Hi --

On Fri, 9 Jul 2004, Charles Mills wrote:

> 
> On Jul 8, 2004, at 2:25 PM, Martin larsson wrote:
> 
> > richard lyman wrote:
> > Wouldn't it be a good idea to make a webform where you can register if 
> > you're interested in paying, just to see how many that are willing to 
> > sacrifice some money to the ruby-gods?
> Not to be negative, but the cost of registering =~ 0, while actually 
> paying is a different story.
> 
> > Those who got jobs where they use ruby alot maybe can get the company 
> > to send little money each month too.
> Seems like a possibility if a company could write it off as a 
> charitable donation.

That's the theory behind Ruby Central, Inc., though as I mentioned
before, the process of getting tax-exempt status is dragging on longer
than we'd hoped so we can't yet offer the charitable write-off
scenario (though we can accept donations and sponsorship for
RubyConf).  It's literally down to having to revise entire forms
because we've received a late payment from last year's conference in
the interim... and things like that.

I think actually supporting someone on a full salary would be very
hard or impossible, just because of scale, but I certainly foresee
Ruby Central serving as a kind of clearinghouse for support for
projects (beyond RubyConf, that is) once the tax-exempt status comes
through.  (Maybe we're being too pessimistic about people and
companies donating on a non-exempt basis (?), but that's been our
judgement so far.)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack / wobblini.net