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Ben Fry resigns from the Processing Foundation

210 points by eat_veggies 3y ago

acomjean 3y ago
I like processing, and the “p5.js” variant. Schiffman’s coding train videos and “nature of code” (version 2 any day now) are how I learned of it and are really interesting and fun. https://github.com/nature-of-code https://github.com/nature-of-code I used p5.js to overlay some graphs on a photo I took which ended up in a coffee shop show. There is value to this and it seems a shame the foundation seems to be miss-managed. I’ve donated in the past and I’m going to have to look into it before doing so again.
- abhgh 3y ago
  Your comment prompted me to look up the Twitter/X thread. I had no idea that the Processing foundation was suffering from issues of mismanagement to this extent. It is sad to hear :(. I haven't used it for a long time, but I remember doing a few projects in 2007-2008 and appreciating the fact that this language existed. But I keep occasionally returning to it, even if that is the form of watching a random Daniel Shiffman video, e.g., [1], or looking up the gallery [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzDttgdILQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzDttgdILQ [2] https://processing.org/examples https://processing.org/examples
  - acomjean 3y ago
    I did some poking too. It seems like they were puttering along with some donations ($165000 in 2018, $275000 in 2020)[1]. 2021 all of sudden they got 10 million dollars..it was crypto donations from artists..[2]so who knows what it’s worth now, if they’ll see another windfall. I can see an organization being befuddled (they hired a finance person). [2] It makes sense a founder being upset the tech side isn’t getting more benefit. It’s not a good look. Hopefully they can manage it better. [1]https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460830259 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... The funding update article: “The majority of the donations in 2021 came from artists donating cryptocurrency to the Processing Foundation.” [2]https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundation-funding-update-94cddb25a3d9 https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundati...
    - ozr 3y ago
      And, of course, now they aren't accepting crypto anymore to reduce their environmental impact. Too much authority being given to people that aren't doing things.
      - thrown37291 3y ago
        They still have crypto wallets accepting donations, Tezos and Ethereum do not have environmental impact today. The blog post was written before the merge.
    - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
      > Hopefully they can manage it better. Why would I want them doing anything after seeing what they've done so far?
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > It’s not a good look The look isn't the issue. The fundamental substance is what counts, and it seems terribly mismanaged to not spend most of this money on development and documentation, both of which scale extremely well.
    - jdboyd 3y ago
      That same document said their policy is to convert crypto to USD, so presumably they didn't suffer from later crashes.
- ralusek 3y ago
  I was about to say that Daniel Shiffman is the only person I sponsor on GitHub, but when I just went to check, I'm listed as a past sponsor: https://github.com/sponsors/shiffman https://github.com/sponsors/shiffman Do sponsorships lapse automatically? In any event, he's amazing and his videos are one of the best ways to get people into code. Very smart, excellent teacher, genuinely wants people to experiment and learn.
  - modernerd 3y ago
    If you were paying with PayPal, GitHub dropped support in February. Subscriptions may stop for those who did not change payment method: https://github.blog/changelog/2023-01-23-github-sponsors-will-stop-supporting-paypal/ https://github.blog/changelog/2023-01-23-github-sponsors-wil...
foota 3y ago
So what is the foundation spending money on?
- mik3y 3y ago
  Propublica has a nonprofit explorer (similar to Guidestar, but free) and tax filing viewer here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460830259 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... According to their FY2021 990 filing, they had $442k of "other" expenses. It seems like they're required to disclose what those expenses are on the Schedule O form if they exceed 10% of all expenses, which they do, but I don't see the expenses enumerated there. (edit: oops, now I see) I am, err, not a tax professional so I stopped here..
  - monitron 3y ago
    Out of their $443,020 expenses in 2021, the biggest line item expense was $187,262 for "CONSULTANTS." Their next biggest was $169,383 of merchant processing fees. It will be interesting to see their Form 990 for 2022, which is presumably the "last year" Ben Fry is talking about..
    - mik3y 3y ago
      Ah, right you are! I completely missed that.
      - monitron 3y ago
        It’s easy to miss, the 990 is a maze! I just happened to get lucky – my work had me doing a project on 990 data recently.
    - didibus 3y ago
      Damn, that's what? Do I need an MBA to understand why they'd need to spend on consultants and merchant processing fees?
      - 3y ago
sberens 3y ago
https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020#m https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020#m
- kfor 3y ago
  Thanks for this! I've been going crazy for months that Twitter threads and replies are totally broken if you are logged out (which I always am since deleting my account in December). And now Nitter has led me to LibRedirect[1] which not only automatically redirects Twitter links but also lots of other common links like TikTok. [1] https://libredirect.github.io/ https://libredirect.github.io/
  - wcerfgba 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing, this looks great! Shame it is not available on Firefox for Android yet.
  - throw_worht 3y ago
