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

[Benjamin Geer <ben@socialtools.net>]

Xavier Leroy wrote:
> What do
> you prefer: that I pontificate on every idea proposed on this mailing
> list, or that I fix bugs?

I think you should do what you do best and have time to do, which is 
work on the core of OCaml, and delegate the development of the standard 
libraries to a community structure, as Alex Baretta proposed.  I think 
the community has shown that it can do at least as good a job as INRIA 
at developing the standard libraries, and (more importantly) has more 
time to do so and is much more interested in doing so.

> As I said above, the preferred way to contribute to Caml is through
> independent libraries and tools,

It is not in anyone's interest for there to be different competing 
versions of the Unix module, just to take one example.  It is much 
easier to reuse code (or just to read other people's code) if there is 
one standard library module for each of the most basic problem domains. 
  I don't mind seeing several different XML parsers, but it makes 
programmers' lives very difficult if there are several different 
versions of, say, List, all incompatible with each other.

>>Has ocaml-lib.sourceforge.net been rejected?
> 
> By whom?  It seems like ExtLib is progressing, and if it's good it
> will be widely adopted by OCaml users (just like, say, Markus Mottl's
> PCRE library was widely adopted).  I don't have anything to say on
> this matter.

If I understand correctly, ExtLib changes the behaviour of certain 
standard library modules in a way that's incompatible with the official 
distribution.

>>INRIA silently working on its own library enhancements which will be 
>>incompatibly replace some of the enhancements developed by the 
>>community?
> 
> As a matter of fact, no, we're not.  But even if we were, these would
> not "replace" the work done by others, but at most compete with it.
> Users get to choose.

Users emphatically do not want to have to choose between using the 
standard library and using a third-party library.  This forces them to 
place a bet: which library is more likely to provide more useful 
features in the future?  This is surely one reason why ExtLib has not 
been more actively developed and more widely adopted.

This problem would be solved if INRIA allowed the community to take 
responsibility for the standard libraries.

Ben

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