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Perl Foundation Funding Goals: 2005-2006
Allison writes "Thanks to amazingly generous members of the Perl community The Perl Foundation was able to fund Damian Conway, Larry Wall, and Dan Sugalski in 2002-2003. In 2005-2006 we hope to repeat this pattern and fund Larry Wall, Patrick Michaud, Leopold Tötsch, and a second Parrot developer. Why now? For one thing, Parrot and Perl 6 are both close enough to completion that a few full-time developers could polish them off in a very small number of "Christmases". Another (more urgent) reason is that we've just learned that we have about 6 weeks left of Leo's time before he's forced to take a sabbatical from Parrot to pursue the noble task of "putting food on the table". This would set the project back by six months or more. So here we stand, on the edge of acceleration or a severe setback. US $200 funds a day of developer time; you can read more about it in the Perl 6 & Parrot Proposal.
Our sincere thanks go to the German Perl Workshop organizers and participants, who got things started by donating funds for just over 20 days of developer time."
Perl Foundation Funding Goals: 2005-2006
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Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
(Score:1)"We're almost done with a project that needs just a small cash infusion and mankind everywhere will reap the benefits. We have little (or nothing) to show for 5 years of work but if you trust us -- and send us cash -- we'll come up with something quickly. Please make your checks payable in Nigerian funds..."
Autrijus seems to have cobbled together much of Perl 6 in a couple of weeks. Shouldn't we rather send money to an inspired hacker like this than disconnected academics working at goverment-project pace?
There's no indication of how much they're trying to raise, or how they're going to raise it. What if they don't hit their target of $35k for each module? Spread the money around evenly and poorly? Fund one programmer to do it all? With all of the ROI and accounting that came from TPI, throwing *this* much money at anything Perl related merits serious consideration. This isn't 1999, there's no company with oodles of cash to waste on something like this and programmers aren't swimming in cash these days either.
Leo's leaving and *this* is why there's a 6-week push on? To try and get a project funded and "complete" and a critical programmer might walk away from it is *insane*. Yes, Leo's made some wonderful contributions to P6I/P6L but to hang an entire 5 year project on any one programmer is nuts -- for Open Source or proprietary software development.
What makes these guys more likely to produce in 6 weeks what they have failed to produce in 5 years? After 5 years, the writer indicates that Perl 6 could be polished off in a "very small number of Christmases".
Two? Five? How much longer? How much more investment?
If this were an itch that really needed to be scratched, it would be done already.
Donated and HAPPY to do so...
(Score:1)I enjoy reading the apocalypses, synopses and exegeses. I enjoy reading the mailing list summaries. I have been too lame to actually contribute any of my time to the project, but if I can do a little to help and we all do a little to help then we can hopefully push this thing closer to completion.
-ben
Look at it differently
(Score:1)Why I give
(Score:2)( http://www.xmltwig.com/ )
I have given in the past, and I will give again this time. And I demand no extra (and costly) accountability.
I give first because for the last 9 years perl has made me happy to be a programer. So I have already gotten a lot for what little money I have given to TPF. I have gotten Perl 5. And I make a living thanks to it. So if Larry wants to take my money and use it to buy pink paint because he believes that the sky should indeed be pink, then so be it. I don't go asking the stockholders at Adobe or Microsoft what they do with the money I gave them.
But in any case I think that the people involved in Perl 6 actually enjoy designing a language, so that's probably what they will do with our money. Otherwise they would be doing something else, and getting paid a lot more money I'm sure.
Then as far as "The Perl 6 project is not transparent enough" and "we need specs". Well, what on Earth are the Apocalypes/Synopsys/Exegesis? They sure read like specs to me. And slightly better than any language specs that I have ever written for sure. Not to mention that the whole project happens before our eyes in the various Perl 6 mailing lists. So really I see the project producing material and I feel that I can follow it if I want. Maybe it doesn't go as fast as we would like, but then giving money or time is likely to be more productive that bitching about it.
So thanks to Larry, Damian, Leo, Allison, Dan and the rest of the community, please accept my donation, I know you will use it wisely.
Michel
Let people know...
(Score:1)( http://jouke.pvoice.org/ | Last Journal: 2006.08.31 19:11 )
What I do think is the main problem is that TPF doesn't communicate well enough to the community about what's going on. For example: I received a grant last year for pVoice. I had to promise to report back what I accomplished with the grant, which I did.
Until I had spent every dollar of the grant, there wasn't even an announcement on the TPF site that I had received the grant, nor has my report ever been made available for others to see where their money had gone.
The same has been going on with other grants, most notably the larger grants for Perl6.
The bottom line is, if you want people to understand why they should give more money, let them know what you have done with it in the past, and keep them updated. Hardly any effort has been made to accomplish this at TPF.
Just my $0.02
Jouke Visser
Using Perl to Enable the Disabled pVoice Sof [pvoice.org]
D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
(Score:1)( Last Journal: 2005.03.23 11:27 )
Either you believe in the cause and donate or you don't.
TPF rewrite
(Score:1)Can someone direct me to mailing list where TPF rewrite (by Perl comunity at large) takes place? It is apperent that we need TPF rewrite now. Does such list exist?