On May 28, 2012, at 9:29 AM, James Harkins wrote: > > Related: I can't say I read the list very closely, so somehow I overlooked > the fact before that David K.'s livelihood comes from working on Lilypond. I > had assumed Lilypond was almost completely a volunteer effort (like > SuperCollider, for which I contribute some code, bug fixes and documentation > when I can), so I hadn't taken seriously the idea of supporting Lilypond > financially. The recent thread changes my mind about that. I can't do it > immediately for reasons I don't need to discuss, but after I get back to the > US for summer holiday, I can make a donation on the order of a few years' > worth of "Finale tax" (yearly $100-$120 US upgrade fee).
The "Finale tax!" I got a chuckle out of that. But it's a great point. > I'd urge other users to think in similar terms. If Lilypond is as valuable to > you as Finale or Sibelius, or more: How much do those packages cost? Does a > $10-$15 donation match the value you get out of Lilypond? My contribution may > be a small amount of what David needs, but... if I can put that kind of value > on Lilypond, maybe you can too. Sending money to David is very simple, and I would think that would be the case for other developers interested in this. Just send by PayPal or a bank wire transfer, whichever is easiest/cheapest in terms of fees. Sending money directly to developers instead of to a central Lilypond account cuts a lot of costs and eliminates much of the need for organizational bureaucracy (e.g., an accounting department). FWIW with today's exchange rate for Americans, the €15 I sent = US $19.37 (minus fees). I don't know what the going hourly rate for developers is where David lives; at US average wages for programmers my $19.37 would at best pay for about 30 minutes of his time. I can afford to send about that every month. What David *could* be making working at a job underscores the need for many Lilypond users to be contributing- he would need 320 people a month each contributing €15 to be competitive with having a regular full time job (and he still would not be getting many of the benefits that would come with traditional employment- at least seen through the lens of how self-employment works in America). As great as Lilypond's output is, there is a long way to go in terms of simplification and usability (the syntax needs to be simplified dramatically; a lot of the code users have to write is pretty ugly and is going to scare off potential users). Having someone working full time on Lilypond is a great way to get that done in under a decade. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
