March of Progress

Or should that be "Late February of Progress". I have to say I'm a bit envious right now of Rich Hickey ... I can see that he's continuing on like a steam roller, extending and improving Clojure. I guess he's having some success in generating Research and Design budget from funding companies. I can see, following his threads, that he's working on yet more concurrency metaphors for Clojure, which is a good thing (though eventually there'll need to be a big book just to describe them all).

I'm on a different track, in that I fund Tapestry out of pocket while doing training and project work. In some cases, those merge, such as when I add specific features to Tapestry for a specific client.

I'm of two minds here: doing project work keeps me grounded in real requirements for Tapestry. I see what works really well, and what needs some polishing. On the other hand, I come up with ideas for new components, improvements, and integrations all the time and barely have enough free time (between clients, ordinary Tapestry maintenance, and this special project) to even document my ideas, never mind implement, test and distribute them.

So, should I set up a funding option like Rich's? Well, that wouldn't help my current clients (I'm committed to getting their apps into production), but it may change how I would look for future work.