Ben Fry resigns from the Processing Foundation(twitter.com) |
Ben Fry resigns from the Processing Foundation(twitter.com) |
I read a lot of Ben's code while I was working on the IDE for Arduino. It was always extremely clear, robust, and well-commented. And occasionally hilarious. My favorite part was the prompt to take a walk that showed up when you had created a new sketch for each letter of the alphabet on a particular day (sketch names defaulted to something like 20231003a, 20231003b, etc). But there were also some good digs at the failings of Processing's various dependencies, like Java and Mac OS.
The world of computational design and open-source software is much better for having Ben Fry and Processing in it.
On days I'm looking for inspiration I revisit that day in mind or visit benfry.com to see what other cool projects he's been working on. Thank you Ben for your amazing contributions to data visualization programming and for being an inspiration to an aspirational hacker.
I learned to program in Python but at the time (around 2005 say) it wasn't easy to create python gui apps that didn't involve a fair bit of boilerplate. When I first downloaded Processing I was immediately hooked. It was amazingly interactive, with top notch documentation and examples. It contributed a lot to me becoming a programmer.
Also shout outs to Fluxus which is pretty sweet too,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus_(programming_environm...
> This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead.
It's interesting, because I got very interested in Processing after being blown away by what an amazing asset Daniel Shiffman is for the coding/educational community, and wanting to find out more about it. When I went to go look into processing a bit more, I was very confused by what I encountered. It seemed like a radical political group with an absolute fixation on identity politics, which just happened to have a couple of programming platforms in the mix. Very sad to see that this wasn't just the superficial impression, but where the money is actually going.
Shiffman, meanwhile, not only is an excellent engineer and communicator, pumping out an endless stream of content...sadly seems to have been doing so despite the organization. The man is a legitimate saint. The way that you get people interested in engineering is by making engineering fun and accessible, which is exactly what he does. I wish the best for him and the work that he does, and I hope that he gets to continue putting what he does out there with or without the help of processing. Processing and p5js, as well as their machine learning library ml5js, also deserve better; they're great too.
I had no idea that they had a 'foundation' let alone this big. The list of people in the about section has me pondering 'why'.
I never knew that a foundation based on donations could stray off the path so far as to make the original founders uncomfortable enough to quit.
I wish them well and I hope that they start a new foundation where money can go instead. Money walks.
I used p5.js to overlay some graphs on a photo I took which ended up in a coffee shop show.
There is value to this and it seems a shame the foundation seems to be miss-managed. I’ve donated in the past and I’m going to have to look into it before doing so again.
https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundati...
Rich people unironically using a term like that is pretty laughable.
(I mean, if a donor doesn’t have Ethereum, then they are probably not going to buy Ethereum in order to donate. If they only have Ethereum, then they need to transact it anyway to get a currency that the foundation will accept… And that’s taking it for granted that Ethereum has some problematic environmental impact, and that the impact is important enough to warrant losing donations for.)
The funding doc reads like an organization that has lost its way and is pursuing various vague social causes (“decolonizing wealth”), or social justice wars, rather than its original mission.
> I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4. [...] This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead.
Basically he feels like the donation money should go towards further development of Processing itself, but the foundation seems to be spending it on other stuff, and not on continuing or accelerating the development of Processing itself.
> Every year, we support and sponsor programs that nurture diverse communities and their projects. Our programs include:
* A Fellowship and Teaching Fellowship Program that funds exploratory, creative, and technical research
* An Advocacy Program that partners with organizations for projects
* Public events that provide platforms for collaboration between our contributors, such as panels and talks that spread the word about the need for equity in these fields
* Summer programs to support emerging coders throughout the world
[1] https://processingfoundation.org/
EDITed: linebreaks
"We invite you to meditate on digital fragmentation and infrastructure that lays its foundation through the global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework we live in today through our Land and Digital Acknowledgements."
tl;dr: divisive nonsense
https://processingfoundation.org/
Every year, we support and sponsor programs that nurture diverse communities and their projects. Our programs include:
A Fellowship and Teaching Fellowship Program that funds exploratory, creative, and technical research
An Advocacy Program that partners with organizations for projects
Public events that provide platforms for collaboration between our contributors, such as panels and talks that spread the word about the need for equity in these fields
Summer programs to support emerging coders throughout the world
Other bits:
We invite you to meditate on digital fragmentation and infrastructure that lays its foundation through the global white capitalist, colonialist, and imperialist framework we live in today through our Land and Digital Acknowledgements.
