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."
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
nicholas on 2005-02-14T23:24:36
Autrijus seems to have cobbled together much of Perl 6 in a couple of weeksFrom nothing? No. From these and these which is part of what has been produced over the past few years. So your We have little (or nothing) to show for 5 years of work is untrue.
There's no indication of how much they're trying to raiseI see 12 amounts of $35000. That's a pretty good indication, surely?
What if they don't hit their target of $35k for each module?They're milestones. You can't start the later ones until you finish the previous (in the general case). So the money goes on each to completion in order if the target is not raised. And once the money runs out then work will continue, but at a volunteer pace.
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.Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Parrot's implementation has mostly been on a volunteer basis, and in volunteer projects you don't get to make such choices, even up front. You take what you can get - "beggars can't be choosers"
What makes these guys more likely to produce in 6 weeks what they have failed to produce in 5 years?You're missing the point here. That 6 weeks is the time left that Leo can afford to volunteer. Not the time before anything is complete. If you read the proposal you will see Each milestone represents approximately 6 "developer-months", planned to be completed by two developers working simultaneously.. You will see that there are 4 parrot milestones. So that means fully funded the estimate is 12 months for parrot. Similary the 8 Perl 6 milestones are estimated to take 24 months if fully funded. Not 6 weeks.
Two? Five? How much longer? How much more investment?Read the proposal. If fully funded the estimate is 24 months. That's 2 years. And given that I read there Milestone 8 - release the stable Perl 6.0.0 then it is clear that the entire investment needed to get to a release is down in black and white already.
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
hfb on 2005-02-15T06:46:59
In spite of the harsh words, Mr. No Free Lunch might not be so 'confused' if anyone from behind the magic curtain ever communicated in a clear, concise way what is going on. There hasn't been an Apoc in over a year so, even for those keeping score, it does give you pause as to why there is suddenly all this excitement, especially after seeing what a bright guy can do in 2 weeks.
Last time there was a push for funds it was two years back then, too. When there is nothing but the 'with us or against us' kind of attitude in fund raising, I'm not really sure why you bother with the 'little people' who pause to think about the details of their investment.
You mention funding 4 people in the proposal, but name only three. Who is the fourth? And 12 x 35k is $1.23 MILLION DOLLARS. That ain't chump change and those who would give money should ask questions and expect to get reasonable answers after 5 years with nothing for anyone who simply has a use for the end product.
I don't know that you've got two years as I've had several people at work come up to me at lunch, introduce themselves, mention my Finnish husband and then launch into a long apology how they haven't used perl in 3 or more years because they gave up waiting for P6 and found something better for their needs. They're mostly bioinformaticists and I'm not really sure why they felt the need to confess to me but I found it interesting.
You'll create a language for those who have invested time and ego, those who drank the kool-aid and the few who have some academic or practical curiosity, but in two years I'd guess that most of the mainstream will have moved on. The point of the exercise was to reinvigorate perl as a whole and it has done very, very little towards that end. Is that really worth 1.23 million bucks?
$420000
nicholas on 2005-02-15T07:45:26
And 12 x 35k is $1.23 MILLION DOLLARS.I believe that there is an error in your maths.
perl -le 'print 12*35000'
420000Re:$420000
hfb on 2005-02-15T09:44:00
That's what I get for making purl do the math. Even so, the questions remain. Is it worth $420,000?Re:$420000
rafael on 2005-02-15T10:06:04
"Second-system syndrome done right", Larry says. To me that's the better justification one can propose. The goal is not to develop (incrementally, as always) a cool new language, but to come up with a fully working, fast and mature implementation, built on the experience of the previous Perls, and able to handle migration from Perl 5 legacy.(Maybe outsourcing to some Asian country could help to cut costs:)
Re:$420000
modred on 2005-02-15T12:07:34
Is it really? C2.com paraphrases Brooks in "The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one." and to me that sums up Perl 6 in a nutshell.Re:$420000
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-15T16:18:53
I'll quote, so there's no misunderstanding that Perl 6 is a second-system gone haywire. From the Mythical Man Month:And of course Brooks goes on an on with examples of the dangers of Second Systems. As he describes Stretch, the link editor, TESTRAN, and the scheduler it's very easy to picture Perl 6's extensions to regexes, syntax, objects, and data structures.Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit. [Add little to little and there will be a big pile.] -- Ovid[...] Self-Discipline - the Second System Effect
An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.
As he designs his first work, frill after fill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next time." Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
This seond is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile." For example, consider the IBM 709 architecture, later embodied in the 7090. This is an upgrade, a second system for the very successful and clean 704. The operation set is so rich and profuse that only about half of it was regularly used.
Re:$420000
Aristotle on 2005-02-15T17:49:01
Where does the fact that there have been four previous second systems of Perl fit into that picture?Re:$420000
chromatic on 2005-02-15T18:13:27
I quit reading for content after the claim that Rafael couldn't possibly believe what he wrote. Then I went back and reread FOR AMUSEMENT!
Re:$420000
Ovid on 2005-02-21T22:03:46
For those reading this thread: In case it's not blatantly clear, the "Ovid" referred to here is the poet Publius Ovidius Naso, not me.
