Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[David Kastrup]

James Harkins <address@hidden> writes:

> Really, it blows me away. It's insane that notation software should be
> so smart. The LOMUS award is absolutely well-deserved. Many, many
> thanks and congratulations to the developers.
>
> 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.

Well, I am now in the third month of having made a serious pitch for
getting, uh, my survivelihood from LilyPond, so it is not that you have
missed much.  It has been for quite longer that I had not focused on any
other job because keeping my focus on LilyPond sufficiently for getting
things done did not really allow for much else.  I am a bit
single-minded.


> 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.

It _is_ a volunteer effort.  The last job I held before LilyPond was
that of a software engineer in a computer typesetting environment.
That's where my means for working on LilyPond without any support were
from, and it is not like I was forced at gunpoint, obviously.  But I
don't see that the kind of stuff I want to get done on LilyPond will be
finished by the time I have burnt the reserves from that time through.
In fact, I see a long long way ahead before getting LilyPond near to
where I consider its toolchain efficient for turning music into scores,
and for turning code into scores.  And I am alternating between heavy
stuff and low-hanging fruit, and some of the low-hanging fruit comes
about by working with the heavy stuff.

The recent addition of adding targeted tweaks was low-hanging and picked
in the course of giving footnotes a reasonably nice interface.  If you
take a look at the actual number of code lines for the actual feature
commit, it's "that's all?":

commit 0b716515bfd610a04bbe4289f171f3cd80a0fc14
Author: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
Date:   Tue May 15 19:11:03 2012 +0200

    Give \tweak an optional grob parameter for tweaking indirect grobs
    
    You can now use something akin to
    
      \tweak Accidental #'color #red cis'
    
    for tweaking a grob created indirectly from the given music expression.

 lily/tweak-engraver.cc     |   15 +++++++++++++--
 ly/music-functions-init.ly |   30 ++++++++++++++++++------------
 2 files changed, 31 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

The problem is that you need the idea and a good hunch how to implement
it and a hunch whether the syntax will be supportable.  And then of
course, documenting stuff and making sure that \displayLilyMusic knows
about it and adding regtests and so on takes more work.

Basically much of the work consists in stopping LilyPond to get in my
way.  I am actually good at that.  Not so good at following plans.  All
in all, I tend do move it forward, and while it takes longer until I am
annoyed enough at architectural problems to make large changes in spite
of my isallthisreallyoptimal-indecision, I do them as well from time to
time.

> 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).

I've not been on LilyPond's case seriously for a few years, and so it
would seem inappropriate that I burn through the accumulated goodwill of
years in the course of a few months, unless this is a temporary measure
on the path to a more sustainable model.  And I don't really have one in
sight.  Which is worrying me.  But in the meantime, I still need to
subsist while working on LilyPond, so I am not in the situation to offer
anything better.

> 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.

Just to be clear: this is not a general contribution to LilyPond, it is
a contribution to a single developer.  And I have said it before and
will repeat it: LilyPond is _huge_.  I can't "finish" all I think
worthwhile doing in a lifetime.  But I can work on creating an
"atmosphere" for coding (and I am explicitly _not_ talking about
improving human-human relations since I suck at that, but about
improving human-computer relations) where it becomes easier for others
to get things accomplished, and consequently contribute sooner and
easier.

-- 
David Kastrup