Perl Community To Buy Damian Conway?

jbc writes: "As discussed over at use Perl, the Perl community is attempting to raise US$55K in donations to support Perl überhacker Damian Conway for a year so he can devote himself to worthwhile pursuits related to Perl development. Thanks to a large donation from an as-yet-unnamed corporate donor, they're apparently already more than halfway there." Update: 10/15 11:31 PM by H : To actually give, go to the YAPC site.

What Damian has to say about this...

taken from Use Perl [perl.org]:

--

That's an astonishingly generous offer, Elaine. Thank-you.

I thought perhaps I should take the opportunity to explain the nature of -- and reason for -- the rush.

YAS has not been able to accept donations for this project until its tax status was confirmed. But my department at Monash University has now gone into the planning phase for next year, and needs to know within the next week or two whether they'll have my teaching/admin services for 2001 (which they most decidedly won't if the Perl community wants me).

So my department needs a clear indication of what I'm doing next year, which means YAS needs a clear indication of whether the community thinks "buying me out" is a worthwhile thing, and something they would actually fund (I'm not nearly egoistical enough to simply assume that the weird stuff I do is worth real money :-)

That's what's required by next week: pledges of support. Actual cash could come (a little) later.

Meanwhile, I've already been overwhelmed by the support that people have privately expressed for this. Whether or not the project comes together, I am deeply honoured and grateful that so many people seem to believe I would be worth "buying".

More Info

YAS has more info, see the story on use Perl [perl.org].

Re:Keep this in mind when you vote

And since Harry Browne can't win, vote Bush!

That's what people were saying about the Republican party circa 1850; "they can't win, vote Whig!".

Heard from any Whig party members lately?

The Republican party won the 1860 Presidential election because people stopped falling for that and started leaving the Whigs for the Republicans.

Sort of like the influx of Libertarians defecting from the Republicans in recent years, or the similar defection (on a smaller scale) of Democrats to the Reform party.

And, of course, a few Democrats joining the Libertarians, and Republicans joining the Reform party.

Bottom line; it only takes a couple of elections to turn things around, *IF* people stop falling for this "two party system" bullshit and start voting their conscience.

Your vote won't determine the outcome of this election, but a massive groundswell of third-party voting this time could result in a change in the 2008 elections, and that's a very important thing to remember before you go condone and endorse a party who doesn't represent your beliefs in any meaningful way.

-

More importantly, Damian Conway can help on Perl6

The Perl 6 project is underway now, and Damian has played a huge role already in the upcoming language (re)-design, as you can tell by looking through his contribution to the Perl 6 language RFCs [perl.org]. If he had his way and he most certainly should (in my opinion), Perl 6 would gain higher-order functions, a far more useful function/method definition syntax, a ton of cool object-oriented goodies that actually fit in with the perl spirit, and so on.

I truly believe that if Damian Conway can be given a year to work on Perl 6 things and Perl in general, the community will be far better off. Now, please excuse me while I fork over my $50. :-)

Worth the price

I've been to a couple of his talks and $55k USD is easily worth it to get this guy writing perl full time.

Who else is going to write Lingua::Romana: :Pe rligata [monash.edu.au], Quantum::Superpositions, Class:: Mul timethods [cpan.org] and Coy [cpan.org].

This guy write the funniest, most intriguing perl modules around. And he gives really funny presentations. If you ever get a chance to see him give a lecture in person be sure not to miss it.

Re:Wow

Dr. Conway is a coding fiend. A quick look through CPAN [cpan.org] will reveal:

Parse::RecDescent
Coy
Text::Balanced
Lingua::EN::Inflect
Quantum::Superpositions

Just to name a few. He has also created a yet to be published module to write Perl programs in Latin (Lingua::Romana::Perligata)! On top of that he is a tireless lecturer.

He has also written a very good book concerning OO and Perl: Object Oriented Perl [manning.com].

In fact, during this year's Perl Conference his series of talks was jokingly referred to as "Damian TV, all Damian, all the time." It would be very helpful to have Damian devote even just 1 year full time to Perl.

I hope this is enough to show you his value to the Perl Community.

Brief Bio

Taken from the Perl.com website...

Dr. Damian Conway is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), where he teaches object-oriented software engineering. He is an effective teacher, an accomplished writer, and the author of several popular Perl modules. He is also a semi-regular contributor to the Perl Journal. In 1998 he was the winner of the Larry Wall Award for Practical Utility for two modules (Getopt::Declare and Lingua::EN::Inflect) and in 1999 he won his second "Larry" for his Coy.pm haiku-generation module. He has just published "Object-Oriented Perl" (Manning, 1999).

Yes you do

You BUY politicians, and politicians are people like you and me who share in humanity's common hopes and dreams. At least until they fuck it over royally through legislation or executive edict.

Patrons

The concept of patron is ancient. There was a time (awhile ago) when artists and scientists were supported by rich patrons so that they could focus on their creative work.

The modern world would be much different if it were not for the discoveries and art of these men. (if someone could reply to this message with some names of these artists and scientists, it would be much appreciated. I cannot remember any at the moment...)

I have felt for a long time that free software development could benefit from this model.

How many great developers are out there who have to work 8 hours a day, before coming home exhausted to fit in 2 or 3 hours of coding between dinner and bedtime?

So here's the next point. Altough the wave of get rich quick startups that characterized the laste 90's is in decline, there are now 1000's of financially sufficent millionaire developers.

If you are one of there people, run down to your investment counselor and find out how you could donate a couple of grand a year to Open Source development. There's probably some loophole that would make it tax exempt or a deduction. Get together with some of your millionaire friends and pick a project to sponsor. It doesn't have to be perl, but a project that you feel could benefit your interests and hopfully the interests of the community by having a full time developer(s). Go to sourceforge and find one that looks cool. Perl, linux kernel development, freenet, maybe a game engine. It's your money, but you could use it to help us all.

But what would the $55k buy you?

When you pledge money to public television or a thousand other "charities", you get a small gift in return, like an umbrella or a video. Does the perl community plan to continue in this tradition? I.e., for $100 I get Damien's half-eaten french toast; for $1,000 I get to play conceal&carry with ESR, and for $10,000 I get to have Larry Wall lecture me on the scriptures (especially the parts about uncovering people's nakedness)?

URL for donations

If you want to contribute to the Damian fund, you can pay online with a credit card at:

http://registration.yapc.org/ [yapc.org]