> If you perform a public service, it's fair to ask the public for money.

I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.

As a volunteer organizer for a weekly meetup that helps local entrepreneurs, I and my team have never "asked the public for money". Occasionally we have private companies that like what we do and throw some money our way for coffee. It turns out that passion and effort from volunteers and attendees and other members of the startup community are the critical parts of the meetup, and money is not.

So, that gets me wondering what could be done with those $200k besides pay people to get agreement on one particular word being free-er to use. For example, that would fund coffee and breakfast for the meetup for hundreds of years, perhaps even forever. Or fund plenty of other charitable causes with a direct positive impact on people.

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sokoloff 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too).

I don't think it's reversed.

I coach a high school robotics team (volunteer, unpaid) and last season I went into my pocket for an unknown amount of money, but was not less than $5K and probably closer to $7K.

I'm clearly going to do it anyway; is it wrong for me to go out and seek sponsorships for the team so I don't have to dig quite as deep into my own pocket?

I don't think it's even the tiniest bit wrong nor in any way less-than-charitable.

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SilasX 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>I think the order here is reversed: If you ask the public for money, it's fair to perform a public service. If you just do something you wanted to do anyways, and probably would have done anyways, then it might be viewed as less-than-charitable to ask others for money to help you achieve your goal for yourself (even if other people might benefit somewhat too). Especially when you are far richer (like 100+ times richer) than the people you're asking for money.

I get the where you're coming from, but it's this exact attitude that ends up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.

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ImPostingOnHN 5 days ago | parent [-]

If the $200k were going towards such a geek, or towards maintaining code that everyone uses, that'd be better.

As it stands, the money is going to lawyers, who will argue over the right to utter the word "javascript" in a commercial context (rather than, say, "JS"). So zero coding or maintenance.

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lenkite 5 days ago | parent [-]

Programming Geeks cannot argue in court. Only lawyers can. So the money is going to the right place ?

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ImPostingOnHN 5 days ago | parent [-]

You're assuming that arguing in court over being allowed to use 1 specific word in a commercial context is a good thing to spend $200,000 on at all, which is quite an assumption, regardless of who does the arguing.

I agree with you that it'd be better if Deno took your suggestion, and spent the money on a Programming Geek, rather than being distracted from their core mission for trivial, semantic matters. The latter is how we actually end up with critical infra like OpenSSL being maintained ad hoc by some devoted geek for a pittance, who inevitably can't keep up with critical patches.

I mean, I'll be the first to admit that I've argued about a word on the internet before, but at no point did it ever cross my mind that I should spend $200,000 doing so.

	▲	freeopinion 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		You have just convinced me to stop using the word J8t. It is not worth even $1 to me to be able to use that word. If Oracle wants to claim ownership, that claim can just be added to the legacy of Oracle. It's a bit stupid to be legally forced to stop using the word, but such is the nature of any discussion involving Oracle. How about Deno put up $10,000 to sponsor a renaming contest? In honor of Deno, I propose VajaScript. err... Vajascript