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Perl Foundation Awards Perl Development Grant to Larry Wall

Posted by timothy on from the who-better dept.

Krellis writes: "The Perl Foundation today announced that they have awarded a Perl Development Grant to Larry Wall, the creator of Perl and designer of Perl 6, joining Dan Sugalski and Dr. Damian Conway, the other 2002 grant recipients. The Perl Development Grants are funded by donations; over USD 80,000 has been donated so far, a total of USD 240,000 is needed for the three grants. See http://donate.perl-foundation.org/ for more information on how you can pitch in - every dollar counts! See also the use.perl.org story for more information."

9 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Well, duh! by PeterClark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hate to say the obvious, but why wasn't he the _first_ one that the grant was awarded to? After all, he is only the creator and lead architect of PERL. Are there any blindly obvious reasons why this didn't happen earlier?
    :Peter

    1. Re:Well, duh! by babbage · · Score: 4, Informative
      As I understand it, Larry Wall is/was an employee of O'Reilly, but I don't think he had any job duties per se; rather it was more of a patronage for him to keep working on Perl while he was on their payroll. (Think of how the Medici family sponsored artists during the Italian Renaissance -- same idea here.)

      With the establishment of this new Perl Foundation, maybe the idea is to formalize these kinds of patronages for key developers. Damien Conway was first because he's such a great teacher & advocate, and Dan Sugalski was second because he needed more time to work on the Parrot engine for Perl6. Now that Larry is joining this, hopefully he'll have more time to work on the high level language specification...

      --
      DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
  2. Cart Before the Horse by solman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Am I the only one who thinks it is a bad idea to announce the awards before the money has been raised to pay for them?

    The could have delayed the announcement, made fewer awards or made smaller awards.

    Now, instead of focusing their efforts on raising money for future activities, they instead have to focus on digging out of a $160K hole.

  3. Best way to use money? by lkaos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is issuing grants the best way (from a taxation perspective) to use these donations?

    If the Perl Foundation is a non-profit (which I assume they are), wouldn't it make more sense to take these guys on the pay-roll so that the money wasn't taxed except for the consideribly smaller amount that would be paid for general living expenses?

    The 20K travel budget is what suprised me... Since that's a grant, it's not 20K for travel because Larry would still have to pay taxes on that no?

    I'm not terribly proficent in tax laws but something just seems a bit fishy to me... I wonder if it has to do with whether one can claim that writing perl is charity...

    If it isn't, then there definitely needs to be a movement to make OSS a charitable act because it certainly is. I know there was a /. thread about this but I remember it being rather ambiguous.

    --
    int func(int a);
    func((b += 3, b));
    1. Re:Best way to use money? by gnat · · Score: 5, Informative
      Ha! Vacation? No. The travel budget comes from our goal of keeping the people we fund active in the community. That means sending them to conferences like YAPC and OSCON, as well as regular trips to see other Perl Monger groups.

      Damian has set the bar very high in this regard--see the start of his 2002 schedule, and read his 2001 diary to see how much he gets around. While I doubt Larry and Dan will be travelling internationally as much as Damian, we do want them to visit user groups outside their home town.

      In an ideal world, a conference would pay Larry to be Larry. Unfortunately, you might have noticed that this world isn't ideal. Larry has to pay his own way to conferences, just like everyone else.

      --Nathan Torkington

  4. In other news... by jsse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Last Thursday, the Microsoft's community received a boost when Microsoft chose software developer Bill Gates as the first recipient of the Microsoft Foundation grant. Microsoft initially donated an estimated $500,000 worth of hardware and software. See http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/default.asp?subid =22 for more information on how you can pitch in - every dollar counts!

    "We're pleased to be able to let Bill focus on golf without distraction," said Craig Mundie, lead moron of the Microsoft Foundation. "Through these grants, the support of the monopolization -- including sizeable amounts from victims, can be put to use for the good of everyone!"

    Yes, I'm just kidding, you can mod me down now. *close his eyes*

  5. At the risk of being curmudgeonly... by pdqlamb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Damion Conway was a professor, who took a sabbatical to do his perl thing this year. Larry Wall was an O'Reilly employee, the last I heard, and was being paid to develop (wait for it) perl. So what's the story behind the story here? Is ORA looking for help to pay Larry's salary, or just a tax deduction, or is something else going on

    1. Re:At the risk of being curmudgeonly... by Krellis · · Score: 5, Informative

      As I posted in a different comment thread, Larry was laid off by ORA in October, and has been without work since then. He could go back into industry and get a "real job". I imagine his old employer, the JPL, for one, would be happy to have him back, but that would leave him with very little time to dedicate to the continued development of Perl 6.

  6. Re:Great! But why is Larry no.3? by Krellis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Larry was, up until October, funded by O'Reilly to continue his development of Perl. Unfortunately, in the economic climate that we are all facing, ORA had to make the decision to lay off Larry in October, after 5 years of supporting him. The previous two grants were arranged and planned when it was assumed that Larry would still be working. When that ceased to be the case, things were brought together such that Larry could also be brought on board.