Hi Anthony.

I share your feelings and I'm sure many others in our community also do. Many people here are working really hard to advance Squeak. Many of them (I'm sure) also have funding problems. You are one of the most clear examples.

I've never stopped working for a salary to focus only on Squeak. However I've found time over the last 5 years for several Squeak related projects:

- OS/2 Squeak VM
- SUGAR (Smalltalk User's Group ARgentina)
- A morphic, internet based Scrabble game (a University lab project)
- PhotoSqueak (my Image Processing project, University lab project)
- Drafts of chapters for two Squeak books
- One article for SqueakNews
- JPEGReadWriter2

I've even been nominated for the Squeaker of the Year award! But it hasn't been easy. I kept studying (I'm getting my Masters real soon), and working.
For a terriffic but short time I had the incredible honor of being funded by Alan. I thought all my problems were solved, I was in paradise. However, the end of the Disney era came, and I had to find a 'regular' job again. I'm still trying to find some time to finish the work Alan asked me (some really cool new music synth techniques).

I also have my big Squeak dream. I'm planning a real time sound dsp framework, to build everything from musical instruments to a complete virtual music studio. I even have a working tiny prototype that can do real time distortion controlled by morphic sliders, with sub-mS latency (better than any commercial package). I guess that if I had quit working for money for more than a year like you, I would have done more. But currently, I'm trying to work a reasonable load (no more than 40 hours a week, but 30 would be better); and trying to find some time to keep working for Squeak. At least I've managed to work in Smalltalk since 1998.

But I'd like to know a better alternative. I'm sure that if there was some way to fund Squeak work, we could have tens of high quality people working full time.

Best regards,

Juan Manuel Vuletich
http://www.sinectis.com.ar/u/jmvuletich/studio.html