Your financial support for LilyPond development

I have been informed that my crosspost to both developer and user lists
of LilyPond

<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2026-08/msg00001.html>

has only made it to the developer list, as visible in the archives.

That is unfortunate since it means that my urgent plea for support has
mainly reached developers so far.

I am not going to harp again on my financial situation (you can read up
in the archive post I linked to above) and the situation will not fall
apart within the next weeks again.  However it is still far from
sustainable.

If every LilyPond user contributed €1 monthly, I'd have no problem.
Unfortunately, Free Software does not lend itself to microtaxation.
Which means fewer people who help, and those have to carry a larger
weight.

Now I am just currently jumping back into LilyPond development and you
might ask yourself why you should support me when there are quite a few
other worthwhile contributors.

The answer has multiple facets.  For one, for better or worse, it
appears that I have some unique skills and focuses that mean that stuff
I don't do doesn't get done.

As an example, I am right now implementing local variables
<https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/-/merge_requests/3111> and output
definitions <https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/-/merge_requests/3115>
for books and bookparts that on the one hand make it quite easier to
structure LilyPond files by wrapping parts into bookparts including
their own definition.  That required some really embarrassingly simple
code (considering that I have warned people away from this for decades)
in our parser and data structures, but the fine points did require
digging into the Guile source code in order to iron out some badly
documented annoyances.

For another, if you don't pitch in because there are developers who are
also investing a lot of time, chances are that those developers will end
up not just investing a lot of time but _also_ money in order to keep me
alive and at the project.  Which would be even more unfair to them and,
due to the failure of my call for help to arrive on this list, is
actually what is right now happening.

And the third facet: if you haven't yet pitched in during the decade
that I did full-time work on LilyPond while using up financial reserves
and barely breaking even, here is your chance to show the appreciation
to where this has led (much of what you can currently do with music
functions and input syntax and tweaks and other things was just much
less clear and reliable before I implemented and reimplented a whole
lot).

My Email address is good for Paypal and you can also find me on Wise
using it.  If you want account information where you can direct monthly
payments of a size you feel comfortable keeping up for, say, half a year
or more, please contact me.  I can also arrange payment details ready to
receive CAD and GPB in addition to EUR.

Note that I work most effectively (to a pathologic degree) when focusing
on stuff that I am currently invested in, so your payment does not give
you a claim of exactly what I am going to work on in order not to
decrease the overall value I am able to provide to LilyPond as long as I
am "free" to choose my particular area of work.

But you will be contributing to LilyPond's advancement in areas useful
to people.  For someone who is not already so deeply invested to
regularly read and possibly write on the development, I would recommend
to think about €20 to €50 on a monthly basis.

Think about it.  And also think about how important it is that you can
install LilyPond everywhere as often as you want legally and can discuss
its internals.  This free availability is what precludes microtaxation,
and it would be great if you did your part to make it work anyway.

Thanks for listening!

-- 
David Kastrup