In which, alas, I must rattle a tin cup

Your right, that is just arrogant. We are all thankful for the work you have done but I promise the internet will still be here tomorrow if you stop. Get a job or figure out how to setup a foundation to fund your work (i.e., like Mozilla, OpenBSD, et.al.). As the foundation is something you should have put together years ago I would suggest that you should go the job route.

When the bubble burst in 2001 I went from being on the top of the network stack to struggling to find work. I took every contract I was offered no matter how much is was below my skill set. I worked doing help desk contract work, etc. In the years before I designed and built a freaking backbone and did a HW company. I am back and successful now but I worked my ass off to get here and I never forget it. I am a better person for it.

Before my last startup hit my family and I lived in a 2 bedroom place in Menlo/PA area. The rent was expensive but the schools were the most important thing. We had a neighbor, an Mexican family. They also lived in a 2 bedroom with 4 kids. I would hear the fathers car leave the garage at 5AM and here him come back at midnight. He worked 3 jobs to pay for that apartment in such an expensive area. I asked him why. "It is my job to provide for my family. The schools are the best here and I want my kids to have a good future, thats why."

Get a job.

Yes, that's the method that most of us implement in order to acquire money.

> And that would be unfortunate for the long term; the infrastructure work I’m doing and expect to do in the future is tremendously important.

Wow, that comes off as extremely arrogant and egotistical (to me).

> Somebody’s going to need to design and field NTPv5 to fully cover the IPv6 transition, and it looks increasingly like that somebody needs to be me.

Are we taking a vote on this?

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Let me be blunt: get a fucking job.

To anyone who might be considering a donation in order to support NTP, allow me to recommend directing your donation at the NTP Foundation [0] instead.

[0]: http://www.networktimefoundation.org/

He bemoans the government deciding that 11 million people not having health insurance was more important than his right to not have a job. You don't have a moral right to work on open source projects all day, people do arguably have a moral right to healthcare. The government did exactly what it was supposed to, move money from people who were existing extravagantly to people who desperately needed it.

All due credit to his wife, but generally if the marginal cost of insurance was what was keeping you employed, how much value were you delivering?

I know because I can get that way. I'm one of those people who ends up knowing how everything works because I'm wired that way. And it's really hard to hand jobs off to colleagues who you perceive as less competent. That's perfectionism. It's a great way to not get things done that need doing. Because you don't have the time to do everything that needs doing.

There isn't enough time available for you personally to do everything you feel you need to do, to the standard you feel it needs to be done, that you think no one else can achieve. Certainly not if you also need to feed your family and the things you need to do are not bringing in enough income.

The solution, as annoying as it is, is to drop your standards, to realise some of those needs are actually wants. Having a cool, fulfilling job that pushes all your buttons and pays really well is a luxury many people don't get. Having random strangers pay for your living costs so you can do cool stuff is a massive, massive luxury only a few people get.

What's really important to you: NTPsec or food & shelter? Sounds like you're choosing the former.

Making these choices is hard. I've moved to a small town and as a one man band cannot get the sort of technically sophisticated work that I really enjoy doing. But hey, living here is cheap and people are friendly and laid back. We have a lovely house. Trees the kids can climb. I can cycle from suburbia to my office in 7 minutes.

To get this, I had to give up my dreams of having top notch IT work.

I don't have a Patreon. I could work on some cool infrastructure work, too, if I had one and people donated enough to keep my family afloat. But I don't. I have a job that is sometimes boring and sometimes not. And I have a roof over my head, food on the table, access to good medical care, running water, electricity, broadband ... I'm doing better than most of the world's population. I can't complain.

Eric, get a job. And let some air out of that ego.

I had to laugh - somewhat grimly - at that. My wife is the same. She came from an unusually tough background and it has a profound impact on the way she feels about being short of cash. I'd say Mr Raymond's going to find himself in a job whether he likes it or not - unless he really pulls off a coup.

If anything I would have thought that it left too many jobs in place by fully institutionalizing the role of the very expensive middle man insurance companies, and thus ensuring that it'll always be fundamentally more costly than a more pure universal healthcare system.

Keep jackin' it to the market, dude. "The meddling of the ACA destroyed my life! By the way, no one will pay me for my labor."

Get a job.