Money for Nothing

Friday May 20, 2005
As some of you may be aware, my birthday is coming up soon. I'd like to say publicly the same thing that I've said several years running: if I didn't get a present for you, don't get a present for me. I have plenty of stuff lying around - way too much, in fact. Ying has been busily EBaying off the things that we don't use, and we're not close to halfway done.

However, I realize that these words are an empty gesture, especially to my family, who are routinely generous and wonderful to me regardless of how callous and awful a person I am. So for those of you who are hell-bent on making something of this most recent anniversary of my birth, I will stoop to a new low with this suggestion. Send money:
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I'll put down the self-deprecation for a moment and explain. A major source of anxiety for me these days is the state of the Twisted project's direction. I know there are several things that need to happen to push it to the next level of success, and there are plenty of people who only need a little bit of encouragement to do those things. However, I am spending most of my time and encouragement on another project right now, and it doesn't look like I'm going to get a reprieve any time soon. I've also got a personal deal with myself that I'm not going to spend any more of my own monetary resources on Twisted until something related to it has made me a millionaire ;-).

There has been plenty of discussion recently on the mailing list about problems with the project's public presence, even some specific recommendations about soliciting donations.

It would make a terrific gift for people to put some money towards this goal. It would encourage me personally to go out and write up some explanations of what needs to be done, secure in the knowledge that I'll actually be able to incent other peoples' contribution of time and my effort writing those specifications wouldn't be wasted. Ultimately, It would take a huge burden off my mind to see Twisted's progress towards my goals for it get unstuck.

By the way - since I'm asking for this as a gift, not as an official fund drive, I'm not going to post public statistics or fundraising goals or anything like that. If I had the time and energy to do a real fund drive I probably wouldn't be posting anything more than that initial paragraph. In fact, if there are a lot of donations I will probably contribute some of them towards the work required for setting up such a drive.