Tell Us! Why Did You Donate To The Haskell Foundation?...And If You're Holding Out, What Would Make You A Regular Donor?

Haskell Foundation
#5

My reasons for contributing…

I agree with what has been said (above) about Haskell. Additionally I think it is generally an amazing product of engineering…especially that it runs as fast as it does while being as high level as it is. To me Haskell seems elegant and beautiful. I love type signatures and the simplicity of pure functions! Haskell feels like it is built on a solid foundation. I admire, and I’m humbled by the wonderful people who have made Haskell what it is. I want to see Haskell and it’s community thrive and succeed.

I support the Haskell Foundation in the hope it will essentially provide high level management (in a friendly, coordinating, supportive, facilitating sense of the word “management”). I hope that it strengthens and energizes the community. I hope that it will attract funding and use the money to move Haskell forward by financing arduous tasks that would otherwise not be done, or would not be done as effectively.

I want to be able to commit to using Haskell and be confident that I can count on a thriving, healthy ecosystem going into the future.

I’m excited about a “virtuous cycle” of applying donations to make Haskell a better tool, so it’s used by more people, so a larger community is there to fund further improvements…

I hope individual donors like me will together contribute over $600 000 a year. The Haskell Foundation is in its first year, and as I write this we have hundreds of thousands of dollars contributed by corporations but we’ve had less than 20 non-corporate donors. People may think that a donation of $5 or $10 a month won’t make a big difference in the face of the large corporate donations which the Foundation is already getting, but if we had 5000 donors averaging just $10 dollars a month that would be $600 000 per year more to support Haskell! That money could do a lot of good! I think of the corporate funds that have already been raised as handsomely covering the overhead/expenses of the foundation and any further contributions can now be efficiently directed to make improvements that benefit the community!

I know the Foundation is new, but I want to give it a chance in terms of time and money. My sense is that it has found good people and is off to a great start!

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#6

I echo a lot of the themes in @cdsmith’s post!

I had been introduced to functional programming and eventually stumbled onto Haskell. It first looked really bizarre, but that’s also one of the reasons why I wanted to understand what was behind it and why the people that used it were so passionate about it. I wrote more about that here: https://aniravi.com/posts/special-about-haskell.html

I’ve learned a couple of different languages but Haskell struck a chord with me. I loved that it challenged how I thought about programming and that there is an effort to discover the potential of what good tools could look like, especially static type systems. I’ve learned other statically and dynamically typed languages, like Java and JavaScript, but felt like our tools could be more useful, expressive, and helpful. Haskell shows that you can have a type system that helps you express yourself as a programmer, which is ultimately what all of us are doing when we write code - expressing ourselves.

I contributed to the Haskell Foundation because as others have already mentioned, there’s a lot of magic in the community that needs some organization and push to get things done, as well as warts to be addressed. It’s incredible how far things have come over the years with primarily volunteer-driven efforts, but I’m excited to see what some organization around key improvements that need to be made can do for the community.

I’m a recent college grad that just started getting paid at my first job a few months ago, but I feel strongly about giving back to open-source, as open-source and free content is the reason I learned almost everything I know today. Haskell’s ecosystem happens to be my primary focus now - that may change in the future, but I think there is something special in this language and the surrounding ecosystem. I only share more about who I am to say that if I can give, you can too.

I don’t get to use Haskell in production yet - but maybe someday I will get to use it or something that’s heavily inspired by it :slight_smile: I also don’t have a ton of time to be able to learn and use Haskell, so contributing financially made sense to me - maybe someday, I’ll be able to contribute with code as well.

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#7
  • I use Haskell in my day-to-day work;
  • I love the acceleration of improvements to the language and ecosystem recently;
  • I hope the HF can help improve more so that more people can enjoy this language
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#8

Kant’s Categorical Declarative.

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#9

I’ve used Haskell a lot and find it to be the most enjoyable programming language I’ve used, so I’m donating because I’m hoping the Haskell Foundation will help both with bringing Haskell to more people, and improving the language even further.

It seems like the Haskell Foundation is in a unique position to tackle some problems in the Haskell space that would otherwise receive too little attention to have much hope of being properly addressed, both because it acts as a centralized focal point to bring together stakeholders with diverse interests, and because it has an organizational structure in place that makes it less likely that efforts will fizzle out prematurely.

