As per my previous personal confesion, I have actually been doing a fair amount of work on Puma and its associated bretheren. Here's a quick progress report with my motivations for each item:

1. I have started a complete rewrite, focusing Puma as a purely server-side, web-based rendering engine.
   Motivation: iTab (see below).
2. ORB, although still technically a part of Puma, will be given its own CVS module. Development on ORB will resume once Puma v2 is in late-alpha.
   Motivation: Self-configuring server clusters (for work).
3. iTools has been created. All general-purpose libraries (XML parsing, utility libraries, etc.) and special mini-projects (issh, ipkg, ikeys, etc.) have been moved there.
   Motivation: Stop the cluttering of Puma; get focused.
4. I started a new mini-project called iTab for displaying fretboard layouts for chord sheets (for guitar, if you haven't yet figured that out). This is the app that's driving me to get Puma v2 going. I presently have an ANSI terminal version of the app running (crudely), but I want it web-based.
   Motivation: Learn/re-learn music theory.

I've come to the realization that I've fallen into the trap the many OSS developers fall into. I've been wanting to move forward on this project, but I find that every time I try to attack it, I simply get overwhelmed. For every change I make, there are so many other things that have to be done: documentation, unit tests, updating the web site, updating changelog and release notes, making sure that things don't break when I check things in, thinking about all the architectural issues, etc. It's all just too much. I never seem to get things off the ground.

Between work, the family and other required extra-curricular activities (beer w/ the guys at the local watering hole), I find that I only have a few hours a week to work on this. A few hours is not nearly enough to satisfy my grand vision.

My solution to this conundrum?

1. Make the vision a little less grand. In truth, I am actually making the occasion check-in to this project, occasionally the changes are quite spectacular. For example, in the last few months, I've complete re-factored my XML parsing libraries and added a greatly improved version of ipkg. Both of these are the direct result of my job.
2. Talk less, do more. I'm not going to keep up the documentation the way I would ultimately like to. I will still endeavor to write intuitive code, maintain decent comments in code and write perldocs. What I will not try to do is fight the constant battle to keep the project web site up to date. You may have noticed that I've done a pretty bad job of that up until now. If you want updates, e-mail me. I will respond. I've only received a grand total of 5 e-mails since I started this project (aside from messages from friends). I'm not drowning in correspondence.
3. Don't worry about failure. This project is already a failure. I've written over 10,000 lines of code and no one has taken the slightest notice. C'est la vie.
4. Stop trying to be so organized.
5. Work on only the bits I want.
6. Take smaller bites. See point #1
7. Don't worry about what I'm going break.
8. Make immediate goals.