Unlike some miners/pools, I don't just throw "updates" into the pool's production environment without a good deal of testing, especially not changes to bitcoind. I'm pretty sure Eligius possibly delaying deployment of anything at this point is quite a bit of an exaggeration, also, considering we're less than half of 1% of the network hash rate currently. Regardless, the obvious anti-Eligius trolling is obvious, and I probably should just clean up the thread vs wasting time responding. Best to set the record straight though, I suppose.
Currently, I'm focusing on the previously announced updates to the pool itself and the pile of changes coming along with that, while simultaneously testing that code, updated bitcoind implementations, a new web front end, and more. With any luck I'll have the pool updates done and online before any soft fork matters anyway. Worst case I'll just flip the existing pool core over to the updated bitcoind if I fall behind on the main core change over to the updated system. Either way, it's not a big deal IMO, and I'm not rushing changes to the back end. As much as I hope to grow the pool and get Eligius's position back to a higher percentage of the network hash rate with the work I'm putting in on these upcoming updates, I'm not delusional in thinking that right now Eligius has any real impact on the activation or non-activation of any forks. So, I'm prioritizing my time accordingly.
I put part of the new real-time stats API online last night utilizing the existing pool core to start some public testing. It's been written pretty much completely from scratch. The public testing has helped me find and fix a few issues I was having with it when people started doing some poking around, so, thanks! More on that soon.
I'm definitely stretching my time pretty thin as of late, and I'm honestly not where I wanted to be on progress for the updates at this point. I was hoping to be in a public beta phase by now, but I'm just not there yet.
At the same time, when it comes to crucial code, I'd much rather be safe and late than potentially screw something up that costs people, myself included, money.
I have a lot of time slotted for this over the short term, so I'm hopeful that I'll make some serious progress!