[...]
To that end, I'm soliciting:
(1) your suggestions for preparation,
(2) your ideas for proposals, and
(3) your reasons why the Perl 6 ecosystem (including Parrot
and CPAN6) is one of the world's greatest and and most
extremely leveraged causes (technically, economically,
and socially).
I'll also put whatever fundraising-oriented material I come
up with on the Perl 6 wiki, to help and encourage others
along similar lines.
I'd like to raise the question what to do with the money, assuming that
you can acquire some.
I see two possible route:
1) Let The Perl Foundation decide what to do with the money
advantage: they already have a comitee (is that really an advantage? ;-)
disadvantage: they seem to think that Perl 6 on Parrot is _the_ and the
only way to go. (There's nothing wrong with rakudo and parrot, but Perl 6
is, by definition, a language. And it should have multiple
implementations)
Should it really? I mean: is the time right for that now?
It's really hard to define what the community wants: noone can speak on
behalf of the whole community (and the community has many ideas about
things :)) However, and strongly IMHO, what most Perl users want is very
simple: to have a not-too-slow Perl6 implementation that runs most of
the current Perl6 specification - without too much bugs. Maybe the Perl
Foundation got some people who can decide what we need to achieve that -
someone must make a decision where the money should go anyway.
Surely it is very nice to have many implementations (we have seen how
much helpful the Pugs project was to help Perl6, for example), but could
that happen (or: be sponsored) *after* we have *one* that is fairly
complete?? After some time, one imlementations will emerge and become
*the* implementations anyway.
What I would like to add is that IMHO this time implementators should be
sponsored. That is: those who hack and those who answer their questions
on how to hack. :)
I also think that different Perl groups all around the world could be
responsive. Let's contact the gazillion perl lists and say: "...if you
like Perl, please give $10 to the \"Let's have Perl6 now!\" foundation!"
I would, and I will personally send anyone to /dev/null who would not! :)
- Fagzal