Please consider donating to the Processing Foundation to help us advance the role of programming within the visual arts.
I guess the foundation money is mostly being spent on things unrelated to Processing itself. But, if this is what the people donating the money wanted to happen, who's to say that it's wrong? Or maybe nobody really knows what they wanted. It's a tough issue with nonprofit organizations because they can often just spend the money on whatever the management wants, which may not be what the donors or former management wants.
I seriously admire his dedication to processing all these years, this must be tough!
According to their FY2021 990 filing, they had $442k of "other" expenses.
It seems like they're required to disclose what those expenses are on the Schedule O form if they exceed 10% of all expenses, which they do, but I don't see the expenses enumerated there. (edit: oops, now I see)
I am, err, not a tax professional so I stopped here..
Looking at the About section, and the people involved [1] there appears to be at least a misalignment between the purely technical (?) vision of the tweet and the much wider remit of a foundation that he started years ago.
Things change, priorities move on. Is there something rotten here as rather vaguely implied? Perhaps, but it's possible there is just a disappointment at the child choosing a very different path to that desired by the parent.
And he said that's no better than what they had prior the foundation when him and Casey were working on Processing. That he started the foundation in the hope to scale up development.
Now, I have no idea what they could have allocated money on, isn't it sole purpose to further develop Processing? But my guess is they are doing outreach, grants, and other stuff like that, as opposed to further development. But that's just speculation on my part.
An org which usually potters along turning over small figures receives $10M USD in crypto in 2021, specifically 2021? You tell me.
Is there? Why do they need to be aligned? The foundation is aligned to who's in charge of it "today". If those mentioned in the tweet are no longer in some sort of control they can't expect it to go the way they "wish".
An aside, I don't use Processing very often but every time I've dipped into it I've found it simple and enjoyable.
Processing is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.
Why do you need a language to learn to code when you can just... learn to code in one of the more simple languages then switch later to something more complex such as Java? Python's pretty simple to get started with.
The Arduino thing came later, the language and tools (IDE, etc) was quite mature by then.
Talent and technology based progress is no longer compatible with non-profits or academia.
The actual technology, the actual tools made by actual talent that made coding easier and accessible have done a million times more for democratizing than any non-profit talk, grant or fellows program could ever do.
The Foundation and it's farcical work can only exist with the Processing code base, but without the code the Foundation is nothing.
Processing using since the Proce55ing days.
On edit, thanks for the nitter links!
I seen links to tweets, but there were never any replies or continuation of the thread. I didn’t know if it was locked or Twitter was broken or what.
So strange it doesn’t say “Join to access 8 more posts in thread” or “login to see 50+ replies” or something.
Calls to action don’t work if I don’t know I’m being called to action.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy always applies:
----
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
-----
That news had many defending the foundation, saying that their other projects get equally low funding. However, it makes me wonder how these foundations would fare in terms of income if they didn't use the name of a popular open source project. It's likely that a lot of donors have the misconception that their money goes to the namesake project - this is especially true for Mozilla.
It makes sense a founder being upset the tech side isn’t getting more benefit. It’s not a good look. Hopefully they can manage it better.
[1]https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...
The funding update article:
“The majority of the donations in 2021 came from artists donating cryptocurrency to the Processing Foundation.”
[2]https://medium.com/processing-foundation/processing-foundati...
https://github.com/sponsors/shiffman
Do sponsorships lapse automatically?
In any event, he's amazing and his videos are one of the best ways to get people into code. Very smart, excellent teacher, genuinely wants people to experiment and learn.
