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The Perl Foundation Grants Are Running Out

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the throwing-cash-in-the-guitar-case dept.

dogma01 writes "It looks like the grants to fund: Larry, Damian, and Dan have pretty much run out. :(" Keeping guys like these working on Perl is definitely a good thing(tm) if you are looking to support the Open Source Community somehow. You can donate here if you are feeling generous.

3 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Perl sux0rz by Theodore+Logan · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm not sure what you mean by "real" but if you think OO and Perl don't go together, you're just plain wrong.

    --

    "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok

  2. Re:Perl 6 is a mistake by Fweeky · · Score: 3, Informative
    But Ruby doesn't support multilevel inheritence

    Um, yes it does. For instance:

    Fixnum < Integer < Numeric < Object

    It also supports mixin inheritence, in case you want some more exotic inheritence hierachies; class mixes in Module, and Array mixes in Enumerable, for instance.

  3. Re:Ask yourself... by thoughtstream · · Score: 5, Informative

    For 18 months of Damian and half a year of Dan and Larry... what has been produced?

    I'll let Larry and Dan speak for themselves, but as for myself: in the eighteen months I was supported by the Perl community I produced the following...

    • Released 55 significant updates to 21 CPAN modules...
    • ...including 16 entirely new modules...
    • ...5 of which were subsequently considered important enough to be included in the Perl 5.8 core distribution;
    • Wrote four extended documents (Exegeses 2,3,4 and Synopsis 5) explaining the Perl 6 design;
    • Wrote a Perl Journal article on the practicalities of porting Perl 5 code to Perl 6;
    • Developed a 125 page alternative design for a future Perl (named Perl 5+i), much of which has fed back into the Perl 6 design process;
    • Wrote several articles for various Perl community channels like use.perl;
    • Added 88 discussion nodes to the Perl Monks website;
    • Posted 192 responses to messages posted on the comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups;
    • Replied to over 5000 Perl-related email messages;
    • Gave 167 hours of presentations on 56 Perl topics in 21 different cities in 9 countries on 4 continents.

    What finished products can we take back to our workplace and use?
    These, for a start...
    • Attribute::Handlers
    • Attribute::Handlers::Prospective
    • Attribute::Types
    • Class::Delegation
    • Filter::Simple
    • Getopt::Declare
    • Hook::LexWrap
    • Inline::Files
    • Lingua::EN Inflect
    • NEXT
    • Parse::RecDescent
    • Perl6::Currying
    • Perl6::Placeholders
    • Perl6::Variables
    • Regexp::Common
    • Switch
    • Text::Balanced
    • Text::Reform

    Mailing list traffic?
    Yes. That's where the community converses.

    Apocalypses/Exegeses?
    Yes. Designing Perl 6 was the main job we were asked to do.

    Acme::*?
    Sure. Play is where the community coheres.

    A lot of travel time...
    Yes. Too much. 28 weeks apart from my family. :-(
    ...and expenses?
    Surprisingly, not. Over 100,000 miles of travel and 200 nights of accommodation. All for about $50 a day and $0.20 per mile.

    Lectures given in far away cities...
    Yes, exotic remote places such as New York, London, Dallas/Fort Worth, Toronto, Chicago, Bonn, and Silicon Valley. ;-)
    ...to a few hundred perl hackers?
    Over 10,000 in total.

    Half a design for a language...
    Considerably more than half, I'd estimate. Most of the really hard bits, and quite a lot of the rest.
    ...nobody really begged for?
    Begged? No. Why should they beg?

    But hundreds of extraordinary individuals and organizations did collectively donate over $210,000 in the last 18 months to ensure that the work we were doing would continue. And donations more than doubled in the second 9 months of fund-raising.

    I had always assumed that was because the community approved of what we were doing.

    Damian