WinterMute's Self Employment Fund
Donation protected
I've been toying with the idea of turning devkitPro into a business and creating my very own ideal job for quite some time. For various reasons I've always managed to stop short of actually doing it but I think the time has come when I need to either do it or find a different way to earn a living.
As some of you may know from IRC conversations and some blog posts I suffered a breakdown some years ago due to stress related to working in the games industry. I'm not the first this happened to and I'm sure I won't be the last but it eventually led me to maintaining a popular and well respected set of tools for homebrew programming and I discovered that I actually really enjoy being a part of this community.
Currently I'm classed as disabled with a diagnosis of Dysthymic Disorder which may be a symptom of another underlying problem which I won't say much about at the minute - I'm still exploring that aspect with my counsellor and it's difficult to say whether it's any one thing or a mix of many. Right now I'm currently on Incapacity Benefit but, if you've been following any UK news, you'll know that our government are on a bit of a crusade to paint the sick and disabled as feckless scroungers who add no value to society. Rather than do something sensible like offer a clear path from benefits into work with support and understanding of the problems we face in finding and maintaining gainful employment it seems that we need our support network taken away until we have no choice but to work or starve. I might understand the approach if we had the potential for full employment and jobs were flexible enough to deal with the limitations of fluctuating mental health conditions but neither of those are currently possible nor does it look likely that they will be. It seems that the best escape for me would be to move forward with plans to make devkitPro my actual job but I could do with a little help.
There are various grants available to help with moving into work but the main condition is that a job should be for at least 16 hours a week, pay at least national minimum wage and be expected to last for at least 5 weeks. That works out to £495.20 (£6.19 * 16 * 5) or roughly $795 at current exchange rates but ideally I'd like to be able to get to around 6 months to get a bit of space to deal with startup issues and get some products together that people might be willing to buy. 26 weeks works out to £2575.04 or roughly $4138 so, allowing for fees and some exchange rate fluctuations I originally set up a chipin with a target of $5000 which got things moving pretty well but sadly Chipin decided to shut down before the deadline I'd set.
I don't intend to ever charge money for the toolchains directly - part of the philosophy with these tools is that everyone should have access to those, regardless of ability to pay. There are some other possibilities with some hardware prototypes I'm working on related to homebrew and some of the other systems that people use devkitARM for.
A while ago I was asked by a publisher if I'd be interested in writing a book on homebrew programming, which actually I would but obviously that needs some other revenue to support me while it's being worked on.
As some of you may know from IRC conversations and some blog posts I suffered a breakdown some years ago due to stress related to working in the games industry. I'm not the first this happened to and I'm sure I won't be the last but it eventually led me to maintaining a popular and well respected set of tools for homebrew programming and I discovered that I actually really enjoy being a part of this community.
Currently I'm classed as disabled with a diagnosis of Dysthymic Disorder which may be a symptom of another underlying problem which I won't say much about at the minute - I'm still exploring that aspect with my counsellor and it's difficult to say whether it's any one thing or a mix of many. Right now I'm currently on Incapacity Benefit but, if you've been following any UK news, you'll know that our government are on a bit of a crusade to paint the sick and disabled as feckless scroungers who add no value to society. Rather than do something sensible like offer a clear path from benefits into work with support and understanding of the problems we face in finding and maintaining gainful employment it seems that we need our support network taken away until we have no choice but to work or starve. I might understand the approach if we had the potential for full employment and jobs were flexible enough to deal with the limitations of fluctuating mental health conditions but neither of those are currently possible nor does it look likely that they will be. It seems that the best escape for me would be to move forward with plans to make devkitPro my actual job but I could do with a little help.
There are various grants available to help with moving into work but the main condition is that a job should be for at least 16 hours a week, pay at least national minimum wage and be expected to last for at least 5 weeks. That works out to £495.20 (£6.19 * 16 * 5) or roughly $795 at current exchange rates but ideally I'd like to be able to get to around 6 months to get a bit of space to deal with startup issues and get some products together that people might be willing to buy. 26 weeks works out to £2575.04 or roughly $4138 so, allowing for fees and some exchange rate fluctuations I originally set up a chipin with a target of $5000 which got things moving pretty well but sadly Chipin decided to shut down before the deadline I'd set.
I don't intend to ever charge money for the toolchains directly - part of the philosophy with these tools is that everyone should have access to those, regardless of ability to pay. There are some other possibilities with some hardware prototypes I'm working on related to homebrew and some of the other systems that people use devkitARM for.
A while ago I was asked by a publisher if I'd be interested in writing a book on homebrew programming, which actually I would but obviously that needs some other revenue to support me while it's being worked on.
Organizer
Dave Murphy
Organizer