And given that I have been paying attention to the development of Perl 6 and have a decent idea where they stand, I'm quite pleased with how things are going, though I confess they're taking longer than many suspected. Of course, if MTanstaafl wishes to sit on the outside looking in and lob stones, that's his right, even if he's wrong.
perl5 is the second system.
properler_head on 2005-02-22T19:36:25
perl5 was the second system. Ands it sucks. The price for references and objects was a complete loss of integrity, be it semantic or syntactical.I loved Perl4. I understand why Perl5 is what it is but I can't hardly recommand it to the newcomer when Python and Ruby don't carry all the historical baggage that Perl5 has.
Perl5 was a total rewrite, but it was bound by the decisions made for the first one that was intended only as a better awk.
That's why Larry takes so much time with Perl6. He wants a language that will grow and will keep some integrity over time. Such an undertaking is not the making of an industrial product of a completely known type. So it is illusory to expect steady progress and known milestones. Most of the industry is merely innovating. I hate that word. It means putting a new polish on known concepts and get the customer to pay again for the same thing. Know product cycles guaranties steady income for the investors. But, to use their very terms, does that really create value over the long term?In computer languages, it is even worse. Your skills dom't translate automatically in the innovative language. A new language need to be learnt. Usually to get marginal improvement on your productivity and none on your creavity.
Larry is not a innovator but a creator. Innovators and creators don't live by the same standards, What they create don't obey the metrics we are used to judge previous creations and innovations. it breaks these very metrics. Creation is subversive. Because it does not obey existing metrics, creation looks like entropy. And, in a sense, entropy is part of the process. Perl5 was the entropic process that lead to the emergence of Perl6. we need creators. Innovators just build on the work of creators.Our mistake was to believe that Larry would come with something in months. Don't blame him for the wrong expectation we have imposed on him. I had doubt but when I have read the Apocalypse about rules. I understood that Perl6 would be more than a clean implementation of Perl5. I loved Perl5 because of regexps. And I realized that Perl5 regexps was a mere clumsy historical artefact tacked on the side of Perl with features added in a haphazard way. We even lost people on that, like Tom Christiansen, who could not admit Perl5 was going this way. I was entranced to figure how well thought Perl6 would be. I can wait for Perl6.
I am eager to understand it. I am learning type theory because I don't know how a language can be both with static and dynamic bindings. How type conversion can coexist with type inference? Probably not, There will be different modes. Larry is still silent on that. That probably means he has not made his mind of it. And probably some important features will come over time, not with the first release of Perl6. But it must be designed for it.
And now, we come to examples of a perception problem with Perl. Sadly Perl6 will have more problem on that. But that's a problem with our industrial culture, not of Perl who bring us back to our real human nature. Our industrial world is about specialization of process and people. But Perl is a language and not an mere industrial artifact or process. People think that they can pigeon hole Perl. For example: "Perl does CGI. So it cannot be used to program in the large". And, by what I read in perlmonks and elsewhere, we are pigeon holing Perl6 by judging it with the metrics of Perl5.
Trust Larry. Read the synopsis, the apocalypses, the exegeses. Play with Parrot and Pugs. If you feel too small to contribute code. Just going along the learning effort, you will help building the Perl conmunauty.
Perl6. Better be right than right now.
Re:perl5 is the second system.
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-23T14:55:06
Whether or not to even attempt Perl 6 wasn't my original point -- simply the shady financing of TPF, and throwing money down the Perl 6 Hole -- but you've touched something.There is a tipping point for all things, when the need to produce something with all of the features you want is surpassed by the need of actually producing a usable product.Better be right than right now.For example, the Pony Express is romanticised and fondly thought of, but failure. Not because it wasn't financially sound or wasn't sorely needed -- it was both. It was an idea behind its time and was completely smashed by the telegraph.
Perl 6 is taking so long it's becoming a newly improved adding machine, a better buggy whip, or a terribly precise astrolabe. Perfection, indeed, but useless.
Re:$420000
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-15T14:42:47
Even the devil may quote scripture to his own purposes. Just because Larry thinks the sky is orange, bears can sing, or that Perl 6 can avoid the SSE doesn't mean it's true.
Rafael: contribute your own thoughts and quit spouting the party line. This is not an ad hominem, but other thank your "joke" almost everything you said came from http://dev.perl.org/perl6.
How can you honestly believe that a system that isn't even fully spec'd out yet after almost 5 years will ever come to completion? It can't and it won't. Perhaps some of Sugalski's work can be salvaged with PONIE. But this fantasy-land that emits Apocalypses, Exegeses, and Synopses isn't going to produce anything anybody needs.
just the facts
Allison on 2005-02-15T15:40:59
Larry is doing Synopses now instead, to speed up the process.There hasn't been an Apoc in over a year so...Autrijus' accomplishment is awesome, but it's not a production system (i.e. something we'd feel comfortable shipping as a replacement for Perl 5). Turning it into a production system would take as much time and effort as finishing off Parrot/PGE/Perl 6....especially after seeing what a bright guy can do in 2 weeks. The fourth requested we not make his name public until he decides whether to leave his employer. I respect that, so I removed it from the web page version of the proposal.You mention funding 4 people in the proposal, but name only three. Who is the fourth?That's an interesting anecdote, but I've heard just as many positive anecdotes about how someone just found a great new application for Perl. It's not as good as hard statistics, but hearing about a 50/50 split on people changing to/from Perl, I'm happy.I've had several people at work come up to me at lunch, introduce themselves, mention my Finnish husband and then launch into a long apology how they haven't used perl in 3 or more years because they gave up waiting for P6 and found something better for their needs.The watchword for technology is "change". It's not something to fear.