    Neat! I wish there was a web version of LibRedirect. Would then be easy to make a DuckDuckGo Bang! for it, so we could do "!<bang> <original URL>" in DDG in any browser without installing an extension first.
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  Also on Mastodon: https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283 https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283
k310 3y ago
Mere mortals can't see past the first "tweet" in a thread, so is there any more to Ben Fry's message? On edit, thanks for the nitter links!
- kilpikaarna 3y ago
  https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020 https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020
- MBCook 3y ago
  Oh is that what’s been going on recently. I seen links to tweets, but there were never any replies or continuation of the thread. I didn’t know if it was locked or Twitter was broken or what. So strange it doesn’t say “Join to access 8 more posts in thread” or “login to see 50+ replies” or something. Calls to action don’t work if I don’t know I’m being called to action.
Animats 3y ago
This is Processing, as in the Arduino development environment? Or something else.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- moralestapia 3y ago
  It started as a different thing. A language to quickly prototype (mostly graphical) concepts. A sort of Flash for Java as well ... The Arduino thing came later, the language and tools (IDE, etc) was quite mature by then.
- willbicks 3y ago
  Processing [1] is a language (/ ecosystem and IDE) that serves a lot of creative use cases, particularly creative graphics projects. Arduino re-used the GUI of the Processing IDE to build the Arduino IDE, which is called out on the startup splash screen for the latter, and is probably what you're thinking of. An aside, I don't use Processing very often but every time I've dipped into it I've found it simple and enjoyable. [1]: https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/
- k310 3y ago
  Processing is very cool, especially if you like graphics. https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/ Processing is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    What does it do that Jupyter - which is used by millions of people, not tens of thousands - doesn't and why does it need a foundation? Why do you need a language to learn to code when you can just... learn to code in one of the more simple languages then switch later to something more complex such as Java? Python's pretty simple to get started with.
mellosouls 3y ago
It's not really clear from the thread what the complaint is though there is an implication of misspent or wasted funds. Looking at the About section, and the people involved [1] there appears to be at least a misalignment between the purely technical (?) vision of the tweet and the much wider remit of a foundation that he started years ago. Things change, priorities move on. Is there something rotten here as rather vaguely implied? Perhaps, but it's possible there is just a disappointment at the child choosing a very different path to that desired by the parent. [1] https://processingfoundation.org/people https://processingfoundation.org/people
- re-thc 3y ago
  > there appears to be at least a misalignment between the purely technical (?) vision of the tweet and the much wider remit of a foundation that he started years ago. Is there? Why do they need to be aligned? The foundation is aligned to who's in charge of it "today". If those mentioned in the tweet are no longer in some sort of control they can't expect it to go the way they "wish".
  - mellosouls 3y ago
    Yes, but that's partly the point I was making. The whole thing is a vague lashing out without clear detail of what the exact criticism is or whether it is fair.
    - Pyxl101 3y ago
      Agreed. More clarity would help. Maybe he wanted to start drawing a salary in order to resume working on Processing again, and the board said no. (That isn’t my first guess about what’s happening, based on the highly polarizing content on the foundation’s website but the thought did cross my mind.)
- didibus 3y ago
  The criticism seemed pretty clear. He said that last year 800k was spent, and none of it went into development of Processing itself. And that next year they plan to spend 1.2 million, and of that, only 2 developers are planned to spend any time further developing Processing. And he said that's no better than what they had prior the foundation when him and Casey were working on Processing. That he started the foundation in the hope to scale up development. Now, I have no idea what they could have allocated money on, isn't it sole purpose to further develop Processing? But my guess is they are doing outreach, grants, and other stuff like that, as opposed to further development. But that's just speculation on my part.
keyle 3y ago
This is sad. I was just thinking days ago, as I revisited Processing, how consistent it has been at being Processing. Sure, development has been rather slow but at least it's not overwhelming to come back to. I had no idea that they had a 'foundation' let alone this big. The list of people in the about section has me pondering 'why'. I never knew that a foundation based on donations could stray off the path so far as to make the original founders uncomfortable enough to quit. I wish them well and I hope that they start a new foundation where money can go instead. Money walks.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  I read something about the Linux Foundation that indicated it is also straying quite far from the expected path as well.
  - the_biot 3y ago
    They've been a money train for a very long time now, and at some point started going ultra-woke as well. Last I checked they were demanding what can only be described as "woke loyalty oaths" from people that wanted to speak at one of their conferences.
  - goku12 3y ago
    The news is that TLF spent just 3.2% of its funds on the Linux kernel. It dwindled from a paltry 3.4% in the previous year. Meanwhile, Linux developers are giving up on their LTS kernel due to lack of resources. That news had many defending the foundation, saying that their other projects get equally low funding. However, it makes me wonder how these foundations would fare in terms of income if they didn't use the name of a popular open source project. It's likely that a lot of donors have the misconception that their money goes to the namesake project - this is especially true for Mozilla.
