End of year finances (was: fingerings)

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> 2012/11/29 Eluze <address@hidden>:
>
> { c'' d''-1  \tweak ParenthesesItem #'font-size #-2 \parenthesize -4
> e'' a c''-3 }
>
>
> And who made it possible?

Actually, in this case I am only responsible for the "directed tweak" of
ParenthesesItem (and its syntax change in 2.17 to \tweak
ParenthesesItem.font-size ...).  With regard to behavior Eluze found
amazing, namely "tweaked articulation behaves like standalone music
unless prefixed with -", I hope I will eventually be responsible for
shutting it down.  Tweaking a main music or postevent item,
respectively, should not change its interpretation when omitting or
writing - before it.  This inconsistency has been there for a long time.
Some aspects of it have been removed already (when assigning to a music
variable, LilyPond knows how to treat that variable afterwards without
needing to write - either in assignment or use), it is just that music
functions are notoriously more difficult in that respect.

> It's a shame that the whole LilyPond-community is not able to garantee
> his financial survival.

So far I survived, but using up a bit of my own reserves.  And exactly
because I managed to get enough support for my work to survive, things
like health care payments and taxes are going up, so it becomes more
expensive just treading water.

To be fair, I don't guarantee consistent quality of my work on LilyPond
in return.  And it turns out that the level of support very much depends
on timely monthly reports of my finances and work.  Those take time and
effort to do and mostly reach the existing donator base, and I am not
really fabulous at "timely", in particular for repetitive tasks.  To get
the financial reports out to the public beyond previous financial
contributors, I use the LilyPond Reports, but those need more editorial
material than just my financial situation, and it turns out that I am
accountable for a lot of that additional editorial material as well.

Now Colin Hall, our patch meister, is down to being able to do two patch
countdowns per week.  I currently have 7 patches on countdown and 4 more
on review.  Since ongoing work usually consists of several patches in a
series depending on one another, this is also braking things a bit, so I
was pondering volunteering for some countdown duty as well.  But taking
on too much stuff at once leads to myself dropping the ball again and
again.

Trevor and James have been picking up some of the slack I had writing
user-level documentation for some of my work, and that's great.  It
still requires me to double-check their work for correctness as
obviously I am best qualified for that.

David (Nalesnik) and Harm are doing a fabulous job cranking out code and
advice for complex not-quite-user-level problems.  There is quite a bit
of "LilyPond should be able to do this out of the box" material in
there.  I am trying to keep track of some of that to figure out where
the infrastructure could better support it, but harvesting turnkey-ready
material would be the kind of "boring" task that slows my productivity
down to a trickle so I usually don't try.  I am much better at critical
advice than complete solutions.

> I'm awaiting a larger back-payment of taxes and decided to give a
> reasonable amount of it for supporting him.
>
> Would be nice if some more people would decide to *do* something
> similiar.

I have yesterday sent an inquiry to a local "Bürgerstiftung" (citizen
foundation/charity) for cultural/arts advance.  I had previously
contacted them, asking for support of my work on LilyPond, but their
answer had been that they had already allotted all funds for 2012.  But
if that turns out to be the _sole_ problem, it might be possible to let
them act as recipient for payments intended for letting my work on
LilyPond commence, and at least in the EU, that would imply some tax
advantages both for donors and recipient.  I quite don't know how this
may play out and whether anything will come from it, but if it works it
might help making more efficient use of actual donations and might make
it easier for some to decide helping out.

At any rate, I currently am in a situation which a former dean of mine
would have called "desperate, but not serious".  There is no compelling
reason to quit, but also no dependable long-term perspective.  In case
of a large end-of-year funding rally, it is likely that I'd do my tax
filings from it and try covering the minimum for state pension funds
(which will take some monetary pressure off my work on LilyPond in 20
years or so, when I might not be equally productive as I am now).

And make no mistake: financing a single person fully in Western Europe
_is_ taking a surprisingly large amount of money even when we are
talking very basic pay rates.  It is actually surprising that we have a
comparatively high rate of employment here nevertheless.  No idea where
goods corresponding to all that money come from.  Probably from
countries with lower standards of living, in return for exported goods
like cars and weapons.  Ugh.  Anyway, exporting free software (pretty
much the only software affordable legally there) seems like a bit of
compensation, and music is sort of universal.

I think I am currently cranking out quite solid value compared to
"industry average" which is paid quite a lot more.  One really has to
wonder who ultimately pays those bills.

And I am glad that a small but crucial minority manages to take over
most of my bills in return for the work I do as part of a common project
for the sake of musicians.

-- 
David Kastrup