The AS project was first conceived around May 2009. It was carefully laid out and underwent many evaluations and revisions, until finally going public in Oct 2010. A short history of the AS project can also be seen in the appropriate sticky.
At lot of the early planning was being done at AS's predecessor, the now deceased exalpha blog. While being "born" there, the termination of the blog actually delayed the creation of the project, as an organizational restructure was required first.
While we cannot disclose the details of the project at this point of time, rest assured that this will not be just another forum. One example of this is the creation of multiple specialized, but interconnected, subprojects, such as ASL and the recently announced ASS.
While there were several delays so far, the contingencies put into place secured the plan is still on track. A simple example of this is our goal to reach 1 000 000 monthly visitors by the end of 2011 and how we're already at 550 000 monthly visitors as of now.
The AS Project is financed by donations from its executives. We do not plan to place any form of advertisement on the network's websites, as long as the project remains affordable. At some point in the future we might have to ask for donations, when infrastructure costs raise to unaffordable levels. Even then all management tasks will be on a voluntary basis and without monetary compensation.