This is only a guess. I'd have as hard a time disproving it as you would proving it....in two years I'd guess that most of the mainstream will have moved on. That's rather pessimistic. When was the last time you saw a 3-month flamewar on p5p? The community rewrite has been proceeding along with the rest. We are a kinder community than we once were.The point of the exercise was to reinvigorate perl as a whole and it has done very, very little towards that end.And Perl is not dead. One measure: people are uploading more than ever before to CPAN (in about the same ratio of good-to-bad as always). We have regular releases of Perl 5.8, thanks to Nicholas Clark. Sure, that's just one person, but the community of Perl is entirely made up of a collection of "one person"s, each doing their own thing in their own way. The collection builds up something greater than the simple sum of the parts.
There are plenty of other ways people can help if this one doesn't inspire them. Fund DBI development, submit a patch, write a module, attend a meeting, buy a book, teach a class, help a friend or coworker learn Perl, or answer a question on a mailing list or website.Is that really worth X bucks?Personally... yes, it's worth it. I've donated a significant percentage of my life and income to this project. I'll still be doing so when Perl 6.0 is released. And I'm not the only one.
Re:just the facts
2shortplanks on 2005-02-15T16:48:56
Allison, thanks for the honest answers, with just the facts. Personally, I'd like to thank you and everyone involved for their hard work. You're doing thankless tasks. So thank you.I think people are afraid that they're not going to get any change. People's confidence has been eroded. They're afraid that they're going to give money and not get anything tangible back. I don't think that's necessarily fair, but it's the general feeling - people just aren't confident of Perl 6's completion.The watchword for technology is "change". It's not something to fear.Given this fact, one of the things that worries me about this proposal is the lack of definitions of timelines and accountability. It just doesn't say what these developers will be doing apart from working towards completing the milestones. It doesn't say who will be managing these people and who, as employees, they will have to answer to. I guess the big question these people are asking is exactly what are they going to get for their money - although the proposal implies completed milestones, it doesn't ever actually say it.
It's not that *I* don't trust the developers to work themselves into the grave if need be to achieve the goals - I do. I have great respect for the work that these people have done, and I have every confidence in them. It's that without this information I fear that it's going to be very hard this time round to convince people to stump up cash.
So, I was wondering if TPF had considered paying the money for a milestone on completion of the milestones? This transfers the risk from those that are donating to those that are getting paid.
I'm sure I'm missing some important facts here - like people not being able to eat for six months. Whatever your reasons why this idea is unworkable (and not for a moment do I think that TPF doesn't have them) I think it would do good for us all to hear them.
Thanks again.
Mark.
Re:just the facts
delegatrix on 2005-02-15T19:00:30
I'm sure I'm missing some important facts here - like people not being able to eat for six months.I don't think you're missing anything. It isn't the responsibility of the TPF or any foundation to ensure the livelihood of grant recipients. This isn't charity. There's no text box on the grant application asking for details on how badly you need the money.
I agree that the lack of accountability is astounding. Documentation on deliverables, quality measures, progress reports, lessons learned, noted failures, annual reports - anything would help. Even continued development has deliverables. Don't the grant managers have this kind of information available? Maybe those deliverables are hidden among the discussion of p5p, maybe there's a mail list I don't get, but TPF would do itself a great service by documenting its accomplishments in an accessible place.
Re:just the facts
chromatic on 2005-02-15T19:12:06
I agree. The Conway Channel was nice in that regard. For community-funded projects that produce open source code, regular progress reports seem very reasonable.
Re:just the facts
Ovid on 2005-02-21T23:37:02
As one of the grant managers to whom you refer, I would say "yes, I have that information." However, I am not aware that we've clearly discussed how to best disseminate that. And yes, there's a mailing list you're not on and it's a closed list. Of course, it has to be. When "Luminary X" wants to say "what a mind-bogglingly stupid proposal" (and some of them are), that conversation needs to be private so the committe members know they can speak freely and later tell the proposal author that their proposal didn't make the cut (and why) without coming across as a bunch of prima-donnas.
Still, you raise some good points and I think I'll forward them along. You can go to The Perl Foundation site and read about the Grants Committee, but you are correct that there's not enough info there. Let's see if we can rectify that.
Re:just the facts
Allison on 2005-02-15T21:19:21
So, I was wondering if TPF had considered paying the money for a milestone on completion of the milestones? This transfers the risk from those that are donating to those that are getting paid.
It is indeed the plan to pay for completed work rather than paying for the entire milestone up front. The commitment is to complete the work for this amount of funding even if it takes longer than planned. Which means, the longer it takes, the lower the "rate of pay" for the developers.Re:just the facts
vek on 2005-02-16T06:38:02
People's confidence has been eroded. They're afraid that they're going to give money and not get anything tangible back.
Bingo. Why are people surprised that the latest call for donations has been met with some cynicism?
Once bitten, twice shy (and all that).Re:just the facts
hfb on 2005-02-15T18:58:52
While I appreciate the happy spin, there are still no answers and, perhaps, more questions. There has been precious little communication from the dark void that is TPF with occasional requests for money for a project that seemingly has no end. It's not pessimistic, it is being realistic. Perl is a cul-de-sac at this point it is so constipated with P6.
