
Funding Clojure 2010 - swannodette
http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/msg/5f40e7048e1f774e
======
yason
I shelled out $250 for Rick. It won't feed his family for long but I'm only
one guy and it's absolutely worth it.

Clojure is the most exciting environment I've used for years. I've spent most
of this year learning to write and actually writing non-trivial programs in
Clojure. It's been a fun ride, the best one for years!

With Clojure programming becomes, instead of fighting small but bugging issues
with the system, following your curiosity instead.

~~~
albertcardona
I shelled out $100 a while ago, after arguing with Rich over IRC that a
donation system would be a good idea. He setup the sourceforge donation (now
there's a different one) and on it went. I guess my insistence helped him take
a decision that I am sure he had been considering for some time.

Rich was spending way too much time on clojure, but he wasn't making a living
at all out of it. Just from what Clojure has taught me on concurrency and time
management, it's been worth every dollar. I wish I was a company and I could
dip my hands into deeper pockets.

[EDIT: Rick/Rich ... there are too many Rick/Rich in my life. Thanks for the
notice.]

~~~
swannodette
Just a niggling point but will people stop writing Rick, it's Rich ;)

------
swannodette
Some fascinating thoughts about sustainable open-source development. For me,
Clojure was/is easily one of the most exciting developing events in
programming languages in 2009.

I started following the language around October 2008 and I've seen the mailing
list go from 500 to close to 3K. Amid this growth both the mailing list and
the IRC channel have remained helpful and friendly. Useful tools are popping
up everywhere, and more and more people are using it as the secret sauce in
their projects.

And even if you don't like the language (being a Lisp), it's hard to deny that
Clojure's ubiquitous use of persistent data structures and rich variety of
concurrency primitives have made what previously seemed academic and esoteric
concepts practical and everyday.

If you're a Clojure fan or even an open source advocate, think about chipping
in!

I have a feeling 2010 will be yet another great year for Clojure ;)

------
wheels
He should really set up a 501(c) 3 as that makes it a _lot_ easier to get
corporate donations since they then become tax deductible.

~~~
cemerick
We ( <http://snowtide.com> ) are sponsoring Clojure, and we'll be able to
simply treat it like any other expense. I'm sure we could figure out (or, have
our accountant figure out) how to get the same benefits if the same amount
were being dispersed as a donation to a nonprofit, but I personally like not
having to figure that out at this point.

~~~
wheels
I won't claim to understand the mechanics of such, but I know that there's a
notable tax difference between charitable donations and expenses (or perhaps
donations can't technically be considered expenses?). It's not such a big deal
for e.g. startups, but IBM, HP, et al are much more likely to write a big
check (say, $10k) if it's to a 501 (c) 3.

I've seen other open source projects jump through these hoops specifically for
those reasons. Getting a few of those folks lined up for "The Clojure
Foundation" is probably a faster route to being sustainable than $100 at a
time.

~~~
cemerick
I don't understand the difference, either, which is why I like the fact that
our contribution looks and works just like an expense. For small orgs,
certainly, there's only two numbers that matter: revenue and expenses.
Figuring out how to set up a third bucket is overhead I'm not interested in
now. :-)

~~~
petercooper
It varies significantly by jurisdiction, but merely giving money to another
company/organization/person _may_ not count as an "expense" for deduction
purposes. In most Western jurisdictions, you would need to be getting
something in return - like consultancy, labor, product, a contractual
obligation (as with a retainer), etc. I'd be quite unsure whether the "paying
for hours spent working on Clojure" line would fly with all tax authorities -
but, yeah, that's why people have accountants :-)

~~~
Psyonic
Probably taken care of by filing at least one bug. Then the consulting line is
easier to accept, as long as that bug was fixed.

That said: I'm neither a lawyer nor an accountant, so take that with a large
dosage of salt

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prospero
Donated $100. Rich Hickey is amazingly prolific; even if this only supports an
hour or two of his work, that translates into very real improvements to
Clojure.

------
magoghm
Clojure is exactly the kind of language I want on the JVM. Donated $100 USD.
Will also donate for each commercial project I do using Clojure.

~~~
magoghm
It seems that donating is good for your karma. Just after I donated my $100
this morning, I received an unexpected payment for $3,800 USD! :D

~~~
petercooper
Donate another $100 and see what happens then! :-)

~~~
magoghm
Great idea! I just donated another $100. Let's see what happens today...

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numair
Is Clojure used for any particularly interesting tasks in which it results in
a massive improvement in performance, efficiency, or TCO? Is there any
specific community of users who are doing commercially-applicable stuff with
Clojure?

