I can't think of any reason why we wouldn't give Nick this extension. He's been doing great work with the money he's had so far. Please let him continue.
The monthly reports show useful work except the "32.50 reading/responding to list mail",??
Is it to focus on perl 6 instead?
Nicholas just keeps going and going! If he's not run out of improvements to make, then I vote we extend his grant.
Please grant this money to enable Nick's work to continue: it's hard to think of anything else which would help more with maintaining core Perl 5.
On the contrary, reading and replying to the mailing list is at least as useful as everything else. There are quite a few other contributors to perl, and Nicholas' review of their work, commentary on what will or will not work, and other expert advice is extremely valuable.
When Nicholas retires from this project, his help to other contributors will be as much a useful legacy as patches to the optree runner.
On the contrary, reading and replying to the mailing list is at least as useful as everything else. There are quite a few other contributors to perl, and Nicholas' review of their work, commentary on what will or will not work, and other expert advice is extremely valuable.
When Nicholas retires from this project, his help to other contributors will be as much a useful legacy as patches to the optree runner.
As long as TPF can afford to fund Nicholas, it should do so. His work is extremely valuable, and his reports always enlightening.
I'm in favour of this extension, as I have been for other grants to Nick. I think he does great work.
I sincerely hope your Perl6 jab was just a joke (albeit a very inappropriate one).
From personal experience - a recent *single* p5p thread took about 8 man-hours of my time over the course of 3 days. This is time actually dealing with it, not including lunches, sleep, browsing, playing with the dog, or with Perl6.
Talking with people is hard. Reasoning with them is even harder. $1600 to have a level headed and knowledgeabke resource available to a gang of ~30 active developers is beyond well justified.
I strongly support a grant extension. The results are extremely valuable and it is a very lucky constellation to have one of the very few people on the globe being capable of doing this work actually doing it.
I agree with mirod. This is tremendously useful work for Perl 5.
I can't think of any reason not to extend this grant. Nicholas has been doing excellent work and, as long there there are funds and Nicholas is willing to continue, I am in favour of extending this grant.