    - mst 3y ago
      The LTS kernel change appears to be lack of senior maintainer bandwidth. This is not, in my experience, the sort of problem that could be solved by throwing money at it. (and by "in my experience" I mean situations where I was involved with that shape of problem, and could have arranged to have money thrown at it, and the eventual decision was that that wasn't the limiting factor) Note that this is entirely separate to the question of whether what TLF is doing with its money is suboptimal - it probably is - but I don't believe from what I've seen that the LTS kernel situation is downstream of funding decisions.
mellis 3y ago
So very sad. Ben Fry is one of my heroes. He's done an amazing job with Processing, over a very long time. I can't think of any other open-source project with the same consistency of vision and quality of execution, plus the level of design and usability. I read a lot of Ben's code while I was working on the IDE for Arduino. It was always extremely clear, robust, and well-commented. And occasionally hilarious. My favorite part was the prompt to take a walk that showed up when you had created a new sketch for each letter of the alphabet on a particular day (sketch names defaulted to something like 20231003a, 20231003b, etc). But there were also some good digs at the failings of Processing's various dependencies, like Java and Mac OS. The world of computational design and open-source software is much better for having Ben Fry and Processing in it.
- ivyirwin 3y ago
  Agreed. Ben, although he doesn't know it, is one of my biggest inspirations for what I do. Back in 2005 or so he did a presentation to my class at the GSD on his genome visualizations. I was blown away, but even more so when I asked him what language he works in and he said Processing. I said I was unfamiliar with Processing and he said, "Oh, I wrote it." Mind. Blown. On days I'm looking for inspiration I revisit that day in mind or visit benfry.com to see what other cool projects he's been working on. Thank you Ben for your amazing contributions to data visualization programming and for being an inspiration to an aspirational hacker.
  - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
    One common query on HN is "what's the equivalent of the Conmodore 64 in this day and age? how will the next generation of hackers learn?" For me, it was largely Processing and Arduino. I learned to program in Python but at the time (around 2005 say) it wasn't easy to create python gui apps that didn't involve a fair bit of boilerplate. When I first downloaded Processing I was immediately hooked. It was amazingly interactive, with top notch documentation and examples. It contributed a lot to me becoming a programmer. Also shout outs to Fluxus which is pretty sweet too, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus_(programming_environment) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus_(programming_environm...
gedy 3y ago
I met Ben when he visited UCSB in 2004 or so to demo Processing. I was a dummy and thought my own visualization app was "better" and didn't pay much attention to him or talk with him after. I seriously admire his dedication to processing all these years, this must be tough!
didibus 3y ago
The interesting part is: > I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4. [...] This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead. Basically he feels like the donation money should go towards further development of Processing itself, but the foundation seems to be spending it on other stuff, and not on continuing or accelerating the development of Processing itself.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  Anyone knows what the "other stuff" is?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    From: https://processingfoundation.org/ https://processingfoundation.org/ "We invite you to meditate on digital fragmentation and infrastructure that lays its foundation through the global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework we live in today through our Land and Digital Acknowledgements." tl;dr: divisive nonsense
    - mvelbaum 3y ago
      Sounds like commie gobbledygook to me.
      - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
        This comment has strong 1960s vibes.
        indy 3y ago
        It's a reference to Norm Macdonald
ralusek 3y ago
> It was a strange experience; I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4. > This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead. It's interesting, because I got very interested in Processing after being blown away by what an amazing asset Daniel Shiffman is for the coding/educational community, and wanting to find out more about it. When I went to go look into processing a bit more, I was very confused by what I encountered. It seemed like a radical political group with an absolute fixation on identity politics, which just happened to have a couple of programming platforms in the mix. Very sad to see that this wasn't just the superficial impression, but where the money is actually going. Shiffman, meanwhile, not only is an excellent engineer and communicator, pumping out an endless stream of content...sadly seems to have been doing so despite the organization. The man is a legitimate saint. The way that you get people interested in engineering is by making engineering fun and accessible, which is exactly what he does. I wish the best for him and the work that he does, and I hope that he gets to continue putting what he does out there with or without the help of processing. Processing and p5js, as well as their machine learning library ml5js, also deserve better; they're great too.
- didibus 3y ago