As far as investments go, I've been here 10 years and given plenty of my time, supported a pumpkin for 3 years and have given money myself, but I despise the expectations that the community should unquestioningly support P6 with little information or results for that support. I, as you may remember, harped about this for 3 or so years on the TPF list - for the foundation to publish finances, an annual report, to send out thank you notes with little success. There are questions that deserve to be answered and realities to be met with more than platitudes lest we start calling P6 "Topaz2 - when more was less".
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
drhyde on 2005-02-21T15:59:24
but in two years I'd guess that most of the mainstream will have moved on
People said the same two years ago. They were wrong. People are still using and abusing perl to sell books, mangle financial and medical data, control test equipment, and all the same jazz as they were back then.Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
hfb on 2005-02-21T19:22:45
Why is it so outlandish to think that, after years of nothing for the mere mortal to see in regard to P6, that people think of perl5 as only for legacy code and a few other apps and move on. It's like Apple where you're afraid to buy the current powerbook in fear that it's already obsolete. Two more years of the same is a long time.Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
drhyde on 2005-02-21T22:50:04
It's so outlandish because *it simply isn't happening* to any significant extent and because "perl5 is crufty old legacy rubbish" simply has no basis in reality. The non-existence of perl6 is of no importance to the guy who is programming perl today, because perl5 still works and is still just as good at its job as it was when the idea of perl6 was first floated.New code is being written right now in perl5 in all kinds of industries because it works. Companies which have never used perl before are deciding to start using perl. Others are dropping perl for all kinds of reasons, including "the
.net salesman gives better head". I see nothing odd here. You could s/perl/java/ and all that would be equally true. And I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about with laptops. ALL computer hardware is obsolete before we take it from the shop.
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
hfb on 2005-02-22T12:55:47
Maybe I just didn't drink enough of the kool-aid and have really no interest whether or not people use perl or not, but it's not unrealistic to think that 5 years of waiting for P6 hasn't really been a great draw and, in the interim, people have moved on to other things. That people who have always used it will continue to use P5 is no great revelation, but there are plenty of those who swear allegiance to this cult that if it weren't for CPAN, they'd use something else. At some point my words may ring true and at which point they will serve no purpose.
I don't understand the unwillingness to acknowledge the problems. When four people closely involved with the P6 project quietly say that they don't believe they'll ever see P6, how do you expect anyone else to believe otherwise? The number of people using it is unimportant to me, it is the dynamic of the white elephant that bothers me.
And maybe you've never bought an Apple laptop....they have a habit of introducing new laptops once or twice a year which makes the laptop you bought only a month earlier, after years of waiting for the perfect model, obsolete. Waiting around for the perfect model of anything never pays off in technology.
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
drhyde on 2005-02-22T18:07:37
Perl5 is *not* just used by people who've been using it for the past N years. New people in new places are taking it up right now. That's not kool-aid speaking, that's a fact. As for perl6 pulling people in to perl - people don't buy in to a language because of the features promised at some time in the future. They buy in to it because it helps them solve their problems right now.I can't comment on what those people may have said quietly cos I don't know what they said or who they are. Possibly because I don't care enough to pay attention.
And actually I have bought an Apple strawman^Wlaptop. I've been using it for a couple of years now. Yes, it's obsolete in the sense that it has been superceded, but you can't point at a single affordable laptop that isn't superceded in that time - in fact all affordable computer hardware is obsolete before you buy it. But it's *not* obsolete in the sense that it still does everything I need, including all the stuff that I didn't need two years ago. Two years ago I didn't need to do CAD or use Bluetooth. And yet last night, that laptop was doing CAD and on Friday it'll be doing Bluetooth.
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-15T15:22:15
They're milestones. You can't start the later ones until you finish the previous (in the general case). So the money goes on each to completion in order if the target is not raised. And once the money runs out then work will continue, but at a volunteer pace.Ahh, so I misunderstood. Apparently the remainder of the work is being ransomed out to us. If the TPF doesn't get it's $400k then Perl 6 will remain unfinished and it's our fault for not opening our wallets to these feature-creatures who can't deliver. I'd believe the ransom threat, except I haven't received the customary "pinky finger in the mail" for proof yet.
Show me the code. I should have a fully-functional, production almost-ready Perl 6 by now.
Ahh, but the beggars are getting choosy. $70k/year.Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Parrot's implementation has mostly been on a volunteer basis, and in volunteer projects you don't get to make such choices, even up front. You take what you can get - "beggars can't be choosers"Read the proposal. If fully funded the estimate is 24 months. That's 2 years. And given that I read there Milestone 8 - release the stable Perl 6.0.0 then it is clear that the entire investment needed to get to a release is down in black and white already.I have read the proposal. It's full of weasel-words and doubletalk. There's no promise of real work anywhere in there. Perhaps it's time for the Perl 6 Lecture Circuit and Sideshow to come clean, do the honorable thing, and admit this project has failed. There's little workable results after almost 5 years, and there's no itch this large that has to be scratched by anyone.
Some larger (or, more popular) open source projects than Perl 6, and there are a few: Linux, Apache, Mozilla, and MySQL. Each has a specific nitch to fill, as only they can fill it. They're self sustaining and attractive enough to gain corporate sponsorship in some cases. They turned out useful products quickly (but barely) enough to keep bystanders, pundits, and most importantly developers interested.
