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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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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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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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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Haskell has been the crucible for many key FP ideas in programming languages. To continue not just as a laboratory but also as a language for production use, community-based sponsorship is key. Establishing this initiative through the Haskell Foundation is commendable. My individual sponsorship is currently small but nonetheless an endorsement and example for others.
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Seeing this necro’d thread resurrected got me to finally set up a monthly donation. Its not a ton but I want to express my appreciation for the team and ecosystem like none other.
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I’ve also just set up a small monthly donation as a token of my appreciation. Haskell was love at first sight for me. The only language where the act of programming inspires and recharges me instead of draining (and that goes even for decade old messy production codebases). I had to move away from Haskell around a year ago due to circumstances, but the longing grows by the day.
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I feel donations to foundations like the Haskell Foundation should come from companies, not individual workers or contributors. There’s a ethical argument here that I can’t elucidate right now, apologies.
Especially with the recent issues with hackage, I feel like I want to start donating to the Haskell Foundation (not that I expect my contribution to solve the issues!).
However, I think that one thing that has made me reluctant to give a donation is a lack of a sense of scale or worth.
Take an animal shelter, for example. They can concretely say “Donating £10 a month means that you are providing toys and food to dogs like Spot; £20 means we can get professional medical care”, and so on. Obviously, Haskell doesn’t have that kind of heart-string pulling, but something like “A monthly £10 donation keeps Hackage running for an hour” or “Over the course of a year of your donations, you’ll help sponsor projects like these: X, Y, Z”. Personally, I wouldn’t even want some kind of donator’s newsletter like other charities seem to do; once I know the worth of my donation, I’m happy for it to keep going.
Maybe this is just my odd perspective, but putting a value on what my donation means would help me decide what to donate.
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That’s a really interesting perspective, thank you.
Simon
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I don’t think you’re alone in this, people are generally keener to donate if they can conceptualise where the money ends.
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I’ve been donating a small monthly amount since the Haskell Foundation started accepting individual donations. I’m the kind of person who typically makes unrestricted gifts because I give to organizations that I trust will use the money where it’s needed, and that includes the HF. That being said, I do think it would be nice to understand what is being funded (e.g., last year’s infrastructure initiative, on-going GHC development support, various projects), and documenting things can probably help the Haskell community by raising awareness of the activities. Although the OP didn’t feel the need for a donator’s newsletter, I think the Foundation’s reports that were posted here helped me understand what the Foundation was doing and feel part of the community.
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I agree that the Foundation can and should communicate better. There used to be monthly updates, but they fell by the wayside.
I want to make sure the community gets updated on what the Foundation does regularly – monthly or quarterly. There’s so much that’s being done in the background, I was shocked!
Framing these updates in terms of value is an excellent idea that we’ll be sure to incorporate
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I would add a metric: normalized number of Haskell job
openings per year. Right now, the jobs thread on Discourse averages
about one posting per quarter. A reasonable target might be one per
week.
DVORAK is more ergonomic and efficient than the QWERTY keyboard
layout, yet it has struggled to gain widespread adoption for decades.
Haskell is …
I noticed partnership initiative thread. I think it is a step in the
right direction, but HF should adopt a more missionary approach,
because why would a company X with JS/Java/Go stack would introduce Haskell?
HF should invest into Haskell startups and practice approach:
- buy a small company
- introduce Haskell (in micro-service architecture no
need to rewrite everything plus AI could help with cutting corners) - sell the company after a few quarters of profit.
- goto step 1
Please provide an easy way to volunteer time. My employer matches volunteer hours for nonprofits at $25/hour, and I would love to be able to donate that time to the Haskell foundation.
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