Perl Foundation

I've been sending out announcements today to various mailing lists,
and FWP is next in line :-)

The Perl Foundation is more respectable name for the Yet Another
Society to use when it gathers money for the Perl Development Grants.
In 2002, YAS hopes to sponsor two people: Damian Conway, to continue
his most excellent technical and ambassadorial work for Perl; and Dan
Sugalski, to accelerate development of the Parrot and Perl 6 projects.
  http://www.perl-foundation.org/

"But," you say, "the economy's in the crapper!  How will you ever
raise that kind of money?"  I'm glad you asked.  There are two
answers: you, and your company.

A huge number of individuals contributed to Damian's 2001 grant.  I
may be a softie, but I literally tear up when I think about how it
shows the depth of community we have.  We'll need individual support
again for 2002.  The economy is brutal right now, and I know some of
you are out of work.  The good news is that there's no lower limit to
donation: if you can only give $10, that's $10 more than we had had
before, and we're $10 closer to our ultimate goal.  If you can give
$100, or $1000, that's ten or a hundred unemployed people whose money
we don't have to feel guilty for taking. :-)

I just gave $100, which I suspect will make my wife yell at me, and I
wish I had more to give.  Give what you can (and remember--it's tax
deductible!).  I just started a challenge of sorts, see use.perl.org
for details, which I'd love you to participate in.  Make me cry like
Sylvia Plath at an onion farm. :-)
  http://www.perl-foundation.org/

Many companies helped last year, Blackstar being the stand-out
contributor.  We need many more companies to help this year.  "The
Perl Foundation" is a name your manager can feel comfortable writing a
check to, so let's take advantage of that.  If your company uses and
relies on Perl, and would like to give back in a tangible way, please
approach your boss about contributing.  Politicians toady up to
corporate interests for the same reason we need you to talk to your
boss about a donation--it's quicker and easier to get one place to
give $5000 than to find fifty people willing and able to give $100.

Enough.  Attached is the press release about the Perl Foundation.
Thanks for reading this far.

Nat

HOLLAND, Michigan, December 11, 2001. /Perl-Foundation.org/ -- Yet
Another Society, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation for the
advancement of collaborative efforts in computer and information
sciences, today announced the formation of the Perl Foundation as an
internal unit dedicated to the Perl programming language. The
Foundation will consolidates responsibility and authority for the Perl
Mongers users groups organization, perlmonks.org, perl.org, the Perl
Development Grants, the international Yet Another Perl Conferences,
and copyright issues regarding Parrot and Perl 6.

The Perl Foundation is opening with a campaign to raise US$175,000 for
two 2002 Perl Development Grants, to be awarded to Dan Sugalski and
Dr. Damian Conway for the ongoing work in Perl, including development
of Perl 6. The grants will each be a total of US$80,000: US$60,000
stipend, with US$20,000 for travel. US$15,000 is assigned for
administrative overhead.

The first Perl Development Grant was awarded to Dr. Conway by the Yet
Another Society in 2001, when a individuals and corporate sponsors
made it possible. Individual and small companies accounted for nearly
half the US$75,000 award. The list of contributors, as well as the
work produced under the grant, are at http://yetanother.org/damian
.. BlackStar, Morgan Stanley, VA Linux, Manning Publications, O'Reilly
and Associates, and Stonehenge Consulting also made major
contributions.

For more information on The Perl Foundation, Perl Development Grants,
please visit http://perl-foundation.org. To find out more about the
Yet Another Society, http://yetanother.org.

• Perl Foundation by Nathan Torkington