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The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

news.perlfoundation.org

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Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#2
This is very nice. Between this and Booking.com's (disclaimer: I work there) 
€100,000 donation just over a month ago TPF is really getting on track for having large corporate sponsorship from organizations who recognize how valuable Perl is for their infrastructure.

I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core, and they're really gearing up as an organization for making that happen.

One thing of note for those unfamiliar with the Perl community: Notice how both of these big grants are earmarked for Perl 5 development, not Perl 6 development.

By now Perl 6 is viewed as best an interesting research project by organizations using Perl 5 in production.

I don't mean that as a comment to detract away from what the Perl 6 developers are doing, but to point out that it's a very different pattern than what's happening with the next generation of Python, Ruby, PHP etc. runtimes.

1. http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/01/bookingcom-sponsors-1...

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#3
And TPF can put the money to good use; recently (2010 or 2011, don't remember exactly) they started to pay one core developer (Dave Mitchell) to work on bug fixes and refactors that nobody else wanted to do. Later Nicholas Clark got a similar grant, and both have been used to great effect.

I'm not deeply invovled the p5 developers, but it doesn't look like these grant create envy in other contributors, judging from the development speed.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#4
post #3

And TPF can put the money to good use; recently (2010 or 2011, don't remember exactly) they started to pay one core developer (Dave Mitchell) to work on bug fixes and refactors that nobody else wanted to do. Later Nicholas Clark got a similar grant, and both have been used to great effect. I'm not deeply invovled the p5 developers, but it doesn't look like these grant create envy in other contributors, judging from t…

re: Dave Mitchel / core development - Yes it was 2010 on the back of a $50K grant from Booking.com in Dec 2008: http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/12/grant-from-bookingcom...

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#5
post #2

This is very nice. Between this and Booking.com's (disclaimer: I work there) €100,000 donation just over a month ago TPF is really getting on track for having large corporate sponsorship from organizations who recognize how valuable Perl is for their infrastructure. I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core…

Python, Ruby and PHP are converging so much it's becoming totally pointless to keep up with more than one of those, other than availability of tools and runtimes. Looking forward to production-ready Perl 6.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#6
A few months ago there was this discussion on HN - Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3247925).

Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :)

Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions...

  $10,000   Jun 2011  Vienna.pm
  $10,000   Jul 2011  Booking.com
  $10,000   Jul 2011  cPanel
  €100,000  Jan 2012  Booking.com
  $100,000  Jan 2012  Craigslist
ref: Figures by trawling TPF website. Hopefully I have this correct! http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/06/viennapm-donates-up-t... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/07/bookingcom-sponsor-p5... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/07/cpanel-sponsor-p5cmf.... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/01/bookingcom-sponsors-1... | http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/01/craigslist-charitable...

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#8
post #6

A few months ago there was this discussion on HN - Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3247925 ). Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :) Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions... $10,000 Jun 2011 Vienna.pm $10,000 Jul 2011 Booking.com $10,000 Jul 2011 cPanel €100,000 Jan 2012 Booking.com $1…

Hard to find, unfortunately, but NET-A-PORTER (disclaimer: I work there) also donated $10,000. As well as LOVEFiLM, Oslo.pm, and Dijkmat donating various amounts. Source: http://www.perlfoundation.org/previous_homepage_news

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#9
post #6

A few months ago there was this discussion on HN - Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3247925 ). Unfortunately Perl doesn't have a Sugar Daddy :( However it does have a few benevolent Uncles :) Here's the breakdown of the last 12 months contributions... $10,000 Jun 2011 Vienna.pm $10,000 Jul 2011 Booking.com $10,000 Jul 2011 cPanel €100,000 Jan 2012 Booking.com $1…

Booking.com contributed €100k, not $100k. €100k =~ $130k. So the total for the last 12 months is around $260k, not $230k.

Re: The Perl Foundation got $100,000 donation from the Craigslist Charitable Fund

#10
post #5
post #2

This is very nice. Between this and Booking.com's (disclaimer: I work there) €100,000 donation just over a month ago TPF is really getting on track for having large corporate sponsorship from organizations who recognize how valuable Perl is for their infrastructure. I talked to some of the TPF people at Booking.com's donation event and they expressed desires to have more paid-for developers working on the Perl 5 core…

Python, Ruby and PHP are converging so much it's becoming totally pointless to keep up with more than one of those, other than availability of tools and runtimes. Looking forward to production-ready Perl 6.

And community. I am using both PHP and Python because of two widely different communities and approaches to solve problems. For example, Python is the language with the largest and most robust collection of scientific software bindings. Python users tend to take a bit more time to implement things, but they do it in a very robust way. Java is pushing a bit, but Python stays the king.

On the other hand, for everything a little bit "web" related, you can find a stack load of easy to use PHP code. They are also usually "pure" PHP, making them easy to integrate in your own framework/system. Usually the PHP community at large is very fast at getting things done in a simple way (sometimes a bit ugly, but this is improving drastically).

Note: This is of course a bit of a caricature what I wrote, but in essence, you cannot ignore the community/ecosystem supporting your language.

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