[texhax] Crowd funding for LaTeX development

[Karl Berry]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for all the ideas. Others have replied on several fronts already,
here's a little more from me.

    Is the TeX Development Fund still active?  Its last report seems to be
    from 2009. (ref: http://tug.org/tc/devfund/)

Yes, it is still active:
 http://tug.org/tc/devfund/grants.html
One of us should write another summary report for the next TUB.

    Can the fund support several full-time developers, 

Even in the relatively flush years, TUG has never had the money (or
infrastructure or anything else) to employ developers. The whole yearly
budget for TUG is approx. $100K. (For financial details, see the annual
treasurer's reports, most recently
tug.org/TUGboat/tb38-1/tb118treas.pdf, and tug.org/tax-exempt.)

    In theory, TUG could set up a crowdfunding page with a detailed list of
    things to be accomplished

In theory. In practice, I think it would be impossible to maintain that,
because every package/program/project is maintained separately by
different individuals, and expecting those individuals to get back with
TUG about the lists of things to do, what's accomplished, etc., doesn't
seem at all realistic to me.

Kickstarter could work for such individuals themselves who want money to
do some specific project XYZ. That wouldn't involve TUG unless they
wanted it to.

However, patreon.com could be an option for ongoing crowdfunding of TUG,
if we can find some rewards that are both interesting and doable. I'm
not sure if there is anything else out there.

Thanks again,
karl