References: <99121512151928@man.ac.uk>
Message-ID:  <199912152125.WAA00435@istrati.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
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In-Reply-To:  <99121512151928@man.ac.uk>
Date:         Wed, 15 Dec 1999 22:25:26 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <frank.mittelbach@LATEX-PROJECT.ORG>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: Is help available here?
Status: R

Phillip Helbig writes:

 > Do the `people in the LaTeX 3 project' get paid directly for their work?
 > Or is it a `spare-time' effort?  If the latter, the fact that they get
 > royalties keeps them from having to work more elsewhere (assuming that
 > they are not independently wealthy) presumably aids the project by
 > allowing them to work on it.

for the record:

half of the LaTeX Companion royalties (and half of the royalties of its
translations in German, Japanese, and Russian) are contributed by the authors
(i.e. Michel Goossens, Alexander Samarin and me) to the LaTeX3 fund

a substancial amount of the royalties of the LaTeX Manual by Leslie Lamport
are contributed to that fund.

the other books in the ttct series, eg the LaTeX Graphics Companion and the
LaTeX Web Companion do not directly contribute to the fund (this was a plain
honnest mistake on Robin's end and i'm sure that there was no intention
whatsoever to be deceptive) --- as an aside my work as an editor for the
series also benefited the fund as Addison-Wesley contributed a substancial
amount to it after me taking on this work.

people on the project do not get paid for their work other than indicated by
David, e.g., by getting some of their direct expenses for travelling payed.

As for myself, I'm working 4 days in industry (i.e on a payed job) having
dedicated the fifth day (as well as many nights and weekends) to an "expensive
hobby" called supporting and developing LaTeX. The royalties for the books
that directly go to me do not cover the expenses but the smooth the gap
between a five and a four day contract so that i could make that decision. So
in that sense the royalties for the Graphics Companion do indeed support the
LaTeX3 development.

frank