Halfway through October, Krzysztof Pisera is taking over the reins of our donation fund. Today he will choose the open-source and non-profit projects that we will be supporting this month. Tomorrow we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of his first day at Sidnet, a career that he started as a very talented 21-year-old(!). As our lead developer, he has proven himself countless times to be excellent at organising the work of other team members as well as his own.
And if you happen to become nostalgic whenever someone mentions the early ‘90s, you will surely appreciate the fact that both of the projects chosen by Krzysiek began in 1991. What are these projects then?
Vim
Vim is a freely-available text and graphics editor, which is also referred to as a “programmer’s editor”. It supports hundreds of different programming languages and file formats.
According to Stack Overflow, it remains the fifth most popular development environment, even 28 years after its release. The community centred around Vim is engaged in a never-ending dispute (aka. editor war) with the users of another popular editor – Emacs. And inevitably, the Sidnet team includes supporters of both tools. However, Krzysiek avoids engaging in such conflicts as he considering them counterproductive. Nonetheless, he likes Vim so much that this will already be his fifth donation to the project as part of the Sidnet donation initiative.
“I tried Vim out years ago and I have been using it ever since due to its flexibility and the possibility of expanding its functionality, but above all, because of its efficiency. Vim is a model example of charityware. It is developed in a completely selfless manner and user donations are used to help children in Uganda”, Krzysztof said.
And as a side effect of the #SidnetDonations initiative, our company has been included in the Hall of Honour list available on the Vim website.
Foundation for Polish Science
The Foundation for Polish Science is the largest Polish NGO that supports scientists and research teams. It has been funding scholarships for young scientists since its establishment in 1991. Every year it provides scholarship holders with a total of PLN 3 million in donations. The foundation makes it possible for young, bright people under thirty to focus on their work, instead of worrying about money during the early years of their scientific career.
“Science is certainly an area that is close to my heart. Unfortunately, many outstanding scientists (and not only the youngest ones) often earn much less than the rest of our society. As a result, they have to choose between scientific work and more profitable endeavours. These people should be given an opportunity to focus their energy on what they truly excel at. Fortunately, the foundation also helps scientists commercialise their discoveries and inventions. We all benefit from that”, our lead developer said.