Meh. It depends.
Sometimes, like in the case of Mozilla, people are mislead about what their donations are used for. "Donate to firefox" money goes to the Mozilla CEOs favourite political causes.
I'm assuming that in this case, due to the snipped you posted, donators are made aware that they are not donating to Processing development, but to the leaders' political causes.
It could be that many of Processing's donor's had the assumption it was being developed as a creative coding tool (which I think its excellent as). As far as being a tool to introduce programming, I don't think its bad, but there are better tools/approaches. Personally, I think starting with whatever the browser interprets is very accessible, and is very relevant to modern programming. Start with HTML, CSS and eventually move to turing-complete things, like Javascript. Don't jump right into Java or even Javascript.
Perhaps it’s because I am an European, but I’m really astonished by the widespread diffusion of this kind of obtuse ideological furore in the US lately, especially in the academic world
The whole thing is a vague lashing out without clear detail of what the exact criticism is or whether it is fair.
Wow, didn't realize it was a thread with more info. Not logged in, it only showed me the first tweet in isolation. No thread, comments, nothing.
This is not, in my experience, the sort of problem that could be solved by throwing money at it.
(and by "in my experience" I mean situations where I was involved with that shape of problem, and could have arranged to have money thrown at it, and the eventual decision was that that wasn't the limiting factor)
Note that this is entirely separate to the question of whether what TLF is doing with its money is suboptimal - it probably is - but I don't believe from what I've seen that the LTS kernel situation is downstream of funding decisions.
Maybe he wanted to start drawing a salary in order to resume working on Processing again, and the board said no. (That isn’t my first guess about what’s happening, based on the highly polarizing content on the foundation’s website but the thought did cross my mind.)
Processing is Java + sophisticated graphics and animation capabilties: you create a canvas and you can then draw to it. It has a bunch of functions and libraries for use by artists and graphics people. It’s solid and performant. And there is a Python mode these days if you like significant whitespace.
p5.js is Processing ported to JavaScript.
Python tends to really suck for stuff like that as a beginner, because you immediately butt heads with the terrible package management/library situation and why does the pip installer crash with an unhelpful error message and what the hell is a virtualenv vs conda vs pipenv and oh also why does every one of those install scripts crash and ohmygod I just want to draw a line and I see advice like https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844... screw this I'm out.
Too much authority being given to people that aren't doing things.
The look isn't the issue. The fundamental substance is what counts, and it seems terribly mismanaged to not spend most of this money on development and documentation, both of which scale extremely well.
Why would I want them doing anything after seeing what they've done so far?
"The Internet is for those that agree with us" has a long tradition.
The jannie urge to mop has surely got to be genetic
The resources he was abusing were not publically available at any price, commercial use of the ARPANET was officially banned, and he had no right to use it, while he was personally and commercially benefiting from the MIT-AI Lab's generosity, which he scorned in public.
He blatantly violated both the word and spirit of the MIT-AI Lab Tourist Policy, as well as ARPANET and DOD policies against commercial use:
https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b...
>Unfortunately, we must reserve the right to terminate tourist accounts for any reason, although we hope this will not be necessary. The most likely reason would be if a tourist or tourists were to interfere with the laboratories’ research objectives, i.e. do not interfere with other people who are using the system.
>The ITS computers are not an infinite resource and we must establish priorities for their use. Their primary purpose is to support faculty, staff and students in their endeavor to carry out MIT’s Sponsored Research. While tourists are expected to contribute to MIT’s research objectives, they are unlikely to be in the mainstream of the on-going work and should therefore consider their role and use of the MIT ITS machine a privilege. A tourist should at all times conduct himself or herself with this in mind. The most important principle is that tourists should not interfere in any way with a laboratory member’s use of the machine. This means that a tourist should not do anything which annoys other users, and also that he should not use the computer resources when a laboratory member needs them.
>[...] Any use of the MIT ITS machines for personal gain, profit making enterprise, or political purposes is not a legitimate use of the Laboratories’ computer resources.