  Daniel Shiffman is on the Processing Board of Directors though. He is one of four member of the board. So I'd assume to some extent he's part of the disagreement with where the money is spent, but that's speculation, cause Ben Fry did not mention anyone in particular.
sberens 3y ago
Here is the Processing Foundation's 2022 Funding Update: https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundation-funding-update-94cddb25a3d9 https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundati...
- pixelpoet 3y ago
  > Decolonizing wealth Rich people unironically using a term like that is pretty laughable.
  - Pyxl101 3y ago
    The part about turning off donations via Ethereum due to concerns about “environmental impact” was pretty good too. (I mean, if a donor doesn’t have Ethereum, then they are probably not going to buy Ethereum in order to donate. If they only have Ethereum, then they need to transact it anyway to get a currency that the foundation will accept… And that’s taking it for granted that Ethereum has some problematic environmental impact, and that the impact is important enough to warrant losing donations for.) The funding doc reads like an organization that has lost its way and is pursuing various vague social causes (“decolonizing wealth”), or social justice wars, rather than its original mission.
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      This is the place you park the trust fund babies who are too dumb to be entrusted with running a real business.
lacker 3y ago
From the Processing Foundation website: https://processingfoundation.org/ https://processingfoundation.org/ Every year, we support and sponsor programs that nurture diverse communities and their projects. Our programs include: A Fellowship and Teaching Fellowship Program that funds exploratory, creative, and technical research An Advocacy Program that partners with organizations for projects Public events that provide platforms for collaboration between our contributors, such as panels and talks that spread the word about the need for equity in these fields Summer programs to support emerging coders throughout the world Other bits: We invite you to meditate on digital fragmentation and infrastructure that lays its foundation through the global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework we live in today through our Land and Digital Acknowledgements. Please consider donating to the Processing Foundation to help us advance the role of programming within the visual arts. I guess the foundation money is mostly being spent on things unrelated to Processing itself. But, if this is what the people donating the money wanted to happen, who's to say that it's wrong? Or maybe nobody really knows what they wanted. It's a tough issue with nonprofit organizations because they can often just spend the money on whatever the management wants, which may not be what the donors or former management wants.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > But, if this is what the people donating the money wanted to happen, who's to say that it's wrong? Meh. It depends. Sometimes, like in the case of Mozilla, people are mislead about what their donations are used for. "Donate to firefox" money goes to the Mozilla CEOs favourite political causes. I'm assuming that in this case, due to the snipped you posted, donators are made aware that they are not donating to Processing development, but to the leaders' political causes.
- blue1 3y ago
  > global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework Perhaps it’s because I am an European, but I’m really astonished by the widespread diffusion of this kind of obtuse ideological furore in the US lately, especially in the academic world
  - 3y ago
bondarchuk 3y ago
So it seems like it was a mistake to let go of control of the foundation as one of the original founders? But if you have to (I see there were health reasons), doesn't a foundation have a charter, where one could put the intention that e.g. 50% of funds go directly to software development, or something?
- morisy 3y ago
  Just as an informational point, it's generally highly discouraged for foundations or non-profits to have board members (the ones that have the legal control) take a salary as it creates a conflict of interest that's hard to work out of. So if you help found a non-profit, raise money, and then want to do it full time, a lot of times you'll invariably lose control — and there's good governance reasons for that, but it definitely matters who the board ends up being.
pjmlp 3y ago
Yet another example how perverse foundations turn out to be, and FOSS isn't immune to such things.
throwoutway 3y ago
This is sad. I loved Processing and Ben Fry's work. I hope the current board of the Processing Foundation can be ousted and that the donations wont be wasted away anymore. This is a sad state of affairs and I hope Ben can find new joy
omneity 3y ago
The only way to prevent a new crisis from happening is to create a second Foundation, safeguarding the initial objectives should the first Foundation veer off-course. But for that we need two Ben Frys.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Prerequisite: discover psychohistory.
  - mindcrime 3y ago
    And hope for no Mules.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Heartbreaking news and sad some suspicions I had a while ago are being confirmed. Talent and technology based progress is no longer compatible with non-profits or academia. The actual technology, the actual tools made by actual talent that made coding easier and accessible have done a million times more for democratizing than any non-profit talk, grant or fellows program could ever do. The Foundation and it's farcical work can only exist with the Processing code base, but without the code the Foundation is nothing. Processing using since the Proce55ing days.
ogou 3y ago
I've stopped all institutional donations. Never again in this political climate. Only specific projects, events, or Substack/Patreon support for individuals.
cameron_b 3y ago
For those not logged in to twitter, Ben is also on a Mastodon instance https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283 https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283

