From what I've seen, Rich does things to end controversies quickly rather than talk them to death. There was a religious war developing in the user group some time ago over licensing terms of products that were developed in Clojure. Rich didn't take a side, as I recall--he simply intervened after a few days and asked people not to carry on this discussion but to focus on technical issues. At least one heavyweight (Jon Harrop) seemed to disappear from the user group upon being asked to cut out the licensing jibber-jabber, but peace was restored.
Given Clojure/core potential earnings and the bigger bang for the buck of corporate sponsorships, requests for individual donations are not worth the ill-will that they apparently cause. I like his techniques for time management and choosing his battles carefully.
As a longtime Lisp observer, I can't say that I've ever seen Jon Harrop conduct himself as a "heavyweight" in forums unrelated to OCaml, Mathematica, or F#.
Ah, my mistake, I didn't notice the difference in name spelling. It was indeed John Harrop, not Jon Harrop, who appeared to vanish from Clojure after the licensing discussion. I should have made my point without reference to individuals.
"heavyweight" was my opinion of him based on his education, demonstrated ability, and publications, not anything to do with his way of representing himself. I found his comments very interesting, informed as they were by his extensive work in other languages.
Given Clojure/core potential earnings and the bigger bang for the buck of corporate sponsorships, requests for individual donations are not worth the ill-will that they apparently cause. I like his techniques for time management and choosing his battles carefully.
Onward with Clojure development!