On Monday, 6 October 2014 at 04:09:11 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I believe a foundation would help D. Unfortunately, setting one up is very laborious, and neither Walter nor I know anything about that - from what I understand it takes a _lot_ of work. If anyone is able and willing to embark on creating a foundation for D, that would be a great help to the language and its community.

An alternative is to join an umbrella organisation that has experience setting up foundations for open source projects. To name a couple:
Software Freedom Conservancy (Boost), Software in the Public Interest, and the Outercurve Foundation. As far as I understand it these organisations will help you with the paperwork, but you have full autonomy outside of that.

See http://lwn.net/Articles/561336/ for some more suggestions/ideas.

Edwin

On 06/10/14 09:12, Edwin van Leeuwen via Digitalmars-d wrote: […]
> An alternative is to join an umbrella organisation that has experience setting up foundations for open source projects. To name a couple: Software Freedom Conservancy (Boost), Software in the Public Interest, and the Outercurve Foundation. As far as I understand it these organisations will help you with the paperwork, but you have full autonomy outside of that.
> 
> See http://lwn.net/Articles/561336/ for some more suggestions/ideas.

SCons used to have a USA-based foundation, but it lapsed. The various opinions sought indicate that reapplying would be too costly and too much of a burden. The current plan is to follow Buildbot and be a foundation under the umbrella of Software Freedom Conservancy. Thus this might be the best route for a D Foundation.

I am writing this from memory rather than consulting the various email threads, so details lacking: there are some significant downsides to the Software Freedom Conservancy route, but the Buildbot folk decided it was worth it and this is a significant factor for SCons. I suspect SCons will be a member as soon as a couple of legal issues are resolved wrt cash and copyrights.

- --
Russel.
=============================================================================
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On Monday, 6 October 2014 at 02:24:45 UTC, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
> On 2014-10-05 03:33:36 +0000, Walter Bright said:
>
>> We're not really limited by lack of funds, but more by lack of focussed effort. If anyone wants to contribute funds, probably the best use would be to add bug bounties for bugzilla issues that they find to be neglected. The bounties don't really compensate at professional rates, but they do work as a nice "thanks" to those who donate their valuable time.
>
> I've placed a couple of anonymous bounties, but I personally think it's a bad way to get directed focused effort.  A democracy of people trying to get what they individually want done through small donations?

Yes, that is the way democracy works, what is the problem?  The only benefit from a foundation is that they can make decisions for the community that individual donors may not have the information to make, including a co-BFDL like Andrei with his specific expertise.  Well, if you want to follow Andrei, just add on to each of his bountysource bounties, and if you want to follow the community, just randomly add to existing D bountysource bounties or to all of them.  It would be nice if the wiki had links to the D bountysource projects though:

https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/383571-d-programming-language
https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/283332-ldc
https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/455080-gdc

I notice that the top issue is at $1k now, not bad.

> There are many languages which have grown more quickly than D (despite being less interesting) because they have a foundation where people can donate, or some company, which provides for the core developers.   I'm not saying that having a non-profit will magically generate money, but there are a few companies who use D out there who just might be willing to donate non-trivial sums of money to further development if there was a non-profit to see that the money was put to good use.
>
> Just to name a few:
>
> Python: https://www.python.org/psf-landing/
> Node.JS:  http://www.joyent.com/
> Perl: http://www.perlfoundation.org
> Linux Core Developers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
> Ruby Core Developers: https://www.heroku.com (A subsidiary of Salesforce)

I agree with you that a company would help, though I don't see much gain from a non-profit, especially if it's as much work to set up as Andrei says.  If you want your money "put to good use," I don't see how your bounties on bountysource would be abused.  Those bounties or individually contacting Andrei or Iain about funding the project expenses they've detailed strikes me as a far more direct way to contribute to the community than throwing money at a foundation and forgetting about it.  Yes, you won't get to deduct tax from your contribution, but that's the least of our concerns.

On Monday, 6 October 2014 at 04:09:11 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I believe a foundation would help D. Unfortunately, setting one up is very laborious, and neither Walter nor I know anything about that - from what I understand it takes a _lot_ of work.

By "foundation", do you mean "non-profit organization"?  Would it be any simpler as far as you are concerned to set up an organization without initially worrying about its non-profit status?

On 10/6/14, 4:19 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Monday, 6 October 2014 at 04:09:11 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> I believe a foundation would help D. Unfortunately, setting one up is
>> very laborious, and neither Walter nor I know anything about that -
>> from what I understand it takes a _lot_ of work.
>
> By "foundation", do you mean "non-profit organization"?  Would it be any
> simpler as far as you are concerned to set up an organization without
> initially worrying about its non-profit status?

I don't know. -- Andrei

On 06/10/14 12:19, Joseph Rushton Wakeling via Digitalmars-d wrote: […]
> By "foundation", do you mean "non-profit organization"?  Would it be any simpler as far as you are concerned to set up an organization without initially worrying about its non-profit status?