210 points by eat_veggies 3y ago

I like processing, and the “p5.js” variant. Schiffman’s coding train videos and “nature of code” (version 2 any day now) are how I learned of it and are really interesting and fun. https://github.com/nature-of-code https://github.com/nature-of-code I used p5.js to overlay some graphs on a photo I took which ended up in a coffee shop show. There is value to this and it seems a shame the foundation seems to be miss-managed. I’ve donated in the past and I’m going to have to look into it before doing so again.

abhgh 3y ago
Your comment prompted me to look up the Twitter/X thread. I had no idea that the Processing foundation was suffering from issues of mismanagement to this extent. It is sad to hear :(. I haven't used it for a long time, but I remember doing a few projects in 2007-2008 and appreciating the fact that this language existed. But I keep occasionally returning to it, even if that is the form of watching a random Daniel Shiffman video, e.g., [1], or looking up the gallery [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzDttgdILQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzDttgdILQ [2] https://processing.org/examples https://processing.org/examples
- acomjean 3y ago
  I did some poking too. It seems like they were puttering along with some donations ($165000 in 2018, $275000 in 2020)[1]. 2021 all of sudden they got 10 million dollars..it was crypto donations from artists..[2]so who knows what it’s worth now, if they’ll see another windfall. I can see an organization being befuddled (they hired a finance person). [2] It makes sense a founder being upset the tech side isn’t getting more benefit. It’s not a good look. Hopefully they can manage it better. [1]https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460830259 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... The funding update article: “The majority of the donations in 2021 came from artists donating cryptocurrency to the Processing Foundation.” [2]https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundation-funding-update-94cddb25a3d9 https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundati...
  - ozr 3y ago
    And, of course, now they aren't accepting crypto anymore to reduce their environmental impact. Too much authority being given to people that aren't doing things.
    - thrown37291 3y ago
      They still have crypto wallets accepting donations, Tezos and Ethereum do not have environmental impact today. The blog post was written before the merge.
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    > Hopefully they can manage it better. Why would I want them doing anything after seeing what they've done so far?
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > It’s not a good look The look isn't the issue. The fundamental substance is what counts, and it seems terribly mismanaged to not spend most of this money on development and documentation, both of which scale extremely well.
  - jdboyd 3y ago
    That same document said their policy is to convert crypto to USD, so presumably they didn't suffer from later crashes.
ralusek 3y ago
I was about to say that Daniel Shiffman is the only person I sponsor on GitHub, but when I just went to check, I'm listed as a past sponsor: https://github.com/sponsors/shiffman https://github.com/sponsors/shiffman Do sponsorships lapse automatically? In any event, he's amazing and his videos are one of the best ways to get people into code. Very smart, excellent teacher, genuinely wants people to experiment and learn.
- modernerd 3y ago
  If you were paying with PayPal, GitHub dropped support in February. Subscriptions may stop for those who did not change payment method: https://github.blog/changelog/2023-01-23-github-sponsors-will-stop-supporting-paypal/ https://github.blog/changelog/2023-01-23-github-sponsors-wil...

foota 3y ago

So what is the foundation spending money on?

mik3y 3y ago
Propublica has a nonprofit explorer (similar to Guidestar, but free) and tax filing viewer here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460830259 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... According to their FY2021 990 filing, they had $442k of "other" expenses. It seems like they're required to disclose what those expenses are on the Schedule O form if they exceed 10% of all expenses, which they do, but I don't see the expenses enumerated there. (edit: oops, now I see) I am, err, not a tax professional so I stopped here..
- monitron 3y ago
  Out of their $443,020 expenses in 2021, the biggest line item expense was $187,262 for "CONSULTANTS." Their next biggest was $169,383 of merchant processing fees. It will be interesting to see their Form 990 for 2022, which is presumably the "last year" Ben Fry is talking about..
  - mik3y 3y ago
    Ah, right you are! I completely missed that.
    - monitron 3y ago
      It’s easy to miss, the 990 is a maze! I just happened to get lucky – my work had me doing a project on 990 data recently.
  - didibus 3y ago
    Damn, that's what? Do I need an MBA to understand why they'd need to spend on consultants and merchant processing fees?
    - 3y ago

sberens 3y ago

https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020#m https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020#m

kfor 3y ago
Thanks for this! I've been going crazy for months that Twitter threads and replies are totally broken if you are logged out (which I always am since deleting my account in December). And now Nitter has led me to LibRedirect[1] which not only automatically redirects Twitter links but also lots of other common links like TikTok. [1] https://libredirect.github.io/ https://libredirect.github.io/
- wcerfgba 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing, this looks great! Shame it is not available on Firefox for Android yet.
- throw_worht 3y ago
  Neat! I wish there was a web version of LibRedirect. Would then be easy to make a DuckDuckGo Bang! for it, so we could do "!<bang> <original URL>" in DDG in any browser without installing an extension first.
lern_too_spel 3y ago
Also on Mastodon: https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283 https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283

k310 3y ago

Mere mortals can't see past the first "tweet" in a thread, so is there any more to Ben Fry's message? On edit, thanks for the nitter links!

