Funding the development of Clojure

Rich Hickey has done a pretty amazing job, mostly single-handed, of creating Clojure. Aside from the popularity of the language itself, Clojure seems to have inspired even more people to start talking about functional programming.

However, Rich is going to need funding to continue developing the language next year.

In his own words:

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.

The above is an exerpt from a long post by Rich on the Clojure Google Group.

On a personal note, I am surprised that Rich explicitly states that people who are just “evaluating Clojure” should not feel obliged to pay anything.

This is a really nice attitude, but also very ineffective. By far most of us use Clojure only for playing around and maybe solving the occasional Project Euler problem. Does that amount to more than just evaluating the language? Most would probably say no, especially when the suggested donation for “real users” is $100/year.

Instead, if all us casual users donate just a little bit, for example $10, it will amount to quite a substantial amount of money. My guess would be a lot more than the $100/year paid by the relatively few commercial users.

So if you want Clojure to stay alive, chip in! $10 is not a lot of money.

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