Forwarded : [yas] YOU can Support Damian Conway in 2001

[Stephane Rondal]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Nathan Torkington <gnat at frii.com>
To: <london-list at happyfunball.pm.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 1:22 AM
Subject: Re: Forwarded : [yas] YOU can Support Damian Conway in 2001


> Paul Makepeace writes:
> > So he goes on sabbatical and does some random contract work
> > and makes a whole stack more than $55k (which should take
> > about 2-3months in the US).
> 
> I don't think he's eligible for a sabbatical right now.  The point
> is that Damian has done some amazing things with Perl and for Perl
> in what has been a very tiny amount of time (squeezed into the
> corners around the hulking mass of his teaching) that many of us
> would like to fund 1 year of Damian making Perl his fulltime job
> without him having to squeeze in making an income around it.
> 
> I figure I'll invest $$$ in it (and not withdraw my sponsorship after
> the year ends, thankyouverymuchiii).  My return will be the output of
> about one week of Damian's full-time effort on Perl.  And it's not a
> return on investment that I will turn into small bills and roll around
> naked in, it's a return for everyone in the Perl community.
> 
> This is the first step in what may become a larger program.  Many of
> the big names in Perl are not employed for Perl hackery, but instead
> do it after hours or when the boss isn't looking.  We might be able to
> employ a pumpking, or a core hacker, or hire someone to actively
> maintain abandoned CPAN modules, or port Perl to the PalmPilot, or
> anything else that volunteers shun or burn out at.  YAS can act as the
> collective purse of the Perl community, helping us pool our resources
> and fund projects that make Perl better.
> 
> And Damian's work will definitely make Perl better.  I can't wait to
> be able to parse Perl with Perl code.  This will make filter modules
> of all sorts possible (macros!  currying!  lint!).  His potential as
> an academic and good writer, for making Perl more respectable in the
> eyes of the OO-worshipping unwashed masses, could finally be tapped
> (instead of, "Sorry, Dr Conway, but that line of research isn't
> directly tied to a profit source at the end, so please move on to
> something else").  He'd be able to be active in the online community
> (mentoring newsgroups) as well as in the physical community (being
> a highly respectable ambassador for Perl).
> 
> So we'd be buying part of a hacker, part of an ambassador, and part of
> a mad scientist.  Much better use of money than feeding my family, I
> think :-)
> 
> Nat