>These specific statements of policy give a minimum of how a tourist ought to behave to be a responsible user on the MIT ITS system. They are not a complete list of all the ways tourists should or should not behave. Just because some particular anti-social behavior is not listed does not mean that it is acceptable. What a tourist should do is cultivate a good attitude: make a positive effort to anticipate and avoid actions that would interfere with other users. If you cannot tell whether a certain course of action can interfere with any one, find out from someone else before trying it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
>A 1982 handbook on computing at MIT's AI Lab stated regarding network etiquette:[92]
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/41180/AI_WP_2...
>It is considered illegal to use the ARPANet for anything which is not in direct support of Government business ... personal messages to other ARPANet subscribers (for example, to arrange a get-together or check and say a friendly hello) are generally not considered harmful ... Sending electronic mail over the ARPANet for commercial profit or political purposes is both anti-social and illegal. By sending such messages, you can offend many people, and it is possible to get MIT in serious trouble with the Government agencies which manage the ARPANet.
Why are you so butt-hurt on his behalf? What ever happened to personal responsibility, and what's wrong with kicking him off after he broke the rules and violated the law? He not only richly deserved to be ordered off the net, but he also literally demanded it:
"I find this thoroughly distasteful. If you have some authority to order me off the net, do so. If not, leave me alone." -Jerry Pournelle
They certainly DID have some authority to order him off the net, so he got exactly what he demanded and deserved. It was poetic justice, and his sputtering apoplectic reaction threatening to inform the House Armed Services Committee was as priceless as the ARPANET access he lost due to his own asinine words and illegal misbehavior:
"One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee." -Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Pournelle was heaved off the ARPANET for being a flaming alcoholic asshole who shouldn't have had ARPANET access in the first place, because he was abusing it for personal gain and commercial purposes: promoting his SF books and his Byte Magazine column, not for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense!
"Think of it as evolution in action." -Jerry Pournelle
The whole affair was a triumph of Social Darwinism, and couldn't have been more deserved! ;)
We decided to go all volunteer, as it seemed like it would make it easier to ask members to help out. (avoids the why are they getting paid and not us..?).
But with a very small anual budget (very low 5 figures) per year, most of which was from member fees, and almost all of which we spent on our public and free event. paying people wasn't an issue, we just couldn't.
With the spike in donations the foundation got, it becomes way more difficult to manage. Especially since it was a volunteer effort for the most part before 2021. I see some obvious overhead (maintaining p5.js online editor/ toolkit. etc..) but I also see echos of the "why is this valuable and worth paying for but not that"...
And maybe some work to market the foundation itself and try to increase the donations to it.
So really my expectations would be that it takes the money, and hires people to expand Processing, P5js, and the editor with new features, fix bugs, and maybe branch it out to new platforms. And it would maybe hire some people to manage the community issues.
And then the foundation members could discuss amongst themselves about what features are most important, if the editor needs more work this year, or if P5js needs more, or if they want to invest in a port to Rust, or whatever.
But it seems that there's a lot more money going towards things like outreach, grants to artists, events, workshops, etc.
I feel it goes against what I'd expect as a potential donor. And I feel it's also against what Ben Fey expects of the foundation.
He said himself:
> the project was always a 50-50 split between internal (software development) and external (the community, the documentation, examples, etc). The Foundation has lost all sense of balance
Implying that Software Development has almost spotted completely, and it's now all things around community building.
This work touches probably less than 1% what P5 and Processing do yet takes up the majority of the budget seemingly.
My argument is for spending money on making software that affects millions not spending it mostly on fellowships that affect 12 people or workshops and talks that affect 40.
How much of the budget was p5js support/development assigned, how many developers are currently working on it, how many man/hours of development have gone into it over the past two years?
That's a feature, not a bug.
Yeah but then nobody will give you $10M in crypto
Remember in my first comment I used the phrase 'weirdly non-sequitur equivocation word salad' - that's your comment history, that is.