From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id SAA14528; Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:18:19 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA08775; Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:18:17 +0100 (MET) Received: from rabelais.socialtools.net (rabelais.socialtools.net [81.2.94.243]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i2IHIiKW018816; Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:18:45 +0100 Received: by rabelais.socialtools.net (Postfix, from userid 108) id 9D936232FD; Thu, 18 Mar 2004 17:18:15 +0000 (GMT) Received: from socialtools.net (chaucer.socialtools.net [81.2.94.242]) by rabelais.socialtools.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5740D232DA; Thu, 18 Mar 2004 17:18:14 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <4059D9D6.4080903@socialtools.net> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 17:18:14 +0000 From: Benjamin Geer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113 X-Accept-Language: en-gb, en, fr, it MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Xavier Leroy Cc: Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons , Nicolas Cannasse , caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library) References: <4059994E.2010802@socialtools.net> <20040318151234.B21768@pauillac.inria.fr> In-Reply-To: <20040318151234.B21768@pauillac.inria.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on rabelais.socialtools.net X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=2.63 X-Miltered: at nez-perce by Joe's j-chkmail ("http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr")! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml's:01 caml-list:01 run-time:01 baretta:01 reuse:01 incompatible:01 sourceforge:01 extlib:01 pcre:01 extlib:01 incompatible:01 silently:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 caml:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 174 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 ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners