9 ms·
Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards
- zaph0d 16y agoPossible reason behind the decision - http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2053908 http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2053908
- santaprem 16y agoI agree with the above Santap- http://www.scratchcards-online.org/ http://www.scratchcards-online.org/
- jacquesm 16y agoI doubt that was the whole of it but it probably didn't help.
- aero142 16y agoI sure hope not. Most responses seemed to disagree and even technomancy wasn't happy with the characterization of his part. If you take every criticism personally instead of looking at the whole, it's a recipe for being miserable.
- ShardPhoenix 16y agoCombined with Hickey's post in that thread, this whole thing strikes me as rather petulant - "throwing the toys out of the pram" as the English would say.
- nickik 16y agoNo it wasn't rich said something like it on the mailinglist befor that "Has Clojure development stalled?" Stuff witch was a big misunderstanding anyways.
- cemerick 16y agotl;dr: Rich is no longer accepting donations from individuals, but businesses (and presumably not-for-profits as well?) are still encouraged to contribute to the development effort. There are a bunch of corporate sponsors of Clojure, and the list continues to grow: http://clojure.org/funders http://clojure.org/funders FWIW, Snowtide was the first announced corporate sponsor of Clojure in the 2010 drive, and we'll be renewing that sponsorship for 2011 (I just need to dig myself out of the stuff that accumulated over the past 2 weeks first!).
- jacquesm 16y agoA 14 line article is too long to read?
- cemerick 16y agoYou'd be surprised by how many people read only comments unless/until they're motivated to read TFA. shrug
- daniel-cussen 16y agoAs long as they don't comment before reading the article, it's fine.
- DeusExMachina 16y agoIn this case wc is not that different though: summary: 3 80 512 original: 3 123 761 EDIT: format.
- matwood 16y agoMany articles have been making it to the main page that aren't really worth reading. To avoid those I scan the comments first and then read the article. Scanning the comments also gives me some additional background on topics I may not be familiar with.
- jacquesm 16y agoGood for him, no donations should translate in to obligations, they're donations, voluntary and are considered to be a reward for services rendered in the past, not the future. Typically when someone is as driven as this and you get the output of all the labour that went in to it the proper words are 'thank you' and if you feel like rewarding the creator then that's great. But that does not entitle anybody to future preferential treatment or even any guaranteed output level.
- davidw 16y agoAct 2312863 of "how to fund open source software". It's not easy. Indeed, it's pretty much impossible to extract a proportional amount of the value that users derive from your code.
- andrewvc 16y agoAgreed, good for Rich. Personally, I'd have no problem blowing people off who ask for more than they were promised if it got to this point. Then again, that might bring negativity to the community, so I can see how the decision to just stop personal donations makes sense.
- EliAndrewC 16y agoI wonder whether most donors actually understand this, with non-donors being the primary complainers. Randy Milholland, the webcomic artist behind Something Positive, quit his job and funded himself for a year with donations to spend more time on his comics. When his output was still less-than-daily, he got a flood of complaints. "We gave you money and you're still not updating as often as you promised!" When he offered to refund the donations of anyone unsatisfied, not a single donor took him up on it. Apparently most (or all) of the complainers hadn't donated, but still felt entitled to greater output. This is not to say that Rich is making a mistake by no longer accepting donations. Even if most complaints are from non-donors, their (unfounded) sense of entitlement comes from the fact that donations are happening. Still, I hate to think that people happy to donate can no longer do so because of the negative effects caused by non-contributing complainers.
- 16y ago
- praptak 16y agoOh well. I hope that the majority of the community is not like that. Just to restore some balance in the universe: I have donated and I don't expect any obligation in return.
- flatline 16y agoMe too, I contributed to help him continue what he'd started, since I liked the results. If you try to change what's working, it most likely will not end up better off...
- bphogan 16y agoI'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. He's basically complaining that people think they own him (or his time) because they donated money. I've seen that, and it's terribly unfortunate. I was right with him until I saw "I encourage businesses using Clojure ...to discuss options for corporate support for Clojure." Seems to me he'd run into similar problems from corporate sponsorships. Am I missing something here?
- hvs 16y agoMy guess is that if a company is willing to sponsor specific development, he is willing to negotiate. I.e. fee-for-service to some extent.
- nollidge 16y agoI think that's him offering corporate support contracts, not sponsorships.
- bphogan 16y agoI guess I can see that. I didn't read "support" in terms of "support contract" but that does make more sense. Thanks.
- barrkel 16y agoCorporate support != corporate sponsorship. When you get a support contract from Red Hat (for example), you aren't donating money to the development of Linux like a sponsorship; you're indirectly supporting Linux development, but really what you're interested in is either (a) specific solutions to specific problems, or (b) getting access to people should a problem arise in the future during the term of the contract.
- bphogan 16y agoIs that really true though? If Company XYZ is your biggest support contract, they'll have influence over you, wouldn't they?
