Damian Conway

Last month saw the official announcement of The Raku Foundation, including an invitation to every member of the global Raku community to register their interest in the organization and become members, with the right to vote on its leadership, policies, and activities. Once again, I would encourage everyone who loves Raku to do exactly that.

YAS/TPRC have done a magnificent job over the past two decades helping Raku to establish itself and supporting our community. But now it’s time for Raku to stand on its own (thousands of) feet. Back when Raku was going to be the next version of Perl, it made sense for the two languages to co-exist under the one YAS/TPRC umbrella. But as Perl and Raku have evolved – and diverged – it’s become increasingly clear that Perl itself is going to be the next version of Perl, and that Raku is instead going to be its own unique and wonderful thing. So having separate support organisations makes a whole lot of sense now, and will allow each Foundation to focus its efforts for the greater benefit of a single community.

Bringing the Raku Foundation into reality has been a huge effort and fraught with challenges. Not just because so many people had so many different ideas about what TRF should be and how it should work, but also because it was to be registered in the EU as an Open Source Steward for Raku under the Cyber Resilience Act. That will be an important protection for all of us going forward, but it meant a vast amount of work getting the legalities right.

The legal requirements for a registering the Raku Foundation in the EU (and specifically, as a Dutch stichting) also meant a huge amount of work – and of creative workarounds – on the part of the initial board members (and especially Liz). All five members of the board have been dedicated and long-term technical and/or community contributors to Raku, people I know and have worked with over the years, and I trust them to get the Foundation up and running the right way. I’m profoundly grateful to each of them for taking on this role and wish them every possible success.

I’m hugely excited to see what the Raku Foundation is going to achieve in the years ahead, and confident that it will help our extraordinary language continue to evolve and flourish.