Mike--- > the thought that the key developer might just stop working on it doesn't > exactly > give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Look at the last paragraph of Rich's message. He has every intention to keep working on it. Surely he will speak for himself, but my impression is that he wants to be able to work on this full-time as opposed to part-time. I don't see any direct threats to abandon it. Larry Wall's project was not without risk of dying either. He could have lost his job and had to go to work for a less enlightened employer. In some ways, it is easier for you to evaluate the Clojure community than it is to evaluate the likely continuance of other circumstances in the founder's life. And a strong community may be better able to ride out a bubble bursting than a company. The sort of funding activities you are talking about would work, but they would inevitably take time away from core Clojure development. Is it worth being "dunned" for money to allow development to proceed that much faster? To me (and apparently plenty of other people), it is most definitely worth it. I'm not the first person to say this, and I won't be the last, but Clojure has been a dream come true. As great as it is now, I look forward to everything that Rich wants to add----Clojure in Clojure, declarative logic..... I want him to be able to focus on these new things full time. I want him to work for the community, rather than for whoever he consults for, or whoever he lectures to. (The community has been great----if the number of dumb questions of mine that have been cheerfully answered is any indication....) He has created something that has been of great value to me personally and in my work. I feel I owe him. If you are not sure what Clojure is worth to you yet, then you don't owe him anything. And if you believe that there should be no need to pay people whose open-source work you have found useful, you don't owe him anything either. There may be a version of the open-source ethos that disdains making money directly from coding. This ethos would claim that the way to repay people is in code, not in money. I think this attitude ends up being exclusionary. The vast majority of people cannot or do not contribute useful code. But they have just as much of a need for good software as programmers do, if not more, and yet their interests are not always well-served by open-source software. When your remuneration comes not from your core activity, but from various side activities, or when open-source coding itself is a side activity, you are bound to be distracted. When your only currency and standing comes from other programmers,, things that non-programmers need especially----important but uninteresting things like documentation, interface polish and ease of setup----tend to get neglected in the distraction. Not surprisingly, the open source movement has created a great deal of powerful software, but it has had mixed success creating software that the vast majority of people can use. If we want open-source software to live up to its full potential, we will have to abandon exclusionary attitudes, and most importantly think creatively about how to give people like Rich Hickey a living. I wish he did not have to ask for donations, but that's a lot better than him wasting his time. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