kilpikaarna 3y ago
https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020 https://nitter.net/ben_fry/status/1709400641456501020
MBCook 3y ago
Oh is that what’s been going on recently. I seen links to tweets, but there were never any replies or continuation of the thread. I didn’t know if it was locked or Twitter was broken or what. So strange it doesn’t say “Join to access 8 more posts in thread” or “login to see 50+ replies” or something. Calls to action don’t work if I don’t know I’m being called to action.

Animats 3y ago

This is Processing, as in the Arduino development environment? Or something else.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
moralestapia 3y ago
It started as a different thing. A language to quickly prototype (mostly graphical) concepts. A sort of Flash for Java as well ... The Arduino thing came later, the language and tools (IDE, etc) was quite mature by then.
willbicks 3y ago
Processing [1] is a language (/ ecosystem and IDE) that serves a lot of creative use cases, particularly creative graphics projects. Arduino re-used the GUI of the Processing IDE to build the Arduino IDE, which is called out on the startup splash screen for the latter, and is probably what you're thinking of. An aside, I don't use Processing very often but every time I've dipped into it I've found it simple and enjoyable. [1]: https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/
k310 3y ago
Processing is very cool, especially if you like graphics. https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/ Processing is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  What does it do that Jupyter - which is used by millions of people, not tens of thousands - doesn't and why does it need a foundation? Why do you need a language to learn to code when you can just... learn to code in one of the more simple languages then switch later to something more complex such as Java? Python's pretty simple to get started with.

mellosouls 3y ago

It's not really clear from the thread what the complaint is though there is an implication of misspent or wasted funds. Looking at the About section, and the people involved [1] there appears to be at least a misalignment between the purely technical (?) vision of the tweet and the much wider remit of a foundation that he started years ago. Things change, priorities move on. Is there something rotten here as rather vaguely implied? Perhaps, but it's possible there is just a disappointment at the child choosing a very different path to that desired by the parent. [1] https://processingfoundation.org/people https://processingfoundation.org/people

re-thc 3y ago
> there appears to be at least a misalignment between the purely technical (?) vision of the tweet and the much wider remit of a foundation that he started years ago. Is there? Why do they need to be aligned? The foundation is aligned to who's in charge of it "today". If those mentioned in the tweet are no longer in some sort of control they can't expect it to go the way they "wish".
- mellosouls 3y ago
  Yes, but that's partly the point I was making. The whole thing is a vague lashing out without clear detail of what the exact criticism is or whether it is fair.
  - Pyxl101 3y ago
    Agreed. More clarity would help. Maybe he wanted to start drawing a salary in order to resume working on Processing again, and the board said no. (That isn’t my first guess about what’s happening, based on the highly polarizing content on the foundation’s website but the thought did cross my mind.)
didibus 3y ago
The criticism seemed pretty clear. He said that last year 800k was spent, and none of it went into development of Processing itself. And that next year they plan to spend 1.2 million, and of that, only 2 developers are planned to spend any time further developing Processing. And he said that's no better than what they had prior the foundation when him and Casey were working on Processing. That he started the foundation in the hope to scale up development. Now, I have no idea what they could have allocated money on, isn't it sole purpose to further develop Processing? But my guess is they are doing outreach, grants, and other stuff like that, as opposed to further development. But that's just speculation on my part.

keyle 3y ago

This is sad. I was just thinking days ago, as I revisited Processing, how consistent it has been at being Processing. Sure, development has been rather slow but at least it's not overwhelming to come back to. I had no idea that they had a 'foundation' let alone this big. The list of people in the about section has me pondering 'why'. I never knew that a foundation based on donations could stray off the path so far as to make the original founders uncomfortable enough to quit. I wish them well and I hope that they start a new foundation where money can go instead. Money walks.

