From this recent Big Think Interview with Larry Wall (August 9, 2010):

Question: Have you made any money from Perl?

Larry Wall: Well, that depends on how you define it. I get a few book royalties, but it's not really enough to make a living. I have received a few grants over my life, but that's also not enough to make a living. I would say that the real way in which I have benefited from Perl is the way in which many open source authors or creators benefit, and that is that some company will be willing to hire them just to work on that. So in a sense, I have my current job because of Perl, and I am mostly expected to work on Perl, and also advise them in things that are related to that.

But in a sense, my job is remuneration for that. They're not going to make a movie out of Perl, this notwithstanding, so I don't expect to have a Harry Potter on my hands. But I'm comfortably well off because of Perl.

So, re time to spend on Perl 6, I'm speculating that Larry's personal situation has improved considerably since 2005, based on this old perl6-language mailing list thread (April 6, 2005): 

Unfortunately, I don't have much time to edit synopses much these days
+.
No billionaires have written me into their will lately (or if they
have, they haven't pegged out yet), so for now I have to earn my
own way out of the financial hole I'm in, and that takes a lot of
time away from Perl.  I'm just barely keeping up with the email,
and I'm not getting anything done on the translator.  Sorry.

If you want to help, earn a billion dollars and write me into your
will.  And then peg out.  Nothing personal.  :-)

[download]

John Macdonald, at least, was happy to oblige :-) 

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 11:30:35AM -0700, Larry Wall wrote:
> If you want to help, earn a billion dollars and write me into your
> will.  And then peg out.  Nothing personal.  :-)
> 
> Larry

Darn.  So far, I'm, 0 for 3 on that plan.

However, I promise that item two will follow very shortly in
time from item one.  No promises about the delay between items
two and three, though; nor any assurance of my ever achieving
item one (it's failure, in fact, is virtually assured).

[download]

In reply to Re: Who pays Larry Wall? by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Who pays Larry Wall? by morgon

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