Not so "dead serious": As an alternative to the "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" the "Church of Lambda" could be founded (see https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/churches-religious...). To find believers and members should not be a problem, one might think.
Do you find the idea of funding Common Lisp Open Source abhorrent? Because that is the primary focus of my work and my life.
Do you think this would have more intrinsic value if someone else promoted it for me? And I have never understood the hate against relevant self-promotion. Why don't you want value creators to promote their work themselves?
No and no. If someone else promoted it for you, I still would've flagged it as spam.
The problem with self promotion is not with you, or any one in particular, but in a tragedy of the commons. I don't want HN to be filled up with hundreds of requests of self-promotion.
Yes, that you should be better able to justify why you are the right person for the job; after all, it is you who is asking for money and questioning the competence of others. In any case, you are not able to convince me, and on the basis of the other comments one can assume that this also applies to others. It's not enough that you are very convinced of your own abilities.
My CV and other writings and most especially my work itself pretty extensively justify that I'm the right person for the job. Of course, it's probably pretty hard to tell without significant Common Lisp expertise...
You don't need to be a race car driver to debunk a sales man trying to tell you "This is the best car in the world!".
My advice to you is to be humble, you're clearly passionate about Lisp and turn that into a positive thing. Saying Lisp is the best language in the world is a sweeping statement, something a snake oil salesman would put across.
I first used Lisp more than thirty years ago (back then on the VAX), but I still don't understand why it is supposed to be the "best programming language" (as some people continue to claim). It is not even obvious to me how to recognize a programming language as the "best" one. The advantage of the simple syntax is paid with several disadvantages. Praising Lisp for its simple syntax is like praising a protein for its simple structure consisting only of a chain of amino acids.
Fairly extensive advocacy pieces already exist, and we need even more sophisticated ones, and better infrastructure overall, and it would be much easier to do that with proper funding.
I won't be donating, since I don't believe that what needs to change in software development is as simple as a choice of programming language--I'm sure you've heard that one before. Best of luck with your endeavors regardless!
I understand its value as well as I believe I need to in order to do good work. I'm sure you hold beliefs that are different from mine, and I think that diversity--and the fact that we can talk about this stuff honestly and respectfully--is what makes our industry great.
I am creating tons of Common Lisp community resources that definitely help attract a more diverse audience to Common Lisp, incidentally. (Not everyone is comfortable with the "pop up in chat and ask experts" model.)