The fact that the Perl 6 Projet has failed to gain that critical mass or momentum and keep it, or get large cash infusions from outside sources should tell you something: it's just not needed. It's just not that important. It's sole usefulness is as a conference talk-topic and a guest lecturing topic for the Mongers.
What developers can't do with Perl they'll do with PHP, Python, Haskell, Java, or C. Just as they always have. Don't overestimate the loyalty of your developers.
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
vek on 2005-02-16T07:52:32
Are you honestly surprised by the cynicism this latest call for donations has produced? Maybe it’s just me but when people donate money, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume they would expect something to show for their generosity.
I dunno, maybe there would be less cynicism if the Perl6 dev effort had been purely voluntary. You know, working at weekends and in one’s spare time because, damn it, you enjoy it. But it wasn’t voluntary. There was money involved. People tend to get a little restless when their wallet has been opened and they see their hard earned cash disappear down a black hole.
Ok, benefit of the doubt (and all that). Perhaps it hasn’t disappeared down a black hole. But then, how would you know given the lack of communication?
Re:Swindle,con,flimflam or honest cluelessness?
educated_foo on 2005-02-15T05:58:57
It's very tempting to go medieval on your contributing-nothing-to-the-community ass, but instead I'll content myself with a brief nod to your cluelessness:Download it. Complie it. See what it can do. Then try this post again.Autrijus seems to have cobbled together much of Perl 6 in a couple of weeks.pugscode.org
autrijus on 2005-03-01T21:41:53
Indeed, I second that suggestion.:-) Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
nige on 2005-02-15T08:50:36
I don't know the ins and outs of TPF funding but I can't believe that Tim O'Reilly can't cough up some hard cash? ORA has made mega-bucks out of Perl ($$$$$) - what about the Perl/Camel trademark licence how much is he paying for that? If he truly supports "Open Source" then lets have some cash deposits rather then withdrawals from the Perl community coffers!Someone should approach him from TPF with a 2 for 1 offer - every dollar raised by the Perl community he doubles.
I suspect the gate was left open and the Camel™ trademark has bolted - but the TPF has another opportunity with Perl6.
Offer him an exclusive "book seller's" licence to a Perl6 related-trademark => how about Pugs™ or Parrot™, or even Perl6™ for an upfront fee and an ongoing "community support" licence?
Make the offer to other publishers who want to move into the ORA patch? They may jump at the chance!
The Perl6 asset is its stunning intellectual property, combined with the book-buying, conference-going goodwill of the community, and as Larry says the language is designed for the next 2o years - a trademark is the connection between all this and cash. Even in its pre-alpha stage this asset is worth big $$$$$$. A small portion of this asset can be sold off now to safeguard its future - a bookseller's trademark licence may be one way?
p.s. A grass roots suggestion for raising funds is:
ORA Book Drive - get everyone to liquidate their bookshelves stuffed with old ORA books and send the proceeds to TPF. Look over at your bookshelf - "How Much has Tim Made?"™ Do you need all those old books?
p.p.s. I think Autrijus is doing a top job - and Pugs™ should be supported by TPF too.
Re:Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
hfb on 2005-02-15T09:55:59
ORA has been terribly generous over the years and always returning to them to solicit them for still more money seems a bit uncreative. I agree about Autrijus though as he has the enthusiasm that has long since left the project. Money can't buy that.Re:Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-15T14:57:52
Let's call a spade a spade, and a contract a contract.
I counter-propose TPF:
* For each of the "milestones" an airtight specification is written before DIME ONE is collected. [Since the Perl 6 crowd isn't big on specs, I doubt this *can* actually happen.] This would become the basis of a contract.
* Since the bylaws of TPF forbid legal action against members of the TPF, those receiving these contracts would have to step down first.
* Of the $35 for each milestone we split the moneys into two pots: $32,000 for the author and $3,000 to retain legal representation for that phase on behalf of the 3rd party.
* Set up a hostile third party to administer these funds.
* When the contract fails to be met (which it inevitably will) the third party administator can take legal action for damages against the contractor on behalf of the TPF.
Real World pressures would come to bear and we'll find out quickly whether these milestones are real or not. So it this a suicide pact? Given the nature of the work done so far, I'd say yes.
Handing out "grants" for Perl 6 work has gotten us nothing so far.Re:Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
nicholas on 2005-02-15T15:40:50
* When the contract fails to be met (which it inevitably will) the third party administator can take legal action for damages against the contractor on behalf of the TPF.You're intending to collect money to hand out to lawyers? And you expect me to take you seriously?
Re:Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-15T15:58:06
Absolutely.
No person with grounding in common sense would undertake signing $400k in contracts to unreliable souls without legal representation.
And given the reliability of Larry & Co., I'd pay the lawyers *first*.
Re:Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
Aristotle on 2005-02-15T18:01:13
After all this polemism, can we have a promise that you won't use Perl6 if it does succeed? Or does the M in your nick stand for Machiavelli?Re:Show me the money? Perl6 - Pugs - Parrot = TPF
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-15T21:02:08
[M is for Mike. Short for Mycroft.]
If it ever gets spec'd out (I doubt it will, too many cooks in this soup)
and
If it ever gets written (I doubt it will, more likely PONIE will become Perl 6)
and
It proves itself so useful over Perl 5 that the world-at-large can't help but abandon Perl 5 (doubtful as well, Perl 5's just too spread around and CPAN's too large)
and
It proves more useful (faster, better, stronger) than other tools (Perl 5, Java, C#, C, Python, etc..) at my disposal.
*then*
I would use Perl 6 to the best of its abilities. Perl isn't a religion, Larry is not a messiah, and Damian is not his prophet. Perl's merely a tool for getting a job done.
Re:Look at it differently
Allison on 2005-02-16T13:57:02
It's intriguing that a single message gets the reply "you ask for money too often", and "you don't ask for money often enough". I guess we must be getting close to striking the right balance.Community funding isn't the only leg on the stool. TPF had a meeting with ActiveState, IBM, and Texas Instruments in California last month (in response to the invitation published in the last issue of The Perl Review and emailed privately to a few companies.) Two more similar meetings are planned later this year, one on the east coast US and one in the UK.
...many members of Perl community that are unable to support TPF financially can easily contribute a lot of noise... Actually, mobilizing the Perl community was an idea that came up at that meeting. Not purely for fundraising. I guess the question for you is: would you personally be willing to take, say, 5 programmers from other companies out to lunch this year? Asking something along the lines of:
What would you need from TPF to do that? A web form to report the results?
- How does Perl help you in your daily work?
- How could it help you better?
- If Perl is helping you, are there ways you could help Perl and other users of Perl?
Re:Look at it differently
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-16T16:34:56
Can we flip this on it's head? How about the TPF provide the community with a comprehensive report of:
* What monies have been collected by the TPF.
* Where these monies have been spent.
* For each programmer grant, donation, etc...:
+ What monies were spent on that programmer.
+ What the programmer was expected to do as a result of the grant.
+ What the programmer actually accomplished.
+ Lessons learned about the success or failure of the grant to produce the expected results.
[Of course, in hindsight it'd be really easy to cook the expectations
to match the results, but I'm trusting that wouldn't be done.]
* And many other items mentioned in this thread.
I'm sure TPF's corporate sponsors might like to know the answers to these questions as well. Knowing these projects intimately, though, the Perl Community would expect a lot more detail.Re:Look at it differently
cynix on 2005-02-16T22:30:59
It's intriguing that a single message gets the reply "you ask for money too often", and "you don't ask for money often enough". I guess we must be getting close to striking the right balance.
Maybe. But there's no balance to strike regarding accountability so asking for this looks like a valid request to me. I'd expect that nobody would mind some clear facts on both income and spending.Re:Look at it differently
Alkon on 2005-02-16T23:54:36
It is not the matter of "striking right balance". I say that fundraising is inadequate because funding development is ridiculously low, and announcement of funding proposal that we are commenting on reveals it one more time. It is actually anecdotal - one of the key developers of the most advanced computer language of our time that is installed on almost every server machine and supports economic activity worth billions of dollars throughout the world needs to think on how to "put food on the table". If this is the case, something or everything is seriously wrong and we need to change it, obviously. This is not the matter of merely "striking the balance" or just "providing web form" - we should reengineer the whole thing, as we reengineer Perl.
To begin with, promotions need to be organized, learned and engineered with same care we apply to our beloved Perl programs. I remember once reading Linux advocacy documents and I was surprised how many useful information they contained. I remember that I learned stuff about "cold calls" and something like that. I did not read them all, but what I have read was really useful - they educated community members about professional promotional practices. Promoting Perl is not just saying "use Perl" everywhere, it also includes issues of selecting most interesting targets for promotional activity and designing right way to approach them, and what to do next to not make first tentative successes dissipate. This is surprisingly non-trivial thing, but we can learn it. I propose to develop similar content, put it on our community sites and attract community's attention to the issue.
Next, Perl community is reach on people who run or support various websites and can contribute traffic to TPF and other sites that belong to Perl community. I am one of them. Some time ago I wanted to put some form of button/icon that links to Perl community, but when I tried to do this I found that it is not as easy as it may seem. First of all there is no high availability logo kit. It should be a matter of two clicks that I can obtain such logo and linking code, and links to where I can get such logo kit should be on most visible places on all Perl community sites including TPF. Instead we have camel and to use it I should write letter to ORA and hope they honor my solicitation. This is a too high barrier for most people, actually. I personally never solicited ORA and used TPF's logo to link to TPF site and I obtained that logo not from logo kit, but directly from left top corner of TPF front page. Because of that I had no choice of sizes and predictably it did not fit the design of my site, and it made me some work to integrate it properly. And even after that work I am unhappy with this logo and hope to replace it with something more appropriate. This not just the design issue, but semantics as well. People are willing to click "Cool Stuff" buttons, but rarely buttons of "Cool Stuff Foundation". Surprisingly, such a simple and crucial thing as proper linking visitors of my site to a Perl world took a lot work and produced unsatisfactory result. And I think Perl community, which consists of creative people, is reach on painting talent as well and may create attractive logo kit. In general, I think Perl community lacks our own logo. I like camel, and I know ORA is our ally from that foreign world of monetary interests, but I think camel is a little bit too monopolized by ORA. (I hope that parrot will not fly away from us - definitely this would be too much).