Indeed D Foundation would be a non-profit company.

The non-profit status is, I believe, somewhat important since without it the organization is required to be driven by increasing shareholder value, this is not entirely consistent with being holder of IP for a FOSS project and handling donations from other organization (profit, non-profit, or other). The legal issues are minor compared to the marketing ones: donors want to know that their donations are going to be used to move the projects forward not profit.

Obviously though creating a company and then going for non-profit
status is a resonable strategy. But the role as custodian of the
project should only be taken on once the non-profit status is in place.
- --
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip:
sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On 2014-10-06 04:09:26 +0000, Andrei Alexandrescu said:

> On 10/5/14, 7:28 PM, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
>> There are many languages which have grown more quickly than D (despite
>> being less interesting) because they have a foundation where people can
>> donate, or some company, which provides for the core developers.   I'm
>> not saying that having a non-profit will magically generate money, but
>> there are a few companies who use D out there who just might be willing
>> to donate non-trivial sums of money to further development if there was
>> a non-profit to see that the money was put to good use.
>> 
>> Just to name a few:
>> 
>> Python: https://www.python.org/psf-landing/
>> Node.JS:  http://www.joyent.com/
>> Perl: http://www.perlfoundation.org
>> Linux Core Developers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
>> Ruby Core Developers: https://www.heroku.com (A subsidiary of Salesforce)
> 
> C++ also has a foundation since 2012: http://pocoproject.org/blog/?p=671. It paid for CppCon 2014, which was very successful.
> 
> I believe a foundation would help D. Unfortunately, setting one up is very laborious, and neither Walter nor I know anything about that - from what I understand it takes a _lot_ of work. If anyone is able and willing to embark on creating a foundation for D, that would be a great help to the language and its community.
> 
> Andrei

I'm willing to put in the work if Walter is on board also.  I don't want to do all that work to end up being a DPL Foundation in name only.

-Shammah

On 10/6/14, 12:59 PM, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
> I'm willing to put in the work if Walter is on board also.  I don't want
> to do all that work to end up being a DPL Foundation in name only.

That's very generous of you, thanks! We'll discuss this. From what I read at http://lwn.net/Articles/561336/, my understanding is that we'll need significant ongoing expenses in additional to the initial setup expenditure of time and money. Anyone who knows more about this please chime in. -- Andrei

On 2014-10-06 22:28:52 +0000, Andrei Alexandrescu said:

> On 10/6/14, 12:59 PM, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
>> I'm willing to put in the work if Walter is on board also.  I don't want
>> to do all that work to end up being a DPL Foundation in name only.
> 
> That's very generous of you, thanks! We'll discuss this. From what I read at http://lwn.net/Articles/561336/, my understanding is that we'll need significant ongoing expenses in additional to the initial setup expenditure of time and money. Anyone who knows more about this please chime in. -- Andrei

I'll start doing some research.   To be forward,  I am 100% ignorant of the process at the moment as well.

-S.

On Tuesday, 7 October 2014 at 01:11:42 UTC, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
> On 2014-10-06 22:28:52 +0000, Andrei Alexandrescu said:
>
>> On 10/6/14, 12:59 PM, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
>>> I'm willing to put in the work if Walter is on board also.  I don't want
>>> to do all that work to end up being a DPL Foundation in name only.
>> 
>> That's very generous of you, thanks! We'll discuss this. From what I read at http://lwn.net/Articles/561336/, my understanding is that we'll need significant ongoing expenses in additional to the initial setup expenditure of time and money. Anyone who knows more about this please chime in. -- Andrei
>
> I'll start doing some research.   To be forward,  I am 100% ignorant of the process at the moment as well.
>
> -S.

Very good idea. If you want i can help you.
I can suggest a few directions of to explore.
Source code toolkit: analytic, transformation...
I see this as script engine like js(dmdscript?) with extension for access to source code in object form, like this:
void foo(int i){
    int e;
  if(i<0){
    e = i;
  }
  write("yes we can!");
}
for script to be
{
functions:{
  foo:{ arg: {i: {type: int, default:no }, body:[
       {stament: "var_declare", name:"e", type: "int", default: no},
       {stament: "if", expression: "how it do this help!",
    /* how named main code block? */       block: {}
           else: no
       },
       {stament: "call", name:"write", arglist: ["yes we can!"]}
    ]
 }
}
}

Yes already have similar solutions but they usually focus on a static analysis of the code in one language.

But may be this is an expandable basis to do much more:
code analysis,
refactoring a large project simply by answering the wizard's questions,
a project update for the new api,
and my favorite migration between languages.

Migration between languages - this i think is especially impotant because if you have project greater than hello word you will actually slave chosen programming language.

Let's liberate the algorithms of their actual implementation and developers from the monotonous work!
Very wrong if you code on the 90% is a wrapper, polymorphism, or has long been created.