I don't know a lot about Clojure, but if it is gaining a following for some
sort of commercial application, it would make sense to start "The Clojure
Company" and sell support contracts, training, etc.; if this is the case
there's no reason this guy should be asking for handouts (he should be raising
funding!). But again, hoping people from the Clojure community can enlighten
me.

I am sure some large Silicon Valley company could hire him to add to their pet
collection, but that'd be totally boring, especially if Clojure has real
commercial applications...

Edit: I should note -- if there aren't any specific domains in which Clojure
is either necessary or an improvement, it may just be a nice curiosity (like
most programming languages), and the author is making a wise decision; again,
I know very little.

~~~
va_coder
Another idea: A jobs posting site with a focus on Clojure jobs.

Training, with an emphasis on why Clojure matters and how it can help your
org?

I thought Clojure hit the tipping point this year. I'm surprised Rick Hickey
is hurting for money.

~~~
icey
I don't think the Clojure community is as large as you think it is. Pragmatic
Studios are putting on a Clojure training course in March, but otherwise how
would Rich have made any money on Clojure so far?

He hasn't written any books and doesn't charge for anything - all that has
been available for him so far is the "Donate" link on clojure.org, but it's
never really been publicized.

~~~
technomancy
He gets 10% of the sales from the Peepcode screencast on Clojure:
[http://peepcode.com/products/functional-programming-with-
clo...](http://peepcode.com/products/functional-programming-with-clojure)

It's not much in the big picture, but I suppose every little bit helps.

~~~
icey
I had no idea that Rich got anything from the screencast, that's great :)

------
mcav
I fear that this show of support will only help in the short-term. I hope Rich
can gather some sort of more predictable income, be it via solid corporate
sponsorships and the like. Donations can be deceivingly flaky.

------
mstevens
Put my $100 in. Not an active user of clojure at the moment, but a huge fan of
the project, and I hope to use it more in future.

~~~
davidw
While that's kind of you, the problem with funding open source this way is
that it's a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" system in some ways. Did you shell
out 100$ for all the other open source code you use?

I say this as a huge open source fan, but one of the things about paying for
proprietary software that works is that it helps to solve this problem: it
connects the author/s of the software directly with the money they feel is
appropriate for their product. If the price is right, they earn money and
(hopefully) reinvest some in the product. If the price is wrong or the product
crappy, it goes away.

~~~
prospero
Speaking personally, I didn't donate out of some sense of duty to the abstract
concept of open source, I donated because I have a vested interest in seeing
Clojure succeed. If it reaches prominence as a language, that has a real,
long-term impact on my career satisfaction. There isn't much open source
software which fits that description.

------
dkersten
I'll be sending him my donation later on tonight and hopefully working on some
commercial Clojure apps over the next few months - if any of them take off,
he'll be seeing more donations from me. Clojure is a great language and Rich
deserves the contributions.

------
KirinDave
Clojure is exactly the kind of Lisp I want: a usable one.

I donated $100, and I'll do so again in January.

------
epall
I'm just a student, but I feel it's still my responsibility to donate. My
research project next semester is going to focus quite a bit on Clojure, and I
feel lucky to have access to such a great environment. Thanks, Rich!

------
jwr
Clojure is the greatest piece of software I've seen done in the last several
years. I will donate. I would much rather see Rich hack Clojure than waste
time on consulting gigs.

If you doubt this is the right thing to do, just listen to the man, any of his
presentations will do.

------
davidw
Open source economics rears its ugly head once again. It's a fascinating and
difficult problem.

------
drewr
I put in $50 early on. Time for an ongoing contribution.

------
devin
I will be donating and have asked my relatives, in lieu of money, to donate
money on my behalf to Clojure. I humbly suggest you do the same.

------
jcsalterego
No pressure, Flightcaster!

~~~
icey
I'm not really sure Flightcaster is in a position to start donating money -
they aren't profitable yet AFAIK. However, they have been open-sourcing a lot
of their Clojure projects, which is a great way to increase the visibility of
the language.

~~~
jcsalterego
I am looking forward to seeing FC reach Clojure-donation-profitable :)

~~~
jaf12duke
So do we! We won't wait until then to start giving back. We just sent in our
contributions, both from FC and personally. We've gained a tremendous amount
from Rich--happy to play a part in supporting him and Clojure moving forward.

------
zephjc
He needs to find a benevolent benefactor-company that will employ him to
freely work on Clojure full-time, the way Google lets Guido work on Python
full-time, and Rob Pike,Ken Thompson et al. (presumably) get to work on Go
full-time.

