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Comment by jr_isidore | Hacker News Reader

appears to receive stable funding from the FSF

No, about ten underemployed or semi-retired graybeards on the emacs.devel mailing list burn most of their waking hours futzing with emacs. That's not an exaggeration. They receive no remuneration.

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That's sad. Is there a way I can fund them without going through FSF? I tried looking into it before but it seemed like FSF was the only alternative, so I assumed it was well-managed.

https://github.com/tarsius/elisp-maintainers and https://github.com/freetonik/support-emacs-community-devs list quite a few people, so you can support them directly.

Ah, thanks. At least one of them is apparently already receiving recurring donations from me!

Bro, the FSF is an unchecked post office box somewhere in Kendall Square, and besides, do you really think $10 per month makes a difference? I don't know what these guys feed off of, but it's not food or anything else that money buys.

The emacs devel mailing list is way more active than that.. although you do see some regulars there for sure.

You misunderstand. Every mailing list has their healthy share of drive-by contributions, but emacs.devel contains a handful of dudes for whom *all they do* is emacs. We're talking nights, weekends, holidays. If they were indeed working a job, the inordinate time spent on the mailing list would constitute defrauding their employer.

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