Just wanted to mention that Gmail took it upon itself to summarize this thread to me. I'm suspicious of A.I., so I won't be responding to any specific point without first reading it in the author's own words.
On Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 10:13 AM Neil C Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, 18 Jan 2026 at 09:43, Jerome Lelasseux via users > <[email protected]> wrote: > > It's also difficult for me to contribute to Netbeans, though I'd like > to. But I'd be glad to contribute money (donation) to Apache Netbeans to > help setting up a robust AI agents infrastructure. It provides a "realistic > purpose" for the donation which, I think, could encourage users like me to > donate. I'm aware that, at the end of the day, you need people to set up > the AI agents and oversee them. But maybe it's doable with the few "core" > maintainers ? > > > > As an example, it could start by a documenting task: even if I've been > developing a Netbeans platform app for several years, making changes to > Netbeans still looks scary to me. Source code often has no comments at all, > documentation is spread in many different places, etc. > > Most of those few "core" maintainers that we have now working on the > IDE and platform were exactly where you are right now not that long > ago. I know I was in a very similar place even having hacked with the > platform for years prior! Just jump in, it may not be as scary as you > think. :-) > > I don't know how useful or practical sponsoring AI agents would > actually be. On the other hand, ASF may have some foundation-wide > resources we could explore. > > Individual sponsorship is a difficult one on both sides, particularly > if targeted, and might have to exist externally - > https://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship OTOH, we've had a > sponsorship button on the community installers since they've been made > available, and there's been a sum total of two sponsors in all that > time. One of those was for NB28, out of 140,000+ downloads - another > 49 and I might even cover my personal costs in providing them! :-) > Sorry, I have a certain cynicism about individual donations being a > realistic way to resource open source projects. I'd prefer the > multiple massive corporations still utilising the platform day-to-day > stood up and contributed something. > > Best wishes, > > Neil > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > For further information about the NetBeans mailing lists, visit: > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Mailing+lists > >