~~~
petercooper
I dare say with the right words from the right people, getting him to Google
(or similar) wouldn't be particularly difficult given Clojure's growing
status.

~~~
petercooper
To add, I believe there's some precedent here. Some of the key JRuby founders
were hired by Sun (though they've now left), IronRuby's main developer was
hired by Microsoft, and MacRuby's main developer was hired by Apple. Of
course, there's a heavy platform slant on all of those examples..

------
magoghm
Lots of tweets about funding Clojure: <http://twitter.com/#search?q=clojure>

It makes me happy :)

------
sandGorgon
I think people should also write in to companies that use Lisp/Scheme for
business, in addition to donating - a campaign of sorts.

Companies sponsoring Clojure will also have the side-effect of the project
having a close interaction with industry and its needs.. which may accelerate
its uptake.

------
runevault
Went ahead and threw in a share, will be curious to see how many throw in.
There are enough people subscribed to the list that he could probably be
fairly well funded if enough threw in.

Hopefully it turns out well.

------
ashr
I am happy to make my contribution to the Clojure fund. I am curious though,
whether this model also becomes applicable to the other Clojure libraries and
how would that play out.

------
brown9-2
I hope that this story has a good ending, and that the community (especially
businesses) step up to make sure development can go on.

------
bpyne
I'm only evaluating Clojure right now but I respect greatly what you are
doing. $100 gladly given.

------
JesseAldridge
Open source software is a textbook example of a public good. It seems
blindingly obvious that it should be taxpayer funded.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good>

~~~
gojomo
Open source software isn't quite a 'textbook example' because the classic
concept of 'public goods' predates nearly-free, perfect digital reproduction.

The 'textbook' definition is 'non-excludable and non-rivalrous', meaning: you
can't stop people from benefiting from it (non-excludable) and one person's
benefit doesn't 'use it up' for another person (non-rivalrous).

Well, you _can_ exclude people from using software in a variety of ways
(secrecy/contracts, technical measures, copyright law). That someone chooses
to give software away doesn't make it 'non-excludable' and thus subject to
classic public-goods analysis.

Also, the choice of how to provide non-excludable goods that may be
challenging to finance doesn't reduce simply to "if free riders are a problem,
then taxpayers should fund". Lots of other cultural/institutional arrangements
are possible -- the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics went to work into the
variety of arrangements used by societies to manage common resources.

A movement to have 'taxpayers' subsidize open source is just as likely to lead
to overfunding for the wrong reasons as 'right-sized funding' which exactly
offsets the underproduction theoretically caused by free-riders.

~~~
JesseAldridge
_Open source_ software is a different thing from closed source software. Code
holds far greater value by virtue of being open: an infinite number of people
can use it, bugs are more easily found, ways of improving the code are more
easily discussed, etc. But in order to get these benefits, it must be non-
excludable.

I didn't know about the 2009 Nobel stuff. Can you point me to a layman's
summary by any chance?

I think you are overreaching when you say my scheme "is just as likely to lead
to overfunding". Qualified economists could determine the budget. The money
would be guided by intelligent judges toward worthy projects. Surely an
imperfect solution is better than ignoring the problem.

~~~
gojomo
Yes, _open source_ software is unique and special. But that's another reason
it doesn't fit neatly as a 'textbook' example of a public good. The classical
excludable/rivalrous analysis didn't even consider things that could be non-
excludable by choice, or which might improve qualitatively by being non-
excludable.

That novelty cuts both ways. That an open source software producer can't
capture the full value by charging a fee would tend to lead to
underproduction. But costless communication, redistribution, and sharing-back
means they get value in many other ways -- reputation, code improvements,
increased sales of excludable complement products, etc.

This is again why the analysis has to be more sophisticated than "if free
riders are a problem, then taxpayers should fund".

The Nobel winner was Elinor Ostrum. MarginalRevolution had a high-level
summary:

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/10...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/10/elinor-
ostrom-and-the-wellgoverned-commons.html)

"Qualified economists could determine the budget"? With this and your comment
about "a few government sanctioned pg's" I see that you put a lot more trust
in disinterested experts and bureaucrats to hand out large sums of money than
I do. That process -- boards of politically-favored individuals handing out
money -- does _not_ converge on the optimal level of funding/production. We
know that with as much certainty as we know there can be problems with private
underprovision of classical public goods.

But really, what is the "problem" for which an "imperfect solution" is better
than nothing? Open source is booming. People love to create it even for
nonmonetary reasons -- so perhaps we already have an inefficient surplus.
(Maybe hobbyist open source work should be taxed!)

Meanwhile, governments are having a hard time managing their traditional
public goods duties and tax flows in an efficient, sustainable manner. You
want to give them a new portfolio of economic responsibilities?

------
albertcardona
Rick Hickey's funding plead has been posted on clojure's website:

<http://clojure.org/funding>

There's a "donate" button in the front page: <http://clojure.org/>

