Rich Hickey on the problems of funding Clojure
Rich Hickey offers a great write up of the problems facing the funding of open source software:
There *are* companies that make software themselves, whose consumers
see a value in it and willingly pay to obtain that value. The money
produced by this process pays the salaries of the people who are
dedicated to making it, and some profit besides. It’s called
“proprietary software”. People pay for proprietary software because
they have to, but otherwise the scenario is very similar to open
source – people make software, consumers get value from it. In fact,
we often get a lot less with proprietary software – vendor lock-in, no
source etc. Most alarmingly, this is the only model that associates
value with software itself, and therefore with the people who make it. …As should be obvious, Clojure is a labor of love on my part. Started
as a self-funded sabbatical project, Clojure has come to occupy me far
more than full-time. However, Clojure does not have institutional or
corporate sponsorship, and was not, and is not, the by-product of
another profitable endeavor. I have borne the costs of developing
Clojure myself, but 2009 is the last year I, or my family, can bear
that.Many generous people have made donations (thanks all!), but many more
have not, and, unfortunately, donations are not adding up to enough
money to pay the bills. So far, less than 1% of the time I’ve spent on
Clojure has been compensated.Right now, it is economically irrational for me to work on Clojure,
yet, I want to continue working on Clojure, and people are clearly
deriving benefit from my work. How can we rectify this? Barring the
arrival of some white knight, I’m asking the users of Clojure to fund
its core development (i.e. my effort) directly, and without being
forced to do so.