- zacharypinter 16y agoInteresting to see Steve Yegge on the funders list, hadn't noticed that before: http://clojure.org/funders http://clojure.org/funders
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pmorrisonfl 16y agoWow, now I want to contribute anyway, as a token of respect... and I don't even use clojure!
- zaph0d 16y agoPatches, bug reports are welcome :)
- pmorrisonfl 16y agoFair enough... guess I need to start using it!
- Waywocket 16y ago>Patches, bug reports are welcome :) Well, not really. My biggest beef with clojure is that it masquerades as an open source project by strictly following the letter (it is released under an open source license), but not actually following the spirit in any meaningful way. How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions?
- cemerick 16y ago> How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions? That is a way of thanking contributors. If the question is, "How many other OSS projects require filing a CA before patches will be accepted?", then the answer is "many". viz. Many run by Oracle now (e.g. http://openjdk.java.net/contribute/ http://openjdk.java.net/contribute/), all apache projects AFAIK (http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt), django (http://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/cla/faq/ http://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/cla/faq/), etc. etc. So...what "spirit" are you talking about here?
- Waywocket 16y agoWell let's see, the choice of license is a starting point. The EPL is, per se, a bad license (intentionally incompatible with the GPL and with the showstopping choice-of-venue clause), but it's ubiquitous in Java land so we'll let them off. In case you hadn't noticed, Oracle is widely considered to be an enemy of open source, so pointing out similarities with their processes isn't hugely helpful. In fact, contributor agreements are reviled by a large segment of the open source community (see the fights that go on whenever this subject comes up on LWN, one of the less flame-infested pro-OSS sites). This example is a particularly bad CA because it is effectively a full grant. The only way it could be worse would be a total transfer of copyright. Finally, unlike any other projects I'm aware of, Clojure requires the agreement to be printed out, signed, then snail mailed to a foreign country. There is no reason for this other than to deter potential contributors. I've accepted one CA in the past - after fixing a crash in a little-exercised part of Ogre3D I figured the change was so minor that they could own the copyright on it as far as I was concerned. Would I have submitted the fix if I had to post a letter to New York? Not bloody likely. Other projects (Android is a notable example) are widely derided for this sort of approach to open source - why does Clojure get a free pass?
- philjackson 16y agoWhy not accept donations with the explicit disclaimer that under no circumstances will Rich's development efforts be swayed?
- Tichy 16y agoI think human psychology just doesn't work that way.
- disponsible 16y agoActually it may work. The only ones deterred by this notice would be those who donate to feel entitled, but not those who do it to show genuine appreciation for his work. And I doubt former kind even makes it to the donation form in the first place.
- scott_s 16y agoA feeling of entitlement does not work that way. People aren't that rational; they don't donate for the purpose of having a say in what happens. They probably donate for honorable reasons, but once something they want becomes an issue, they feel entitled because they donated.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mark_l_watson 16y agoRich: I am sorry that you did this. Please add the PayPal donate button back onto clojure.org. I never make large donations to open source projects, etc., but I give small $2 to $10 donations for things that I use. What this allows me to do is to contribute a modest $30 to $40 per year to projects that I use and not feel like a total freeloader.
- dsimms 16y agoAFAIK, he'll still accept paypal! But, he had changed the paypal link on clojure.org/funding to go to clojure/core instead of himself. This was reflection of the changes to the clojure team, which seemed fair IMHO. I'm sad to see that pointing the donate link at clojure/core had unintended consequence of creating some sense of entitlement on the core group.
- masterponomo 16y agoFrom what I've seen, Rich does things to end controversies quickly rather than talk them to death. There was a religious war developing in the user group some time ago over licensing terms of products that were developed in Clojure. Rich didn't take a side, as I recall--he simply intervened after a few days and asked people not to carry on this discussion but to focus on technical issues. At least one heavyweight (Jon Harrop) seemed to disappear from the user group upon being asked to cut out the licensing jibber-jabber, but peace was restored. Given Clojure/core potential earnings and the bigger bang for the buck of corporate sponsorships, requests for individual donations are not worth the ill-will that they apparently cause. I like his techniques for time management and choosing his battles carefully. Onward with Clojure development!
- huwigs 16y agoAs a longtime Lisp observer, I can't say that I've ever seen Jon Harrop conduct himself as a "heavyweight" in forums unrelated to OCaml, Mathematica, or F#.
- masterponomo 16y ago"heavyweight" was my opinion of him based on his education, demonstrated ability, and publications, not anything to do with his way of representing himself. I found his comments very interesting, informed as they were by his extensive work in other languages.
- zaph0d 16y ago
- tomfaulhaber 16y ago"my/our continuing work on Clojure is an ongoing gift" and what a gift it is! Thank you Rich (and the rest of the Clojure community) for this wonderful language. Personally, it makes my work more enjoyable when I use it and I look around and see folks all over having fun with it. Plus it's creating jobs and competitive advantage. Not everything is awesome, but from where I sit, Clojure sure is.