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Join The New "Our Foundation Task Force"? -- Added My Personal Thoughts
#10

@human154 suggested I post here after my comment in another thread. Now that I know about individual donations, I just set up a monthly donation. Why? I don’t think I can put it any better than all of the other posts here, which have two themes: (1) Haskell is an amazing language and (2) the Haskell Foundation can act as a catalyst and coordinator of community activities to improve the language and ecosystem. I use Haskell for individual projects and sometimes to help solve some problems at work (I’m no longer a developer, but sometimes need to create small tools to aid analysis). Whenever I turn to Haskell, I’m amazed at the development tools, libraries, etc. that have been created by passionate volunteers. But to ensure that ecosystem we rely upon is there and volunteers are not overwhelmed requires some coordination, and that is one of the goals of the Foundation.

Some things I thing the Foundation could do

  • Create a bench of volunteers. It can be intimidating for newbies to start contributing to existing efforts and I think the Foundation could develop some guidance on different ways to contribute to projects (so you don’t feel you have to be an uber-Haskeller to make a difference). Something else that might help is to have something along the lines of Danny Grazter’s series of blog posts on how he approaches reading Hackage code.
  • Coordination with some of the companies/individuals who are already producing documentation and training. The Haskell Foundation could help create awareness of these as resources, and perhaps these companies/individuals might be willing to make some of their content available to the Foundation’s documentation efforts (this may involve some negotiation to protect their business models).
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#11

Lets make this thread a safe space for sharing our own reasons for making donations and also sharing what change would need to happen before we would make a donation.

Hopefully we would just speak for ourselves in as constructive a way as possible instead of challenging what others have written.

Maybe there are things that need to be heard, that need to change. How can the new Haskell Foundation change to also be “your foundation” and also get your support? That type of feedback might be essential.

I really appreciate you all taking the time to post here and I’m looking forward to reading more!

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#12

I’m donating to the haskell foundation because I see it as an investment in the future that I want to see.

I love haskell as a language, and I love having it available both a tool to solve industry problems and as a toy and a tool for learning.

Like all communities, the haskell community is imperfect, but it’s also a community full of kind, insightful, and passionate people who should be supported and empowered in their efforts to improve the haskell language and ecosystem.

I donate to the haskell community because haskell is bigger than all of us, and I want to help contribute to an organization that I think can help empower and guide haskell toward becoming all that I think it can be.

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#13

I have set up a recurring donation to the Haskell Foundation because I believe that Haskell (or perhaps a language directly inspired by it) is the future of programming.

Haskell is pure: When I call a pure function in Haskell, I know it cannot twiddle parts of the data structures I pass it. I know it cannot bother my user or launch any rockets. And, I know I can call it again, later, and get the same results. This gives me peace of mind and enhances my ability to understand my code.

Haskell is functional: I often think that “computer science” should be renamed “algorithmics” (cf. “physics”): algorithms are the heart of Getting Work Done, and algorithms are encoded as functions. It is thus natural for functions to be storable and composable in an expressive programming language. Doing so has made me a better programmer.

Haskell is typed: Humans and computers have distinctly different skill sets. We humans are good at capturing real-world problems and thinking creatively about solutions. Computers are good at analysis according to a fixed set of rules, even when that analysis is tricky. Leveraging types, we can make a programming language that allows both collaborators – human and computer – show their best selves. The human programmer can think about the high-level details of a solution, while the computer can constantly help the programmer by eliminating impossible (that is, ill typed) solutions.

Haskell is fast: Despite its high-level nature, GHC makes Haskell code run fast. This is an amazing achievement.

For these reasons, I believe Haskell is the language of the future. But if it is to deliver on its potential, it needs the support of a group like the Haskell Foundation. I am thus proud to donate my money, as well as my time, to the foundation and the language ecosystem.

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#14

I have set up a recurring donation because Haskell makes me a better developer. I’m just grateful :slight_smile:

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Will You Join In A Media Campaign?...To Let People Know They Can Now Donate To Support The Fledgling Haskell Foundation
#15

I’ve setup recurring monthly donation, because Haskell is my favorite programming language.

