I've made a (small) donation to the Perl Development Fund. It's nowhere near as large as I'd like but, like Piers, my situation is somewhat different to last year and, like Matt, I have a very large tax bill to pay over the next couple of months.
I think that many people will be in the same boat this year. Many of us have aren't earning what we were this time last year and the target is far larger this year.
In fact, when I first saw that target I thought that it was unattainable. There was no way we'd raise that money. But now I think I was wrong. We can do it. If only 2,000 Perl users could each spare $100 then we'd be way over target. There must be 2,000 of us with a spare $100... or 4,000 with a spare $50.
In fact it doesn't need to be even that hard. Let's get as much as we can from our employers. Every company that uses Perl saves money. It's time for them to say "thank you" for that. It would only take 35 companies to make a donation of $5,000 each to meet the target. Or 70 companies making donations of $2,500.
One thing is for sure. We'll need a much larger number of sponsors that we had last year. But I certainly don't think that it'll be impossible to reach that number. There are huge numbers of companies out there using Perl. It's just a case of making sure that the right people know that the fund-raising is happening. The CFOs of your companies don't read use Perl; or Slashdot so it's up to us to make sure that they get the information. I've passed the details up the management chain at Acxiom and I intend to chase it up to ensure I get a decision. Why don't you do the same?
