My excuses...

I've had plenty of time over the last few years to do a large project, but haven't. I'm clearly capable as I have done it before when being paid.

I guess the reasons are the same for not doing large out-of-hours projects whilst working. There is no focus. I'm not traveling to work everyday (although I do change buildings) to achieve something particular. I found at work I worked better in an office with a couple of other people, not necessarily doing the same thing. I worked better still when they weren't there, but not if they didn't exist.

I've started lots of stuff, and then stumbled on something glinting new and shiny to do a week later. Even during one day, I'm checking my e-mail, livejournal, RSS, Usenet constantly and Java SE 1.6 diffs weekly. Most of what I do do relates to a narrow point thrown up through that. The longest thing I've done is started to rewrite Xalan XSLT compiler, but went off briefly to do something else a few weeks into it.

So, I think it's a social thing. Few people have a personality equiped to do such a thing.

Now I'm off to have a poke at the broken locking in Swing text. That could be broadened out, but the whole thing is a complete mess wrt threading.