>I contacted the heads of a local university IT department by email this evening and have already received a positive response. I'll be meeting with the professor sometime within the next week or two.
>Visual FreePro may live on through academic collaboration.
>
I'd suggest that in the time til the meeting you take a more eagle eyed approach to your product -
IMO you must fill the roles of architect, lead and manager if such an effort goes to more devs. I had read your sites a few times, and from my POV (based on my take on the complexity of the project) your time estimates were overly optimistic and not really believable ;-) I kept my mouth shut, as I am not one of the great documenters myself and think most should be learned from clear code. And for a project estimated to your time stretches I'd have sidestepped writing docs in advance as well, as herding 3-5 programmers for a 12-24 month project sucks up 40 to 70% of productivity and I would have also tried to blast through alone - but not have asked for volunteers at that stage. Did such approaches twice - but not while working on the side, but as a planned sabbatical, having saved a couple of $ in advance - not as a half-religious OS project but as a purely biz wager: contract with payment on delivery, not for time or effort spent. Zilch if project spec sheet was not met. Commuting dayly with such a load is IMO shortsighted as well: when working on a big project not from home or in my 45min area I schedule trips 2 or 3 days long with 2 6H shifts per day, some sports or sleep in between and stay close to that work place in a rented room or hotel. If they want me on location - no problem, but then I set rules keeping billable H and productivity high the way I work best.

But if there is any chance of getting others enrolled that way, YOU must be better prepared in the areas I mentioned to succeed IMO.