colechristensen 3y ago
I read something about the Linux Foundation that indicated it is also straying quite far from the expected path as well.
- the_biot 3y ago
  They've been a money train for a very long time now, and at some point started going ultra-woke as well. Last I checked they were demanding what can only be described as "woke loyalty oaths" from people that wanted to speak at one of their conferences.
- goku12 3y ago
  The news is that TLF spent just 3.2% of its funds on the Linux kernel. It dwindled from a paltry 3.4% in the previous year. Meanwhile, Linux developers are giving up on their LTS kernel due to lack of resources. That news had many defending the foundation, saying that their other projects get equally low funding. However, it makes me wonder how these foundations would fare in terms of income if they didn't use the name of a popular open source project. It's likely that a lot of donors have the misconception that their money goes to the namesake project - this is especially true for Mozilla.
  - mst 3y ago
    The LTS kernel change appears to be lack of senior maintainer bandwidth. This is not, in my experience, the sort of problem that could be solved by throwing money at it. (and by "in my experience" I mean situations where I was involved with that shape of problem, and could have arranged to have money thrown at it, and the eventual decision was that that wasn't the limiting factor) Note that this is entirely separate to the question of whether what TLF is doing with its money is suboptimal - it probably is - but I don't believe from what I've seen that the LTS kernel situation is downstream of funding decisions.

mellis 3y ago

So very sad. Ben Fry is one of my heroes. He's done an amazing job with Processing, over a very long time. I can't think of any other open-source project with the same consistency of vision and quality of execution, plus the level of design and usability. I read a lot of Ben's code while I was working on the IDE for Arduino. It was always extremely clear, robust, and well-commented. And occasionally hilarious. My favorite part was the prompt to take a walk that showed up when you had created a new sketch for each letter of the alphabet on a particular day (sketch names defaulted to something like 20231003a, 20231003b, etc). But there were also some good digs at the failings of Processing's various dependencies, like Java and Mac OS. The world of computational design and open-source software is much better for having Ben Fry and Processing in it.

ivyirwin 3y ago
Agreed. Ben, although he doesn't know it, is one of my biggest inspirations for what I do. Back in 2005 or so he did a presentation to my class at the GSD on his genome visualizations. I was blown away, but even more so when I asked him what language he works in and he said Processing. I said I was unfamiliar with Processing and he said, "Oh, I wrote it." Mind. Blown. On days I'm looking for inspiration I revisit that day in mind or visit benfry.com to see what other cool projects he's been working on. Thank you Ben for your amazing contributions to data visualization programming and for being an inspiration to an aspirational hacker.
- xmcqdpt2 3y ago
  One common query on HN is "what's the equivalent of the Conmodore 64 in this day and age? how will the next generation of hackers learn?" For me, it was largely Processing and Arduino. I learned to program in Python but at the time (around 2005 say) it wasn't easy to create python gui apps that didn't involve a fair bit of boilerplate. When I first downloaded Processing I was immediately hooked. It was amazingly interactive, with top notch documentation and examples. It contributed a lot to me becoming a programmer. Also shout outs to Fluxus which is pretty sweet too, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus_(programming_environment) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus_(programming_environm...

gedy 3y ago

I met Ben when he visited UCSB in 2004 or so to demo Processing. I was a dummy and thought my own visualization app was "better" and didn't pay much attention to him or talk with him after. I seriously admire his dedication to processing all these years, this must be tough!

didibus 3y ago

The interesting part is: > I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4. [...] This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead. Basically he feels like the donation money should go towards further development of Processing itself, but the foundation seems to be spending it on other stuff, and not on continuing or accelerating the development of Processing itself.

lelanthran 3y ago
Anyone knows what the "other stuff" is?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 15457345234 3y ago
  From: https://processingfoundation.org/ https://processingfoundation.org/ "We invite you to meditate on digital fragmentation and infrastructure that lays its foundation through the global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework we live in today through our Land and Digital Acknowledgements." tl;dr: divisive nonsense
  - mvelbaum 3y ago
    Sounds like commie gobbledygook to me.
    - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
      This comment has strong 1960s vibes.
      - indy 3y ago
        It's a reference to Norm Macdonald

ralusek 3y ago

> It was a strange experience; I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4. > This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead. It's interesting, because I got very interested in Processing after being blown away by what an amazing asset Daniel Shiffman is for the coding/educational community, and wanting to find out more about it. When I went to go look into processing a bit more, I was very confused by what I encountered. It seemed like a radical political group with an absolute fixation on identity politics, which just happened to have a couple of programming platforms in the mix. Very sad to see that this wasn't just the superficial impression, but where the money is actually going. Shiffman, meanwhile, not only is an excellent engineer and communicator, pumping out an endless stream of content...sadly seems to have been doing so despite the organization. The man is a legitimate saint. The way that you get people interested in engineering is by making engineering fun and accessible, which is exactly what he does. I wish the best for him and the work that he does, and I hope that he gets to continue putting what he does out there with or without the help of processing. Processing and p5js, as well as their machine learning library ml5js, also deserve better; they're great too.

