A call to sponsor the Perl Toolchain Summit (#422)

* a call to sponsor the Perl Toolchain Summit

* Ferenc Erki becomes an in-kind sponsor

* SUSE becomes a financial sponsor

* fix typos reported by Ferenc Erki

* OpenCage becomes a sponsor

* add a section about what this PTS will work on

* cPanel is a brand of WebPros, which is the actual sponsor

* Bookings.com is a sponsor

* don't round the total, just give the raw data

* add a section about the past results of the PTS

* fix punctuation and capitalization in bullet lists

* Fix typo

Co-authored-by: Ferenc Erki <erkiferenc@gmail.com>

* use wording that does not mention specific programming languages

Co-authored-by: Ferenc Erki <erkiferenc@gmail.com>

* fix cpm link

* add a better link to the river analogy

* Zoopla is not sponsoring in-kind anymore

---------

Co-authored-by: Ferenc Erki <erkiferenc@gmail.com>

Author: book

content/article/the-perl-toolchain-summit-2025-needs-you.md

@@ -0,0 +1,241 @@
+# The Perl Toolchain Summit 2025 needs you
+
+This year in particular,
+[the organizers](https://blogs.perl.org/users/book/2025/02/announcing-the-perl-toolchain-summit-2025.html)
+have had difficulty reaching our fundraising targets for the
+[Perl Toolchain Summit](https://perltoolchainsummit.org/pts2025/).
+
+[In the words of Ricardo Signes](https://rjbs.cloud/blog/2024/05/pts-2024-lisbon/):
+> The Perl Toolchain Summit is one of the most important events in the
+> year for Perl. A lot of key projects have folks get together to get
+> things done.
+
+Everyone who is *invited* to the Summit is a project leader or important
+contributor that is going to give their time and expertise for four
+days, to move the Perl toolchain forward. They give their time
+(sometimes having to take days off work, which is already a loss of
+income or holidays for them).
+
+This is why, since 2011, we've done our best to *at least partially
+refund* their travel and accommodation expenses when needed. Everyone
+who's attending the PTS should really *only* have to give four days of
+their life for it.
+
+If the PTS can't support its participants, then more and more of them
+are going have to either decline our invitation, or spend their own
+money, in addition to their time, to continue supporting the Perl
+Toolchain.
+
+**This is bad for Perl and CPAN.**
+
+Perl differs from other programming languages which have large corporations
+funding their development: it's entirely supported by the community and its
+sponsors. In other words, by you.
+
+## How much does a PTS cost, by the way?
+
+Let's do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming:
+* hotel: 100€/night (most people are staying 5 nights, arriving the
+  day before and leaving the day after),
+* travel to Leipzig from Europe: 500€ round-trip,
+* travel to Leipzig from outside Europe: 1,500€ round-trip,
+* venue cost: 2,000€
+* lunch, snacks and coffee breaks: 15€/day/person
+
+We're expecting about 35 people coming (out of 44 invitations sent), 22
+from Europe, and 13 from outside Europe.
+
+That brings us to a total estimate of 53,100 €, almost all costs
+considered. That's a lot of money.
+
+The organizers never actually spend that amount, because many of our
+attendees pay for themselves, or have their expenses covered by their
+employer (which we list as in-kind sponsors, alongside our financial
+sponsors).
+
+Our budget for 2025 is of 25,000 €: that is our financial sponsoring
+target, as well as the amount we expect to pay directly to various
+suppliers. The rest is covered by in-kind sponsors or the attendees
+themselves.
+
+## What did the PTS produce?
+
+Here are a few examples of some of the many results of past Perl Toolchain Summits:
+* During the first edition, in 2008 in Oslo, a number of QA and
+  toolchain authors, maintainers and experts came together to agree on
+  some common standards and practices. This became known as "[The Oslo
+  Consensus](https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/toolchain-site/blob/master/oslo-consensus.md)".
+* In 2013 in Lancaster, a similar brain trust came together to address
+  new issues requiring consensus (e.g. minimum Perl version supported by
+  he toolchain) This became known as "[The Lancaster
+  concensus](https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/toolchain-site/blob/master/lancaster-consensus.md)".
+* In 2015 in Berlin, another group assembled to address new issues, with
+  a particular focus on toolchain governance and recommended standards
+  of care for CPAN authors. This led to the "[river](http://neilb.org/2015/04/20/river-of-cpan.html)
+  [analogy](https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/toolchain-site/blob/master/berlin-consensus.md#the-river-analogy)",
+  now widely used all around CPAN.
+* In 2023 in Lyon, the minimum Perl version supported by the toolchain
+  was [amended](https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/toolchain-site/blob/master/lyon-amendment.md) to a rolling window of ten years.
+* Also in 2023, the [CPAN Security
+  Group](https://security.metacpan.org/) was created. It assembled again
+  in 2024 in Lisbon, and met with the [Perl Steering
+  Council](https://perldoc.perl.org/perlgov#The-Steering-Council). It
+  recently published its [retrospective for
+  2024](https://security.metacpan.org/cpansec/update/2025/03/12/CPANSec-Retrospective-2024.html).
+* The [PAUSE Operating
+  Model](https://github.com/andk/pause/blob/master/doc/operating-model.md)
+  (a document which defines the permissions model for PAUSE and the
+  community rules for how we manage them) came out of a discussion at
+  the 2017 event, and built on discussions at earlier events.
+* Numerous improvements to multiple toolchain modules
+  ([Test2](https://metacpan.org/pod/Test2),
+  [Devel::Cover](https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::Cover),
+  [PPI](https://metacpan.org/pod/PPI)), CPAN clients
