Since I want my braindump from an hour ago to reach as far within the community as possible, I figured I will repost it here as well (given the core crowd of perlmonks does not really read such things). Note - *THIS IS NOT A PERSONAL FUNDING-DRIVE*. This is about figuring out how hopelessly stuck-up as humans we are collectively, in our corner of the proramming universe.

Original text taken from here

Given our community is a little... let's say cautious I feel the need to open with a disclaimer. I am in no way affiliated with Gittip, in the past, present and the foreseeable future. In fact I looked at their bugtracker for the first time this morning and am appalled that a site in production for 2 years can have so many outstanding basic conceptual issues.

In any case this entry is about the underlying idea, so if you can manage to not get distracted by a shoddy implementation - read on (NSFW language as always :)

It started yesterday when I looked here and asked Y U NO WANT BEER?!. While twitter did not manage to spark a conversation, IRC did (and boy, was that some conversation :) The chatter quickly evolved, climaxed and (painfully predictably) broke away for good. And also predictably it boiled down to a split into several distinct camps

I say FUCK THAT. And instead of explaining how and why you should do something you are not currently doing, I will instead explain why I am currently pledging $50 (possibly more in the future) per week, and distribute them among folks of my choosing.

First of all: it is easy for me to do so (and yes, this part is important). Connect my twitter / github / bitbucket / whathaveyou account, connect a credit card: done.

With that out of the way - let's take a simple example - Pumpkin Perl and the current Pumpkin (or Pumpking depends on what you like). At the time of writing Perl is #3 on the metacpan leaderboard, with 168 "backers". If these 168 decide to give our pumpkin $5/week each - that's roughly $3500 per month for him right there.

THIS JUST IN, BREAKING NEWS: chump-change adds up.

Now, am I confident he will use the cash to further my interests (that is keep Pumpkin Perl sane) in the foreseeable future? Yes, I am pretty confident, given track record and all that. But the more important question is - does it matter if he actually does? Not in the slightest. I am not sharing some chump-change with expectations of extra commitments and future results.

I am virtually buying my fellow colleagues a beer for EXCELLENT OUTSTANDING WORK *ALREADY COMPLETED*

What I particularly like about Gittip is that it does not require any extra effort to keep doing what I decided to do. Yes, I could go broke by oversharing my extensive wealth, but so could anyone with a non-dumb phone and an appetite for extra game content. At least I'd know there is an actual person (that I might even like) on the other end ;)

Will I feel cheated and sad if none of this goes anywhere? If the virtual beers do not motivate anyone, and if the Perl-portion of the Gittip community remains unseen and insignificant? Not really. $50 is the cost of a decent-but-not-spectacular dinner for two where I live. If this is cash that ended up being thrown away - shrug, it could have been a shitty dinner anyhow. And if I *do* feel bad about it - this means I am a petty shithead and I deserve to feel like that anyway :)

So to recap:

What's not to like?

Cheers

In reply to Buying a round for your friends by ribasushi

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