didibus 3y ago
Daniel Shiffman is on the Processing Board of Directors though. He is one of four member of the board. So I'd assume to some extent he's part of the disagreement with where the money is spent, but that's speculation, cause Ben Fry did not mention anyone in particular.

sberens 3y ago

Here is the Processing Foundation's 2022 Funding Update: https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundation-funding-update-94cddb25a3d9 https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundati...

pixelpoet 3y ago
> Decolonizing wealth Rich people unironically using a term like that is pretty laughable.
- Pyxl101 3y ago
  The part about turning off donations via Ethereum due to concerns about “environmental impact” was pretty good too. (I mean, if a donor doesn’t have Ethereum, then they are probably not going to buy Ethereum in order to donate. If they only have Ethereum, then they need to transact it anyway to get a currency that the foundation will accept… And that’s taking it for granted that Ethereum has some problematic environmental impact, and that the impact is important enough to warrant losing donations for.) The funding doc reads like an organization that has lost its way and is pursuing various vague social causes (“decolonizing wealth”), or social justice wars, rather than its original mission.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    This is the place you park the trust fund babies who are too dumb to be entrusted with running a real business.

lacker 3y ago

From the Processing Foundation website: https://processingfoundation.org/ https://processingfoundation.org/ Every year, we support and sponsor programs that nurture diverse communities and their projects. Our programs include: A Fellowship and Teaching Fellowship Program that funds exploratory, creative, and technical research An Advocacy Program that partners with organizations for projects Public events that provide platforms for collaboration between our contributors, such as panels and talks that spread the word about the need for equity in these fields Summer programs to support emerging coders throughout the world Other bits: We invite you to meditate on digital fragmentation and infrastructure that lays its foundation through the global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework we live in today through our Land and Digital Acknowledgements. Please consider donating to the Processing Foundation to help us advance the role of programming within the visual arts. I guess the foundation money is mostly being spent on things unrelated to Processing itself. But, if this is what the people donating the money wanted to happen, who's to say that it's wrong? Or maybe nobody really knows what they wanted. It's a tough issue with nonprofit organizations because they can often just spend the money on whatever the management wants, which may not be what the donors or former management wants.

lelanthran 3y ago
> But, if this is what the people donating the money wanted to happen, who's to say that it's wrong? Meh. It depends. Sometimes, like in the case of Mozilla, people are mislead about what their donations are used for. "Donate to firefox" money goes to the Mozilla CEOs favourite political causes. I'm assuming that in this case, due to the snipped you posted, donators are made aware that they are not donating to Processing development, but to the leaders' political causes.
blue1 3y ago
> global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework Perhaps it’s because I am an European, but I’m really astonished by the widespread diffusion of this kind of obtuse ideological furore in the US lately, especially in the academic world
- 3y ago

bondarchuk 3y ago

So it seems like it was a mistake to let go of control of the foundation as one of the original founders? But if you have to (I see there were health reasons), doesn't a foundation have a charter, where one could put the intention that e.g. 50% of funds go directly to software development, or something?

morisy 3y ago
Just as an informational point, it's generally highly discouraged for foundations or non-profits to have board members (the ones that have the legal control) take a salary as it creates a conflict of interest that's hard to work out of. So if you help found a non-profit, raise money, and then want to do it full time, a lot of times you'll invariably lose control — and there's good governance reasons for that, but it definitely matters who the board ends up being.

pjmlp 3y ago

Yet another example how perverse foundations turn out to be, and FOSS isn't immune to such things.

throwoutway 3y ago

This is sad. I loved Processing and Ben Fry's work. I hope the current board of the Processing Foundation can be ousted and that the donations wont be wasted away anymore. This is a sad state of affairs and I hope Ben can find new joy

omneity 3y ago

The only way to prevent a new crisis from happening is to create a second Foundation, safeguarding the initial objectives should the first Foundation veer off-course. But for that we need two Ben Frys.

robertlagrant 3y ago
Prerequisite: discover psychohistory.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  And hope for no Mules.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Heartbreaking news and sad some suspicions I had a while ago are being confirmed. Talent and technology based progress is no longer compatible with non-profits or academia. The actual technology, the actual tools made by actual talent that made coding easier and accessible have done a million times more for democratizing than any non-profit talk, grant or fellows program could ever do. The Foundation and it's farcical work can only exist with the Processing code base, but without the code the Foundation is nothing. Processing using since the Proce55ing days.

ogou 3y ago

I've stopped all institutional donations. Never again in this political climate. Only specific projects, events, or Substack/Patreon support for individuals.

cameron_b 3y ago

For those not logged in to twitter, Ben is also on a Mastodon instance https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283 https://information.garden/@benfry/111176713441913283