And then imagine that visitor of my site is curious and clicks TPF logo, then what he faces on his/her entry point to the Perl World. The logic of logo that he clicked on dictates that it must be the TPF site, but it is rather too official and unattractive to catch his attention and first encounter will not produce interest. But even if I decide to deviate from this logic, which is a sin, among Perl community sites I have no proper site to use as entry point to the Perl World. Perl community sites are good for Perl community members that are deep in the Perl culture, but promoting Perl in outer world requires something that can interface with this outer world effectively, and I think we have no such site yet. This is the same problem that Linux has: hackers are at home using Linux, but other potential users, even literate enough, fill it is a foreign place for them. Such entry point to the Perl world should be attractive, dynamic, answer all questions in single place: tell why Perl is so cool; how to get Perl; how cool Parrot is; how good Perl community is, who helps people without billing them; how cool it is to use Perl; how good it is to do in life to support this nice community or even join it; and so on. To promote Perl we need to work hard to catch this "first encounter". The perl.com is not good for that cause it is a commercial site that sells books with its own monetary interests first. We need such community site that serves as entry point to Perl World and interfaces outer world to promote Perl.
Finally and most importantly, in your reply you touched the fundamental thing - "actually, mobilizing the Perl community was an idea that came up at that meeting.". This way it will not work. Ideas for mobilizing Perl community should be born by Perl community at large, not in narrow circles on meetings that are "planned later this year" or held "last month". Perl community should give birth to ideas, live by those ideas and generate momentum necessary to implement those ideas. Perl community is the original source of momentum and it should drive TPF, not vice versa. This is not right when you come to the community and say them that we held some meeting with some people and came up with this idea. The right thing is say to community: "OK, people, we have this issue - lets discuss it, buzz it, brainstorm it, disassemble it (and each other), assemble it back, do it many times, generate ideas and devise solution". Only ideas born this way will move the furniture in this world. This actually not as simple as I put it, of course, but only this way it works. Ironically, this is where TPF providing "web form" may help to begin with - may be we need sort of very special, dedicated web-based Yet Another Perl Community Forum to fiercely discuss issues like this for those community-wide discussions to generate community-wide resonance and community-wide momentum. Well, it seems to be a good idea.
It is not all that I want to say on the subject (it rather too much for a single post). But I hope you see that this is not just the question of TPF "providing web form", it is the question of providing leadership to community to make it self-organize and face challenges. Although this may seem too pathetic, but it is exactly what is required.
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.
Re:Why I give
tmtm on 2005-02-18T10:40:42
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.
It seems there's some confusion here as to the manner in which people are being asked to donate. Customers of Adobe or Microsoft generally don't care what they do with the money. Investors certainly do, being as how they actually own the company.TPF isn't a commercial entity in the same regard, but consider a large charity (such as Oxfam, where I worked for 4 years). Some people are just happy donating cash or clothes or books, or whatever. But there's also a lot of accountability and transparency required.
When I worked for Oxfam one of the national newspapers in the UK published an article claiming that the percentage of income which went on administration was disproportionately higher for Oxfam than for most other major charities. Donations that year fell significantly.
Re:Why I give
mir on 2005-02-18T11:27:38
Well, I don't think that TPF actually pays anyone, so I'd think that ALL of the money we donate goes to the grants. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
And yes, I donate partly because I think Perl 6 will be very cool, and will allow me to keep on coding in Perl in the future, and being able to advocate its use even to companies, or departments, that insist on using a "proper" language, whatever that is. That would be "donating as an investor".
But I also donate because I think that I have benefited tremendously from Perl 5 and I think it is a sensible way to show my appreciation for all the work that has been done so far. That would be "donating as a customer". The fact that I wasn't asked to pay for Perl 5, or for the vast number of modules I use, makes me want to give back, with no strings attached.
No confusion here. Just the feeling that so far Perl (1..6) has been developed without the constraining legal framework that a few posters seem to long for, and I am quite pleased with the results, so it seems to make sense to trust the people who got us to where we are now.
It seems that quite a few people wish the business side of the Perl 6 project was more open, me, I am just happy with the technical side being open.
Re:Why I give
tmtm on 2005-02-18T21:52:39
I don't think that TPF actually pays anyone, so I'd think that ALL of the money we donate goes to the grants. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
This wasn't my understanding. I may, of course, be wrong. The bylaws certainly allow for it.
so far Perl (1..6) has been developed without the constraining legal framework that a few posters seem to long for, and I am quite pleased with the results, so it seems to make sense to trust the people who got us to where we are now.
The major differences is that we now have a legally incorporated entity asking for close to a half million dollars in extra funding.
Anyone making those sorts of requests should expect to come under some scrutiny. And a cursory look at the TPF web site raises more questions than it answers: why are all the legal documents YAS, rather than TPF? Why are there no minutes since September 2000 (especially considering the wide ranging power of the Board)? Where are even the headline income / expense statments to date, rather than just "money raised in last 12 months"?
A deeper look at the legal documents raises some even more awkward questions. The foundation provides personal indemnities (including legal fees) to all its officers (Article 7) - an indemification which survives death (7.10).
All it takes is one death, an executor who decides to go after TPF/YAS, and a nasty legal battle can suck up a huge chunk of the funds. I've seen similar things happen.
It was suggested earlier that it foolish to think that people would donate if there's a chuck of that money going to lawyers. That's probably true of a lot of people. But there's also another group of people who probably won't donate if there's not.
