Say your community shows up to build you a barn, and you sit on the porch drinking lemonade, criticising their carpentry and pestering them for a completion date, well, just how ludicrous is that scenario? Yet this is exactly what we are doing when we sit back like some ancient king, expecting free software served to us, taking what we need, giving nothing in return except maybe money… or “advocacy.”

That analogy is somewhat flawed, because "I" am not the only one to benefit from the barnraising. It's more like a town that decides to build a communal barn that everyone can use (or some other civic project), and everyone is invited to help out. Not everyone is qualified to help build the thing, and in fact, some who try are likely to be in the way.

I'd certainly love to help out with Perl 6, and I'm sure many others would. Unfortunately, I'm like one of the people who would just get in the way, not understanding how it's done, making clumsy efforts that would just take up someone's time to check it out and find out it's not useful, not really having a clue about the guts of perl.

The fact is, I haven't even learned Perl 5 well enough to know where its deficiencies lie - (assuming it has any ;-) ). Most of what appears to be needed seems to require considerable technical knowledge. So yes, I feel I would better serve this effort by sitting on the sidelines and at least not interfering.

Of course, I could also just keep my mouth shut about any putative schedule, and not try to tell folks how to go about writing this massive project. The least I can do is get out of the way and let others work... and to say "Thanks" on occasion.