Say hello to the new Premake OpenCollective!

As I'm sure you are all too aware, Premake development has slowed to a trickle. I've been taking on more and more client work to keep the books balanced, and there simply isn't any useful time left over at the end of the day. A not uncommon problem!

So I'm trying an experiment: can we, as a community, create a pool of funding to speed up Premake's development? Is there enough interest to make it happen? If so, I would be delighted to transition hours from client work back to Premake, as well as put funds toward bounties and recognizing contributions from the community.

The experiment is now officially underway. As long as it continues, I'll provide regular updates on our progress and upcoming work. This cycle, I was able to…

• Set up this OpenCollective, enabling the Premake project to accept contributions to fund on-going development and community support (#1314, #1316)
• Register @premakeapp on Twitter for announcements and group communication (and maybe a little self-promotion). Come join us! (#1315)
• Improve the project on-boarding experience with a new README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md (#1324, #1325)
• Improve the collaboration process with new issue, feature, and pull request templates (#1326, #1327)

I'm not charging any expenses against the collective this cycle so we can build up a balance to recognize cool or important contributions from the community. You can track our finances and transactions at any time on our OpenCollective page.

For the next cycle, I'd like to show a little maintainer love by working down (and ideally clearing) the open pull request queue and, time permitting, do a bit of grooming on the open issue list as well. Longer term, I've put a great deal of time and thought into fixing Premake's core configuration engine, which is holding back development on a number of important features. I've figured out how it should work; now I'm puzzling over how to get there from where we are.

Many thanks to CitizenFX Collective and Industrious One for their generous support this cycle. Your contributions make this possible! 🎉

~st.

(Your feedback is welcome and appreciated—come find us at github.com/premake or @premakeapp.)