Hi, I wanted to take some time to reply, so I didn't reply right away.
I agree with Dick, Ethan and Anne- it's not likely that we'll find the time to keep on pushing ESME forward. It has been painful to see Dick's reports with no progress month after month. I think that if we haven't found the time for one year, it's not likely that this will happen in the near future either. So for me retiring ESME is an expected outcome. Of course, as others mentioned, since it is open-source, it is always possible to revive a project. However note that many components are outdated already- there have been a couple of Scala releases since the last ESME commit, Lift is a couple of versions ahead, and most Twitter-compatibility is outdated- we don't even support OAuth. There's also the problem of motivation. Scratching an itch is one part, but one of the biggest motivators in open-source projects is having a healthy community of users. I haven't heard requests from users of ESME for about a year. So of course at least my personal time is better spent with my 2 kids (and yeah, this is a huge time sink). On a positive note, working on ESME has been very beneficial. It helped me learn Scala and Lift and I'm currently working with social networks in my day job. I'm sure that the experience has been valuable for all of us and I'm happy to have worked with all of you. I'm sure that when the time is right, the ideas might live a second life in another project. Best wishes, Vassil