And if TPF are hoping to raise more funds from corporations rather than individuals, then I think more of them are going to fall into the latter category than the former
I don't want this to come across as negative towards the work that TPF is doing. I just believe that when we're talking about these sorts of amounts of money, then there needs to be a lot more transparency than there currently seems to be.
Re:Let people know...
Allison on 2005-02-18T11:24:55
TPF is chronically bad at communication. This we know, and have known for a long time. Every few months we try again to start a new push. And every time it sputters and dies, or simply never gets off the ground (sometimes it feels like the Wright brothers). Why? Well, we're always short on volunteers, and our volunteers are always short on time.Over the years, my focus has shifted from large dramatic changes to small maintainable ones. Something like a regular column in The Perl Review can be done by a single volunteer in one weekend a month. It's a reasonable burden.
Oh, and we've had a couple of volunteers in the area of communication as a result of this thread. I'm happy.
:)
Either you believe in the cause and donate or you don't.
Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
cynix on 2005-02-17T16:01:34
Either you believe in the cause and donate or you don't.Sorry, the world isn't just black and white (or 0 and 1 for you geeks
;-). And even if it would be, there are things that convince people to change sides. That is, if you want to get more people to donate money, you need to convince the undecided and the skeptical and listen to their arguments. Talking about how noble the cause is, might help to convince some, but I'd expect that e.g. a bit more accountability and regular quarterly reports might help to convince many more. As for all you believers, there once was The Perl Institute (TPI) which sucked up money for "the cause" and disappeared. I know what I'm talking about as I both donated to TPI and watched it's demise. You can learn from history or you can ignore it. Don't get me wrong: in no way do I want to relate the current TPF with the former TPI, but even the Perl history shows that how noble the cause might be, it's never wrong to ask for accountability.
Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
zatoichi on 2005-02-17T17:06:23
Nothing is black and white. However, what I posted still stands. If you believe in the cause (and all that implies) you donate. Accountability is a good thing though.Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
Powerlord on 2005-02-19T18:52:35
Nothing is black and white. However, what I posted still stands. If you believe in the cause (and all that implies) you donate. Accountability is a good thing though.Regardless of what I feel about the cause, I have to put food on my own table before I can consider putting food on someone else's table.
Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
zatoichi on 2005-02-20T00:48:55
Well duh! Who said any different? That isn't even implied.Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
Powerlord on 2005-02-20T02:09:43
Well duh! Who said any different? That isn't even implied.You said any different: Either you believe in the cause and donate or you don't.
Which, when changed into code, becomes this:
if ( ($believe_in_cause) && ($tpi->has_donated()) ) {
# You believe in the cause and donate
$good = 1;
} else {
# or you don't
$good = 0;
}Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
zatoichi on 2005-02-21T16:12:09
No, you would be incorrect. We are only talking about donating and not about "life issues". Lets not confuse yourself please.Re:D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N
clintp on 2005-02-17T17:49:00
It's not so black and white as that. I believe in World Peace (tm), but I'm not going to give money to any wino on the street that promises it.
One of my GF's is a fundraiser for a large US Chairtable Organization ($45 million raised/year). Part of their success is they're *very* transparent about where the money goes. Every year annual reports are made widely available to advertize where their money comes from (donations above $5k) and where it goes to (16 page report with typical pie charts, and individual program expenditures). Organizations that hide their books inevitably will fail (or wind up in court). Transparency is good in this business.
I'm sure TPI/TPF are required to file something similar to an IRS Form 990, and we could probably dig it up somewhere through a FOI Act Request... but why not just put your revenues and expenditures online somewhere? And since there are a managable number of projects, you could post details about what's going on within them.
The Light of Day can only help your fundraising, can't it?
... The community rewrite has been proceeding along with the rest...
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?
Re:TPF rewrite
MTanstaafl on 2005-02-23T15:08:39
Allison indicated last week, volunteers have been found to improve communication. Those volunteers have not been named, and nothing else has been said or published here or elsewhere.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?... The community rewrite has been proceeding along with the rest... Ovid indicated that there is communication about where the money goes the grants list, but we're not privy to all of it. No, wait, any of it. The Committee has yet to decide how to disseminate that information.
My guess is that the information will be presented quietly, during a PM meeting or in the halls at a conference and never spoken of again. Your ignorance will later be mocked. This is the usual mode for a Ministry of Truth.
Re:TPF rewrite
rooneg on 2005-02-23T17:13:34
Actually one of the people who volunteered is Jesse Vincent, and he's started posting about it in his use.perl journal.Re:TPF rewrite
Alkon on 2005-02-24T14:41:45
Two extra volunteers contributing few hours of their free time will not solve problem. It is ridiculous to think so and think we've found solution this way as a result of this discussion.
In general, all this discussion and TPF's low profile leads to some unpleasant conclusions.
Re:TPF rewrite
Alkon on 2005-02-24T17:36:58
... And silence was a reply. That silence is symptomatic. OK, if there is no reply, I'd like to know your opinion, people.
Do we really need to rewrite the so called "The Perl Foundation"?
Re:TPF rewrite
chromatic on 2005-02-24T17:52:46
If you can figure out a way to find, motivate, and maintain sufficient volunteers to do what you say on your deadlines, go ahead. Good luck.
If you want to volunteer to help, I'm sure TPF can find a place for you.
