Good on you Jeff.
btw (non-related) how reliable are CafePress as my tee order has been 16 days since it was sent, I’ve emailed them and still nothing; still waiting 
Lee
I thought you were donating $5,000 per month all this time. Oh, well.
Interesting way to choose a recipient. I would have probably donated to (a) the open source project I use the most,(b) the open source project that I really wish would get better, or © the open source project that I use but is in danger of going under.
Oh well. Your money, your decision. I just buy the occasional T-Shirt and mug. You’re the better person.
You rock, man. Good for you.
So stackoverflow is what you’re going with? Kinda dissapointed, it’s the name I liked least I can’t understand why so many people liked it. Oh well, I’ll still be a part of whatever it is.
I’m glad you decided to give all the money to one project. I was reading this, thinking that you were still in the planning stage; I scroll down a line and wham, you’ve just handed out five thousand dollars.
I remember awhile back you posting other (famous) people’s home addresses in images on your blog and when people complained you said “there is no need to hide it, it is public information that you can look up.”
If you were so unconcerned with that person’s address, why did you gray your address out? I would have grayed out my signature before the address.
I too applaud your contribution, but just wonder if it couldn’t have gone to an effort that 1) moved the tech bar a bit instead of repeating the same old been-there-done-that thing (e.g., wikis, blogs, content servers, etc.), and that 2) didn’t have an $18,000 commercial license with which to fund their own activities?
On a more positive note, thanks for donating to the community. I’ll have to check out this screwturn wiki site.
So, there certainly are industries in which you write programs that are supposed to last for 20 years. (Although, of course, the singularity will obselete such considerations soon enough ;).) But I’m pretty sure that nobody uses .NET for those.
Certainly, none of the apps I’m writing in .NET have a life expectancy of more than a ten years at the outside. I guess my personal website has a longer one, but in that case I’m such an upgrade-junkie that it’ll never be far behind the ‘next big thing’ curve. (Well, assuming my hosting provider stops being slow on the upgrade.)
I am shocked no one mentioned the picture of the check taken on the wooden table. No fans of http://thedailywtf.com/ here I suppose.
@lahser:
Actually, I know of quite a few companies where the life
expectancy of a program is around 20-30 years –
to the point where sometimes people lose the source code
and can only try to find a faster machine to make it run faster.
Code lives - some of my projects are older than 10 years - webapplications, by the way.
But they are refactored every few years, some are translated to C# over the time. Word or Linux live longer than 10 years - but they not the same as they have been 1998. Very different compilers translate them, where no single stone is on the other as before. Internally no single line looks exactly as they were 10 years before, i presume.
If a software is alive, it is under permanent change. That’s the only way a project could survive.
But show me only one DOS-program, which is in use as it was 1994. I don’t see any. Even on the big-iron the programs only survive, if they are constantly changed.
There simple is no software, that runs unchanged over 20 years. The law and needed functions change too fast for that.
It is an urban legend, the single software which was never changed, but is still in use.
No company has such, and i’ve seen many.
A single exception does not count, it would only be a shown big mistake, a living zombie.
Commentable!!!
Very nice gesture, Jeff.
Also, you mention that the comments are often more valuable than the original blog. I’d agree, but that’s also why I wouldn’t be able to operate a successful blog (that and I have nothing interesting to say). Here’s an example where you mention that you’re donating money to some OSS project, and some people can’t resist the urge to be dicks. I would get fed up.
Jeff,
Will and Dan beat me to it…
You basically just posted your signature and your bank account number on the net…
I suggest changing opening a new bank account.
Oh, yeah, and kudos for supporting OSS. It’s interesting to me that you have chosen to donate to a company that has a business model and makes money through commercial licensing of its opensource software, rather than a project that’s being worked on without an obvious profit model. From the post it appears that you just went with the project that people nominated in the blog comments, but I wonder if this entered into your consideration.
I think he’s going to blow the five grand on hookers.
Good stuff 
Congrats to the Screwturn Wiki project!