> We spent 92% of our money in 2023 on paying contributors for their time.
That's really cool. Sometimes I think about donating to the PSF, but I don't really care about PyCon.
Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a capitalist economy, high pay doesn't equal challenging / hard work or even valuable work. If you exist where the money is being funneled, you will get paid a lot even if you barely contribute.
Capitalist or not this is still true. Capitalism is a relatively recent invention with a narrower definition that what most people think. In any case, wealth and power distribution is highly related to network effects. Regardless of skills, being a servant of kings will give you more wealth and power than being a free individual in the desert.
Seems like in general, money is directed towards leverage, and that leverage can be either a carrot or a stick. Positive leverage is providing value to others - a product that's priced according to how much people want it (unfortunately this is orthogonal to how much effort is involved), so you have leverage to demand cash in proportion to that; negative leverage is someone simply able to demand money from you, for various reasons, in various ways, with various types of possibly-physical leverage.
I don't think that's a capitalist thing to say, it just seems to be in the nature of game theory. Building something technically difficult doesn't really have any bearing on how much value can be demanded in return.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#13I have a hard time justifying faith in and donation to Zig when I don’t see reaching production quality as having a high priority for the project over the years. I am hopeful that will eventually change and it will some day even be able to compete with C, C++, and Rust.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#14I have a hard time justifying faith in and donation to Zig when I don’t see reaching production quality as having a high priority for the project over the years. I am hopeful that will eventually change and it will some day even be able to compete with C, C++, and Rust.
They have very ambitious goals, I think it's okay to give them the benefit of the doubt for a bit. Keep in mind that Rust took over 9 years to reach 1.0, and C took about 19 years to be standardized.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#15This is extremely impressive. With about no support from software industries' heavy hitters, they are able to run quite successful foundation and project.
Few days back there was topic "Rust contributor's burnout" here on HN. I understand it maybe a sensitive topic but from outside it feels contributors working on Zig seem generally happy and excited about their contributions. And I think this is more important than number of features crammed or 1.0 release deadline committed to.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#16> We spent 92% of our money in 2023 on paying contributors for their time. That's really cool. Sometimes I think about donating to the PSF, but I don't really care about PyCon.
These organizations should really let users direct their donations toward specific goals. I'd love to donate to Firefox but not for Mozilla to use the money on something else. It would also let them see what people values most and help them prioritize.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#17I really hope Zig succeeds! Of all the languages out there, I think it's the closest to achieving the goal of being C, but without the avoidable footguns. Rust is great too, but is different enough that I can imagine a future where both Zig and Rust easily succeed.
I hope they're able to raise the money they need to fulfil their ambitious roadmap!
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#18As someone who's been contributing $10/mo for a couple years, I'd like to see AK and contractors paid more.
It's great to see the dollars spent so frugally (they are paying something like 60-65% market of average devs) but this is a long-term project so sustainability cannot be ignored. Sooner or later contributors will face tough life choices.
Obviously, that means slower development unless funding shoots up for some reason, and 1.0 already seems far away, but I think otherwise there's too high a risk that it never happens or happens in an ultimately un-useful way.
Anyway, I always thought this project was valuable (that's why I started supporting it), but since I've been following it, I've found I also like the way it is run so I guess I should put my money where my mouth is... I just went up to $15/mo.
I honestly can't predict whether or not this will succeed, but I'm pretty sure it's worth a try.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#19I wish the rust foundation could write articles like that, no corporate legal bullshit.
Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've seen salaries in Europe and in the UK, it's more of a joke. Even interns and junior engineers in the US earn more than in Europe. I don't think this will change any time soon.
Apples and oranges. Total cost of living is very different between EU and the US. This is such a common and controversial topic of discussion I wonder why you're trying to derail a Zig thread with such offtopic bait.
Dublin to NYC transplant speaking, I'm still 3xing because of the salary difference.