Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library)

[Markus Mottl <markus@oefai.at>]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Alex Baretta wrote:
> Xavier, what you guys must do is not pontificate but define once and
> for all the official role of the community in relation to Inria and
> to the Caml team.

Well, to add my two cents to this discussion, I don't think we can say
"you guys must do", the simple reason being that the question is rather
whether they "can do" (in terms of time/resources).

I mostly agree with Xavier that the "Cathedral style" is the better choice
for the development of the language and compilers.  I also believe that
the standard libraries shipped with the compiler should remain in the
"Cathedral", too.

But I also agree with Alex that INRIA should more clearly define
standards that give the community some stability what concerns the
way of contributing.  This is an age-old topic!  Some kind of package
management in the spirit of GODI would be very nice indeed, and I think
that this should also become part of the "Cathedral", because it would
otherwise not take off easily.  Package management is such a basic and
important tool that really everybody using OCaml would need.

As an incentive to INRIA, just imagine how much peace and time for
research you could have with good, portable package management: no more
silly user requests about adding more stuff to the standard libraries!

What concerns other contributions, be it datastructures, more fully
featured system libraries, etc., this is all too specific to be done in
a cathedral and should therefore remain part of the "Bazaar".  I don't
expect INRIA to develop or maintain such libraries for us (even though
I'd be very grateful :-).

Regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Mottl          http://www.oefai.at/~markus          markus@oefai.at

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