+  ([CPAN](https://metacpan.org/pod/CPAN),
+  [cpanminus](https://metacpan.org/pod/App::cpanminus),
+  [cpm](https://metacpan.org/dist/App-cpm/view/script/cpm)) and
+  services ([MetaCPAN](https://metacpan.org/),
+  [PAUSE](https://pause.perl.org/), [CPAN
+  Testers](http://www.cpantesters.org/)) have been discussed and
+  implemented at PTS events.
+
+## What will *this* PTS achieve?
+
+In this section, we'll present two important projects some of the
+participants intend to work on this year.
+
+### CPAN Testers
+
+The [CPAN Testers](http://www.cpantesters.org/) is a system that collects
+all test reports sent by individual testers for all modules published on
+CPAN, on a wide collection of systems. This infrastructure has collected
+millions of test reports over the years, and provides an invaluable
+service to the community.
+
+It makes those reports available to the module authors so that they can
+figure out failures on systems they don't have access to, and
+[other](https://metacpan.org/) [services](http://matrix.cpantesters.org/)
+depend on it to provide test-related data. Perl core development also
+depends on it, via a system we call
+[Blead Breaks CPAN](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20%20label%3ABBC%20)
+where development versions of Perl are used to test CPAN distributions,
+to ensure backwards compatibility.
+
+Every company that depends on even a single CPAN module benefits from
+CPAN Testers.
+
+The service has been running in a "degraded state" (as indicated on its
+home page) for several months now. One of the issues is that it has had
+a single person maintaining it for several years.
+
+That person, as well as several volunteers willing to help them, will
+be attending the summit. The goal is not to just work together for 4
+days to bring things back up, but to come up with a long term solution,
+and increase the size of the maintainer pool.
+
+These volunteers are in the US, Brazil and France, to name a few.
+
+### Secure PAUSE uploads
+
+[PAUSE](https://pause.perl.org/) is the Perl Authors Upload SErvice. This
+is where CPAN authors uploads the tarballs for the distributions that
+end up on CPAN. That service took its first upload on August 26, 1995.
+
+Accounts and uploads are only protected by passwords. As some people
+move away from Perl and CPAN, they stop using their accounts, making
+them targets for attackers. This is a very real supply chain attack
+vector. The PAUSE admins are very vigilant, but quickly reacting to
+issues is not a sustainable solution.
+
+One of the topic that keeps coming up is protecting the accounts using
+SSH keys or Two Factor Authentication. This is not a trivial task, which
+involves dealing with very legacy code. Other avenues of improvement
+involve the expiration of accounts or permissions.
+
+Over the years, in addition to fixing bugs and adding features, the
+maintainers attending the PTS have been able to port the server to a new
+web stack, made it possible to build the entire service on Docker for
+isolated testing, etc. The topic of 2FA came up in the past, but so far
+hasn't been fully tackled yet. This will be on the agenda this year.
+
+The PAUSE maintainers come from Austria, the US, and Japan.
+
+## Our sponsors
+
+Here's our current list of confirmed sponsors for the Perl Toolchain
+Summit 2025. (We're currently in discussion with other sponsors, but
+nothing has been confirmed yet.)
+
+### Financial Sponsors
+
+These sponsors simply wire some money to [Les Mongueurs de
+Perl](https://www.mongueurs.net/), the French non-profit that
+handles the organization of the event (they get an invoice in
+return), and expect the organizers to spend it on PTS expenses
+(see above).
+
+Any money left over is used to kickstart the budget for the event the
+following year, as is our tradition since 2011.
+
+#### Diamond Sponsors
+
+* [Booking.com](https://www.booking.com/)
+
+#### Gold Sponsors
+
+* [WebPros](https://www.webpros.com/)
+
+#### Silver sponsors
+
+* [CosmoShop](https://www.cosmoshop.de/)
+* [Datensegler](https://datensegler.at/)
+* [SUSE](https://www.suse.com/)
+* [OpenCage](https://opencagedata.com)
+
+#### Bronze sponsors
+
+* [Simplelists Ltd](https://www.simplelists.com/)
+* [Ctrl O Ltd](https://www.ctrlo.com/)
+* one individual who wishes to remain anonymous
+* [Findus Internet-OPAC](https://www.findus-internet-opac.de/)
+
+### In-Kind Sponsors
+
+We are very grateful for the companies whose employees are invited and
+that decide to cover their travel and accommodation expenses, and let
+them spend work hours on the event. This means a lot! This is why we're
+promoting them as "in-kind" sponsors.
+
+These sponsors pay for some of the PTS expenses directly (usually they
+own employees' expenses). Just like our financial sponsors, the PTS
+wouldn't be possible without them.
+
+#### Corporate
+
+* [Grant Street Group](https://www.grantstreet.com/)
+* [Fastmail](https://www.fastmail.com/)
+* [shift2](https://en.shift2.nl/)
+* [Oleeo](https://www.oleeo.com/)
+* [Ferenc Erki](https://ferki.it/)
+
+#### Community
+
+* [The Perl and Raku Foundation](https://www.perlfoundation.org/)
+* [Japan Perl Association](https://japan.perlassociation.org/)
+
+## You too can help the Perl Toolchain Summit and Perl
+
+First, you can read [five reasons to sponsor the Perl Toolchain
+Summit](https://www.perl.com/article/5-reasons-to-sponsor-the-perl-toolchain-summit/).
+
+Now that you're conviced, here's how you can help:
+
+* as a company, you can get in touch with us and pick one of our
+  sponsoring levels on our [Sponsor
+  Prospectus](http://perltoolchainsummit.org/pts2025/PTS2025-Sponsor-Prospectus.pdf);
+* as an individual, you can get on our [donation
+  page](http://perltoolchainsummit.org/pts2025/donate.html) hit the
+  PayPal button, and chip in directly.
+
+On behalf of everyone who depends on Perl and CPAN, thank you in advance
+for your support!