I’ve had the privilege of being able to use Haskell for living for the past year (after doing Java professionally for 6+ years before that) and it’s been a blast! Apart from all the technical benefits that we all know about I’m deriving a lot of mental well-being benefits from it. I was never able to get the levels of confidence and peace of mind with any other practical backend language. Also it’s very easy to get into pleasant compiler driven “refactoring flows”.

Recently I’m also delighted by the improvements in IDE experience thanks to haskell-language-server (which I’m also proud supporter of via their opencollective).

My only wish around the donation would be improve the visibility of donations so that I could advertise my support for HF e.g. to my colleagues to hopefully attract further donations :slight_smile:

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#16

Is there a patreon for haskell foundation? I’d like to but for various reasons I don’t use paypal.

Individual donations board meeting minutes (Sep 9)
#17

@joelmccracken I’m afraid it’s just paypal so far.

It looks like you are not the only one who would be interested in an alternative…There is a conversation in play that revolves around this here:

I’m curious what specifically it is about paypal that you don’t like and what you would prefer, if there are others that work for you besides patreon?

Thanks for mentioning this!

#18

Well, I don’t remember the specifics, but I have seen things that I don’t like. But, very practically, they wont let me attach my bank account to my actual account because I once had it associated with another account. Its been a long time, but they won’t allow it.

If paypay was my only choice, I could try making an entirely new account, and perhaps get another bank account to use with it, but its a lot of hassle.

I already support several people on patreon, so it would be a very convenient location for me to add support for HF.

I don’t have any other preferences besides patreon, but it would probably be less work for me to support HF via just about any other method besides PayPal.

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Individual donations board meeting minutes (Sep 9)
#19

I’ve added: “adding a second payment method for individuals’ donations” to the list of potential initiatives that the Our Foundation Task Force could consider discussing/investigating as a potential recommendation to the HF board.

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#20

One of the reasons I have not donated to the Haskell Foundation yet is that US non-profits are not recognized for tax purposes in Canada, and my charity budget is smaller for those causes. Since Haskell users are distributed around the world, I’m probably not the only Haskell user with that kind of concern, but I’m not sure if anything can be done about it; registering as a non-profit in every country in which Haskellers live sounds like way too much work!

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#21

I have set recurring donation to the Haskell Foundation as an individual because of uncertainty and unknown things that have not yet been planned. There will be a lot of events in the future that I am not aware of yet and I really want to see. I want to create a space for the surprises, joy and disappointments, i.e. all spectrum of feelings. Therefore, this donation could be considered as a promise that I can afford and maintain.

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#22

I love Haskell for it’s quirky nature, great community, and super short programs. I use it for prototyping code that I later write in other languages (C and Z80 Assembly mostly), but I’ve written a fair share of functions only in Haskell. The main reason I haven’t donated yet is simply a lack of budget! I’m really grateful to all of you recurring donators who make my freeloading possible, and to the Haskell Foundation for working so hard on this unique language.

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#23

I have set up a recurring donation to Haskell Foundation because Haskell does it right. I’ve been using it on and off for 10+ years, and although I still consider myself a beginner, things I learned while writing Haskell translated incredibly well into everything I do professionally. I go to writing programs in Haskell when I need a break from everything else. It relaxes me and challenges me at the same time. It reflects well how my brain works when modeling a problem domain.

Also, I like the look on peoples’ faces when I say Haskell is my favourite programming language and I’ll do anything to keep doing that (:

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#24

I have now setup a monthly donation to the Haskell Foundation. What pushed me over the edge was reading in the board meeting minutes that only 13 individuals had donated yet. This is a ridiculously small number. Since Haskell is such a core part of my identity now (it’s hard to get into a conversation with me, not even a technical conversation, without me mentioning Haskell), I knew I was going to donate eventually, but that didn’t seem urgent. Now it did, as it seemed like Haskell needed a lot more help.

That’s what pushed me over the edge, but there was another, bigger factor before that which pushed me towards that edge. I was very impressed by the choice of issues which the Haskell Foundation decided to tackle. The Foundation picked big, important issues which, before the Foundation, had seen so little progress in years that I had given up hope of ever seeing them resolved. And yet in short order, the Haskell Foundation managed to identify (an important first step which should not be overlooked!) and resolve or at least make big progress on several of them! Kudos to the Haskell Foundation team, you blew away my expectations.

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