Allison writes "NLnet, a non-profit organization supporting open source network technology research and development, announced on Friday that it will sponsor US $70,000 of Parrot development work. The funding will go to Leopold Tötsch who has been the pumpking for Parrot since 2003 and Chip Salzenberg who recently stepped into the role of chief architect for Parrot. NLnet's contribution will allow Salzenberg and Tötsch to concentrate on completing the first two Parrot development milestones from the Perl Foundation's funding proposal: API specification and stub implementation for 9 critical subsystems. (They will each receive $5k at the start of a milestone, $1k on the completion of each subsystem for the milestone, and $3.5k on completion of the milestone.)
Wytze van der Raay, financial director for NLnet, commented "NLnet has observed the evolution of Perl into one of the essential tools for developing internet applications and managing internet services. The Parrot architecture is promising to add features of special importance to network applications, while simultaneously opening up the technology for several other dynamic languages. One of NLnet's major goals is to remove road-blocks for Open Source projects like Parrot. Thus we look forward to being part of this project, and hope that other organisations will follow our example." Allison Randal, president of the Perl Foundation responded: "Our heartfelt thanks go to the whole team at NLnet. Their contribution will significantly accelerate the 1.0 release of Parrot."
For more information on how to sponsor Perl or Parrot read the contribution FAQ.
Speaking as a loose cannon, at the risk of rocking the boat -- Though the Perl Foundation lists several of the sub-milestones as already complete, there is plenty of redesign/refactoring work that has been deferred until the first complete prototype, much like the Grammar Engine work lists for its milestone 5; and, as in the Grammar Engine's milestone 5, one might expect that 'any excess funded developer time will be rolled over to [later] milestones'. I would not be surprised if this funding sees us all the way to a very solid Milestone 3 -- complete full functionality of all critical subsystems.
