

Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards - zaph0d
http://clojure.org/funding

======
jacquesm
Good 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.

~~~
EliAndrewC
I 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.

~~~
sandGorgon
interesting point - I think people who "donate" do it out of gratitude rather
than creation of entitlement. By virtue of that, the complainers are less
likely to come from the actual donor list.

My empirical evidence comes from the Cyanogenmod Android project - where "when
can I haz gingerbread" or "this sucks - why arent you spending enough time
fixing <bug>" is always from non donors.

NOTE: it is easy to see this trend on the CM forums, because your forum handle
displays whether you are a donor or not. That I think is an easy way to lower
the credibility of flamers (something that isnt possible on Clojure Google
Groups). But then again, maybe that in itself give rises to the expectation
that "if I donate, I can flame". I havent seen it happen on the CM forums
though.

------
praptak
Oh 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
Me 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...

------
masterponomo
From 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
As 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#.

~~~
zaph0d
The Jon Harrop who used to hang out on the Clojure list is not the same as Dr.
John Harrop who used to advocate F#, OCaml, etc.

I asked him and he said "no relation".

~~~
lispm
Not really: Jon Harrop is the troll and John Harrop probably not.

~~~
masterponomo
Ah, my mistake, I didn't notice the difference in name spelling. It was indeed
John Harrop, not Jon Harrop, who appeared to vanish from Clojure after the
licensing discussion. I should have made my point without reference to
individuals.

------
zaph0d
Possible reason behind the decision -
<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2053908>

~~~
jacquesm
I doubt that was the whole of it but it probably didn't help.

------
mark_l_watson
Rich: 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
AFAIK, 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.

------
bphogan
I'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?

~~~
barrkel
Corporate 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
Is that really true though? If Company XYZ is your biggest support contract,
they'll have influence over you, wouldn't they?

~~~
jrockway
I assume Rich is selling exactly this. Company XYZ wants
$hard_to_implement_feature. Company gives Rich money specifically so he'll
implement $hard_to_implement_feature, and then they get
$hard_to_implement_feature.

An example of this was my department wanted a certain feature in the Moose
library, so we offered to pay one of the developers to write it. Then it
turned out we didn't actually have funding for this ("pay someone to work on
_free_ software? fuck that") and so it never happened. But for a company with
it's act together, this is a great way to make your internal codebase cleaner,
and you get to say, "thanks to us, everyone gets this".

If this is his business model, it's a good one.

~~~
apgwoz
Rich has said many times that he will not do this. Clojure/core might, but
rich does not want clojure to be influenced by the highest bidder, essentially
the same as the donations i'm guessing. Rich is an advisor to clojure/core,
but his purpose is to further clojure and community interest only. Of course
this is my understanding of the matter, i don't speak for him.

------
tomfaulhaber
"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.

------
pmorrisonfl
Wow, now I want to contribute anyway, as a token of respect... and I don't
even use clojure!

~~~
zaph0d
Patches, bug reports are welcome :)

~~~
Waywocket
>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
> 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/>), all apache projects AFAIK
(<http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt>), django
(<http://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/cla/faq/>), etc. etc.

So...what "spirit" are you talking about here?

~~~
Waywocket
Well 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?

~~~
cemerick
Sounds like you object to a variety of particulars that you just happen to
disagree with. A fair bit shy of falling short of some kind of essential
"spirit".

The OpenJDK CA process was put in place a long time ago by Sun, generally
well-liked in open source circles last I knew. And I guess you've got the same
problems with all of Apache, for example (which, BTW, requires a signed copy
of their CA to be faxed, at a minimum -- and I suppose some would complain
about the faxing). Rough spot, there.

IANAL, neither are you, and we weren't in the room when Rich talked to his.
Even if those things weren't true, I'm pretty sure Rich (nor anyone else)
would accede to derision by instead of nonspecific, unconstructive griping.

~~~
Waywocket
>The OpenJDK CA process was put in place a long time ago by Sun, generally
well-liked in open source circles last I knew.

Sun was never _well_ liked outside of the Jave gated community. They - and
their CA process - were used several times as examples in articles and
presentations on 'how not to do open source' (eg.
<http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/> \- 'How to destroy your community').

>And I guess you've got the same problems with all of Apache, for example
(which, BTW, requires a signed copy of their CA to be faxed, at a minimum --
and I suppose some would complain about the faxing).

No, they accept e-mailing. See <http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt>. I am
indeed opposed to their CA requirement, but in this case it appears to be
simply misguided rather than an attempt at creating a barrier.

>IANAL, neither are you, and we weren't in the room when Rich talked to his.
Even if those things weren't true, I'm pretty sure Rich (nor anyone else)
would accede to derision by instead of nonspecific, unconstructive griping.

I object very strongly to your dismissal of my position as 'nonspecific,
unconstructive griping'. I'll try to restate it as plainly as possible:

No other example has been found of a project with this requirement. Given that
there are a large number of both companies and non-profit organisations
requiring CAs, none of which require a postal copy, it cannot be rationally
argued that this is a legal requirement unless you are also willing to argue
that all of those other companies are failing to show due diligence; I don't
believe that argument would have any merit. Since Clojure has that
requirement, the most plausible reason is that it is an attempt to erect as
large a barrier as possible to participation (and the only other reason I can
think up is that Rich Hickey is a paranoid of the tinfoil hat variety, but
I've seen no other evidence of that). I cannot overstate enough how large a
barrier this is; even those corporate OSS projects widely condemned for their
failure at understanding the open source ideal (I've already mentioned
Android; another example might be OpenOffice, most of whose developers
recently decided enough was enough and jumped ship) don't make it this hard.
The deliberate attempt to discourage community involvement is what I believe
runs counter to the spirit of open source.

~~~
fogus

        it is an attempt to erect as large 
        a barrier as possible to participation
    

The "barrier" is only as tall as a postage stamp.

~~~
Waywocket
If you honestly think there's a way they could plausibly have made it harder,
start by naming a project which has a higher barrier to entry.

~~~
fogus
I couldn't care less what other projects require. If I am excited enough about
contributing to them then I will do so regardless of the barrier.

------
cemerick
tl;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>

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
A 14 line article is too long to read?

~~~
cemerick
You'd be surprised by how many people read only comments unless/until they're
motivated to read TFA. _shrug_

~~~
matwood
Many 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.

------
zacharypinter
Interesting to see Steve Yegge on the funders list, hadn't noticed that
before: <http://clojure.org/funders>

~~~
mahmud
What would be interesting about that? there are hundreds of people in that
list.

------
philjackson
Why not accept donations with the explicit disclaimer that under no
circumstances will Rich's development efforts be swayed?

~~~
Tichy
I think human psychology just doesn't work that way.

~~~
disponsible
Actually 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
A 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.

