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.
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.
Act 2312863 of "how to fund open source software". It's not easy. Indeed, it's pretty much impossible to extract a proportional amount of the value that users derive from your code.
Personally, I'd have no problem blowing people off who ask for more than they were promised if it got to this point. Then again, that might bring negativity to the community, so I can see how the decision to just stop personal donations makes sense.
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.
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...
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.
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#.
I sure hope not. Most responses seemed to disagree and even technomancy wasn't happy with the characterization of his part. If you take every criticism personally instead of looking at the whole, it's a recipe for being miserable.
Combined with Hickey's post in that thread, this whole thing strikes me as rather petulant - "throwing the toys out of the pram" as the English would say.
No it wasn't rich said something like it on the mailinglist befor that "Has Clojure development stalled?" Stuff witch was a big misunderstanding anyways.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"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.
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|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] davidw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewvc|15 years ago|reply
Personally, I'd have no problem blowing people off who ask for more than they were promised if it got to this point. Then again, that might bring negativity to the community, so I can see how the decision to just stop personal donations makes sense.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] praptak|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flatline|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masterponomo|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mark_l_watson|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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
Seems to me he'd run into similar problems from corporate sponsorships. Am I missing something here?[+] [-] barrkel|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] blacksmythe|15 years ago|reply
Individuals think a $100 contribution gives them some reason to bring up issues. Corporations think something similar for a $100k contribution.
[+] [-] hvs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nollidge|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeusExMachina|15 years ago|reply
As I see it with this service they pay him for his consulting and knowledge on how to use at best Clojure for development/testing/deploy.
But they don't have the option to say something regarding the development of the language itself.
[+] [-] tomfaulhaber|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaph0d|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cemerick|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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