My finances for working on LilyPond

[David Kastrup]

As you all know, my sole source of income are donations from happy
LilyPond users.  It would appear that LilyPond users have stopped being
happy with my work.

I've taken a look at my last bank report.  In the last month I received:

1 donation of 200 EUR
1 donation of 100 EUR
2 donations of 25 EUR each.

That's it (and honestly, the two large donations are embarrassing as
they are by people who have done more than I ever did on LilyPond and
who are helping people more on lists and forums than I do,
respectively).  That does not even cover my rent, let alone medical
insurance, food, repairs, clothes or other stuff.  Let alone pension
funds or similar luxuries.  I'm currently bleeding about 800EUR per
month for working on LilyPond.

What has happened in the last month?

dak@lola:/usr/local/tmp/lilypond$ git shortlog --since "1 month ago" -n -s
48  David Kastrup
12  Phil Holmes
 4  Jean-Charles Malahieude
 2  Dan Eble
 2  James Lowe
 1  Masamichi Hosoda
 1  Thomas Morley

Well, 48 commits does not look like much, but I implemented
functionality to attach to slurs to single notes in a chord in that time
(important for tablature and piano music), designed and implemented an
interface for working with multiple slurs per Voice, fixed several bugs,
made c:5 in chord mode a power chord rather than equivalent to c major,
created several low-level functions for manipulating graphical object
properties like \offset does, removed a hard-to-understand internal
object called a "simple closure" and prepared for more simplifications.

I will likely work several more months on those internals and if the
situation has not improved by then, call it quits.

I thank all those who have supported me for this long.

-- 
David Kastrup

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Re: My finances for working on LilyPond

[Thomas Morley]

2015-10-22 19:21 GMT+02:00 David Kastrup :
>
> As you all know, my sole source of income are donations from happy
> LilyPond users.  It would appear that LilyPond users have stopped being
> happy with my work.
>
> I've taken a look at my last bank report.  In the last month I received:
>
> 1 donation of 200 EUR
> 1 donation of 100 EUR
> 2 donations of 25 EUR each.

Well, it's a shame that the amount of donaters has decreased to only four.
Let me out myself as the one, who does the 100 EUR.
I do this monthly, for some years now.
I don't earn that much myself, can't do more.

I'd like to invite all to think about the own financial possibilities,
and whether it's doable to support him.

>
> That's it (and honestly, the two large donations are embarrassing as
> they are by people who have done more than I ever did on LilyPond and
> who are helping people more on lists and forums than I do,
> respectively).

This is not the entire story.
Very often I use functionality David had created or improved, without
it, I'd be far less effective.

His work is sometimes not directly visible to the average user and
sometimes it is protracted and tedious.
LilyPond needs him and this kind of work, maybe you can't imagine how
much we need it!
Loosing him would be a desaster.

We need a lot of people at all layers. I don't now where we would
stand without Phil (releases), James (patch-organisation), the
bugsquad, the translators, people reporting bugs etc, etc
And we need people like David for fundamental/parser work.

For german speakers, I posted similar:
http://www.lilypondforum.de/index.php?topic=1222.msg11630#msg11630

Again, please think what you can do!!!
If you think you can donate something please contact David privately.

> That does not even cover my rent, let alone medical
> insurance, food, repairs, clothes or other stuff.  Let alone pension
> funds or similar luxuries.  I'm currently bleeding about 800EUR per
> month for working on LilyPond.
>
> What has happened in the last month?
>
> dak@lola:/usr/local/tmp/lilypond$ git shortlog --since "1 month ago" -n -s
> 48  David Kastrup
> 12  Phil Holmes
>  4  Jean-Charles Malahieude
>  2  Dan Eble
>  2  James Lowe
>  1  Masamichi Hosoda
>  1  Thomas Morley
>
> Well, 48 commits does not look like much, but I implemented
> functionality to attach to slurs to single notes in a chord in that time
> (important for tablature and piano music), designed and implemented an
> interface for working with multiple slurs per Voice, fixed several bugs,
> made c:5 in chord mode a power chord rather than equivalent to c major,
> created several low-level functions for manipulating graphical object
> properties like \offset does, removed a hard-to-understand internal
> object called a "simple closure" and prepared for more simplifications.
>
> I will likely work several more months on those internals and if the
> situation has not improved by then, call it quits.
>
> I thank all those who have supported me for this long.
>
> --
> David Kastrup


Greetings,
  Harm

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Re: My finances for working on LilyPond

[Simon Albrecht]

On 22.10.2015 19:21, David Kastrup wrote:

As you all know, my sole source of income are donations from happy
LilyPond users.  It would appear that LilyPond users have stopped being
happy with my work.


You must know that this is not the case. I should be much surprised if I 
were the only one to appreciate the highly complicated work you do, of 
which the results sometimes are hard to grasp in their immediate effect. 
But that does not diminish their value for the project at all, and 
unless I’m much mistaken nobody currently working on LilyPond could 
rival your understanding of the internals and your ability to fix them. 
I do not think one can construe a link between the work you do and the 
sudden (?) decrease of funding; indeed, you continue to make quite 
impressive and important changes.
I have taken so much profit from your work that it’s about time I gave 
something back. It can’t be as much as I’d certainly like to give, but 
if I don’t remain the only one to take part, it will make a difference. 
Please tell me (privately, I assume) where to direct the support. (You 
probably know that I live in Germany.)


Yours sincerely, Simon

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