After reading the responses that have lately accumulated on your other fund-raising thread, Will, please don’t do it again.

The mistake that you are making ... innocently and sincerely (and, technically knowledgeably) ... is more of a social than a technical one.   You are asking for twenty-thousand United States Dollars, all at once.   Even though Kickstarter campaigns are known (infamous?) for doing that, now and then, it is much more realistic to expect the sort of funding involvement that you have seen so far:   “pay as you go.”

Kickstarter does not have most, if any, of the protections that apply to traditional large-scale fund raising:   auditors, trust funds, and so on.   Kickstarter has been abused.   And people have learned to be prudent.   They want a business plan (much more than simple milestones).   They want the disbursement of funds to be clearly linked to ongoing progress, and, should the project (unlike yours ...) have a questionable chance of success, to have most of their eggs emerge unbroken.   Even when success is sure, they want control.   To be prudent and wise.

Do I ... does anyone ... question your technical ability, the need for the project, or its chance of success?   Speaking at least for myself:   n-o.   But may I politely offer the following suggestions, for the good of you and this project?

1. I suspect that $20,000 is a serious underestimate of what this project would cost, if conventionally funded.   (Or, if Kickstarter “paid Will’s salary.”   $20,000 (USD) would interest me salary-wise for a couple months.   RPerl is gonna take a lot longer than that.   I foresee that the project could become stifled by that funding request.
2. Open up the project to the collective contributions of the community, not just for funding but for work on the code.   You become the project manager and champion; the herder of cats.   But it substitutes expertise for money, and often brings greater expertise to bear.   It also greatly improves the confidence of the investor/kicker community in what they now see.   Code quality also goes up.
3. You could ask for a $20,000 lump if you needed to buy a $20,000 machine, and could also show that you had exhausted other reasonable options or that no other option was reasonable.   That does not apply in this case:   a lump is not necessary, and other options are reasonable.   Therefore, I recommend that you expect what is reasonable:   that the sum, which is likely to be much larger in the end, will come as progress payments.
4. Don’t become disillusioned, angry, discouraged, or indulge any other emotions that would waste your time.   What I am saying is not a rebuff.   This is a worthy project, you are impassioned about it and rightly so, and it will succeed.   I just suggest that it will succeed, and be supported (financially and otherwise) in a different and greater way.