Who pays for all this?

[Shammah Chancellor via Digitalmars-d]

On 2014-10-05 03:33:36 +0000, Walter Bright said:

> We're not really limited by lack of funds, but more by lack of focussed 
> effort. If anyone wants to contribute funds, probably the best use 
> would be to add bug bounties for bugzilla issues that they find to be 
> neglected. The bounties don't really compensate at professional rates, 
> but they do work as a nice "thanks" to those who donate their valuable 
> time.

I've placed a couple of anonymous bounties, but I personally think it's 
a bad way to get directed focused effort.  A democracy of people trying 
to get what they individually want done through small donations?

There are many languages which have grown more quickly than D (despite 
being less interesting) because they have a foundation where people can 
donate, or some company, which provides for the core developers.   I'm 
not saying that having a non-profit will magically generate money, but 
there are a few companies who use D out there who just might be willing 
to donate non-trivial sums of money to further development if there was 
a non-profit to see that the money was put to good use.

Just to name a few:

Python: https://www.python.org/psf-landing/
Node.JS:  http://www.joyent.com/
Perl: http://www.perlfoundation.org
Linux Core Developers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
Ruby Core Developers: https://www.heroku.com (A subsidiary of Salesforce)

-S