A call for donations (again)

[DRC]

Generous funding from MathWorks and Google made the 3.0 beta1 release
possible, but as is typical in recent years, it was still necessary for
me to borrow against expected future funding in order to finish the
release (more specifically, the TurboJPEG 3 API overhaul.) Our project
now has a funding deficit of about 75 hours. That's not as bad as the
130-hour deficit that was accrued in order to release 2.1 a couple of
years ago, and it certainly isn't as bad as the deficit I accrued on all
three of my open source projects in 2018, which required me to go into
credit card debt in order to pay my bills. However, at the current rate
of replenishment, it will take more than a year for the libjpeg-turbo
General Fund to catch up to the deficit. I won't be able to do much
with libjpeg-turbo except fix critical bugs and security issues until
the deficit is covered.

If you or your organization are actively using libjpeg-turbo (and
presumably saving money by doing so, since libjpeg-turbo is as good as
some commercial codecs costing thousands of dollars), then please
consider donating to our project either through GitHub Sponsors:

https://github.com/sponsors/libjpeg-turbo

or PayPal:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=information%40libjpeg-turbo%2eorg&lc=US&item_name=The%20libjpeg-turbo%20General%20Fund&no_note=0&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHostedGuest

All contributions, no matter how small, are appreciated and will help me
cover the funding deficit more quickly and thus keep libjpeg-turbo
moving forward.

As I have expressed in the past, I am also open to acquisition by a
larger organization, if that organization is both O/S-agnostic and
CPU-agnostic and has a vested interest in both the survival and the
openness of libjpeg-turbo. I am in no danger of being floated out to
sea on an ice floe any time soon, but I am also old enough that more of
my career (and probably more of my life) is behind me than ahead of me.
Given the 32-year legacy of this code base, it's a safe bet that
libjpeg-turbo-- in some form-- will outlive my career and possibly me as
well. (It's in the Arctic Code Vault, after all.) Furthermore, the
business model necessitated by independent open source development
doesn't leave any flexibility for speculative research, and at this
point, most of the Big Ideas(TM) for moving this project forward will
require that type of research. Thus, it's probably time to open a
discussion regarding the long-term direction of the project. I am
perfectly capable of maintaining the status quo for the foreseeable
future, but any grand visions for libjpeg-turbo will require more than a
one-person shop on a shoestring budget.

DRC