I think the crucial point to pick up on is something that chromatic has pointed out very well in any number of use.perl journal postings over the past year. That is, Perl 6's creation is dependent on how much time people put into it, and how many people put in time. The volunteer effort to date has been exemplary and inspirational. When you think about the universe of possible things intelligent and energetic people could be doing with their time, that so many have put so much into Perl 6 is a tribute both to the worthiness of the Perl 6 project and to the fundamental goodness of the volunteers.
Funding is the piece of the puzzle that allows us to buttress and enhance the contributions of volunteers. Someone who can contribute 5 hours a week to p6 development could possibly contribute 30 hours a week if they took on a reduced workload at their day job. But that doesn't mean their responsibilities just disappear: a mortgage / rent to pay, insurance policies need maintaining, kids have to be clothed and educated, and everyone has a powerful need to eat. Funding makes it possible to bridge this gap. To Richard's point, a systematic development plan is a tool that can be helpful in acquiring funding. The plan is meant to acquire funding, and the funding is meant to be applied against the plan to make it come to pass. Done correctly, it's a virtuous circle that Gets Things Done. I completely agree with chromatic that a plan without resources put against it is neutered. I don't want a plan that has calendar dates on it. I want a plan that has major pieces of work and their dependencies on each other reflected (i.e. a GANTT chart) and a sense of the man-months of required effort for each work-piece. At that point, the implementation volunteers have done their job. It then becomes the responsibility of the funding-acquisition volunteers to take the plan and with it seek out funding to make the man-months happen. Cheers, - Richard PS I often think of it like this: Distance = velocity x Time (D = v x T) When people ask for a "release date" for Perl 6, what they're implicitly saying is, T = D / v, solve for T chromatic has been the #1 expositor that "v" is unknown, and therefore we can't solve for T. In this he is quite correct. (And when we think hard about it, D can be sometimes hazy as well. If Perl 6 had been implemented 100 times before we'd know D pretty well. But we're still figuring out what D is.) The idea behind "a plan" is to firm up D, at least to a certain minimum acceptible level, and to allow for "what if" scenario planning to be played with potential funding sources. (i.e. if you can give us this much v, we'll have a decent shot of T happening in the 8-16 month timeframe afterwards, etc.) On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 2:36 PM, chromatic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tuesday 25 March 2008 10:50:15 Richard Hainsworth wrote: > > > What the perl6 language needs now is a systematic development plan, with > > broad aims and clear goals that will lead to good quality software and > > to the tools to enable ordinary programmers to use perl6 for a variety > > of tasks. > > Richard Dice mentioned that I should elaborate, lest it sound like I'm > trying > to lecture Richard Hainsworth (not my intent, and I apologize for doing > so). > > It's important to keep in mind the degree to which one or two volunteers > going > on vacation can slow the progress of Rakudo (for a recent example) or to > which one or volunteers putting in a few extra hours of visible work can > improve the progress of Parrot (for a slightly less recent example). > > A plan that includes some degree of funding will help Perl 6 arrive much > sooner. Previous plans glossed over this part, which is one reason they > didn't work out in the long term. > > I just want to make sure that any discussion of a plan acknowledges that > there's a fixed amount of work to go and an unknown amount of available > resources to implement the plan. > > -- c >
