PerlMonks used to be owned by The Everything Development Company and was one of the showcases for their web-site-development tools. TEDC paid vroom to create and maintain the site.

Not too long ago, TEDC gave up trying to make a profit and so vroom is no longer paid to maintain the site. TEDC has another site that gets more traffic than PerlMonks and so the meager revenues from things like ads and merchandise sales are used to keep that site running and PerlMonks tags along for the ride.

TEDC is mostly defunct as a company as they couldn't make a profit. I seriously doubt they have done the work to be declared a "non-profit organization" as far as tax purposes go but they are a non-profit organization in the normal English sense of those words. (:

So donations go to just keep things running. If some of the donations go to help compensate vroom for the time for which he is no longer officially paid, then that is great in my mind (and is quite normal for even "officially non-profit" organizations).

You should probably consider the above as gossip as I have no official involvement with TEDC and have just picked this up over the months. But I thought it might be easier for vroom or nate to correct a few mistakements than write down the whole story.

By the way, what the donations will be used for is already documented at Offering Plate.

From what I have talked to vroom about, currently he gets $0USD from donations. All the money goes to BSI, because the money to pay for the bandwidth currently comes from the Slashdot sale "fund".

Also, the ads provide very little revenue. At least a month or so ago, all the non-Perlmonks/EDC/E2 ads shown were in exchange for the current PerlMonks server.

Zenon Zabinski | zdog | zdog7@hotmail.com

• Bandwidth
• Beer
• Babes

What? Perl hacking helps get you babes? Where? I have never seen it.

Wow, you mean do this for other reasons?

I have to code in visual basic occasionally just to get some rest from all the babes pounding down my door.

Oops.
Yes dear.
Just PerlMonks Dear.
Just a minute Dear.
....
Gotta go.

EEjack

I was actually refering to the Donations but yeah you can use Perl to Impress Women

Greetz
Beatnik
... Quidquid perl dictum sit, altum viditur.

What? Perl hacking helps get you babes? Where? I have never seen it.

You haven't seen it huh? Just take a glance at my home node. You don't think those girls would have liked me had I not known perl now do you : )

The 15 year old, freshman programmer,
Stephen Rawls

It doesn't matter if he were planning to do an IPO.
At least not to me.
As it is perlmonks could use some support.
In it's present form we gain from more hard work than we probably know about.

We support so many things that we don't agree with everyday.
When we buy gas from ANY company.
When we buy sodas. Coke is the most well known product on
the planet. You can get coke in places where you can't get
clean water.
They are the second most consumed beverage, water is first.
I can't find a transcript but a spokesperson said that
Dasani is their(Coke) attempt to be the #1 most consumed
beverage on this planet.

I've got plenty more.
BUT.
I'm getting off of the soapbox now.

Just one last thing. I don't think that vroom is planning
to buy any GM bombs to bomb auto plants in foreign countries,
so as soon as paypal approves my funds, I'll give them
a little support.
I know it's not enough, but I hope that it helps.


Okay so I snuck one more in with the GM thingy.

"Lights, Camel, Action!"
--Stump
A Fierce Pancake(1988) *Charleton Heston*(track 8)

There is nothing for me not to agree with. I am not against IPOs, although I have never bought one.

Furthermore, I trust Vroom and I am grateful for the unpaid work he does so we can learn more Perl. I also understand that he doesn't wish to spend umpteen hundreds on a lawyer.

Much as I love this site, I am going to have to pass on contributing at this time because mixing charitable contributions with nominally for-profit ownership is dangerous.

It was a different situation entirely because Vroom is honest, but do you remember the guy who posted here a few months ago? Some sharpie conned him into working for free on some free version of a Napster-like site. Once the site was up and running, however, it became a for-profit site.

We all expressed sympathy for the guy and said that it was a lesson learned for all of us. Because my intuition and judgement tells me that Vroom is completely on the level doesn't mean that I should break a rule that helps keep me out of trouble.

I don't want to appear ungrateful. Those who feel differently than I do should contribute, and I will be glad if they do. But I cannot because it is a nominally for-profit site.

Thank you sierrathedog04 for expressing your opinion. I do not agree with you, but I ++ you for expressing it.

I think "charitable contribution" should not fool us. Somebody needs to pay for bandwidth - and recently we have more users, and site is becoming slower. So if we do not contribute, site will get even more slower, and maybe even worse.

I do not see any problems with concept if vroom or somebody else is making profit from this site. But I seriously doubt anybody is making much of profit. :(

See rumors on Tye's article (tye)Re: On 'Donations Gladly Accepted'.

I do not want to bother to establish PayPal account just for Perl Monks, so I cannot offer this way.

Is for you, sierrathedog04 so important that Perl Monks will be established as legal charity to you can deduct your X dollars contributed from your taxes? I do not plan to contribute so much that it will make financial sense to bother with this either, I'll better spend one hour more learning Perl better - became better expert in my craft.

For me, this is like fund raiser for Public Radio: you decide to sent contribution, because you enjoy information provided.

Consider how much you spent monthly on daily newspapers - and I doubt newspapers are more important for maintaining your income-generating skills, that PM site is. So why be so cheap? Why pretend that PM site is not "clean" enough to accept my couple dollars?

If I want just to send personal check for say $20, where I should send it? Are there any dangers with that (I am new in USA - please warn me if there are some)?

pmas

To make errors is human. But to make million errors per second, you need a computer.