[Caml-list] OCaml language committee launched

[Caml-list] OCaml language committee launched

[Florian Angeletti]

Dear OCaml users,

   It is my pleasure to announce the launch of the OCaml language 
committee. This
committee is intended as collegial instance with the aim to facilitate
discussions and consensus making about the evolution of the OCaml 
language and
its standard library.

   Over the years, it has become a common shared grievance among both 
maintainers
and contributors to the OCaml language that, sometimes, the review 
process for
changes grinds to a halt, either because consensus is elusive or because 
no one
feels empowered enough to take a decision single-handed.

   In order to reduce the number of those instances of decision 
paralysis, the
OCaml maintainers have decided to experiment with an OCaml language 
committee:
a subgroup of the OCaml community organised to discuss evolution of the 
OCaml
language in a timely fashion, see
- 
https://github.com/ocaml/RFCs/blob/master/Committee.md#who-is-the-committee
for the list of members of the committee.

   In practice, if someone feels that a contribution (a Pull Request, issue,
Request For Comment) might be stuck or might benefit from a wider 
discussion,
they may ask the committee to take the contribution under consideration by
mentioning it to the committee chair (which is currently me, or 
@Octachron on
GitHub).

   Then the committee will deliberate on this contribution, both on the
archived public mailing list `ocaml-language-committee@inria.fr` for 
internal committee
discussion (https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/ocaml-language-committee)
and possibly on the relevant community channels 
(https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml or
https://discuss.ocaml.org).
    At the end of this collegial discussion, the committee will publish 
a consultative decision
on the matter. We expect that having such a collegial consultative 
decision would be enough
to unblock most situations.
    Note that the anyone is welcome to subscribe to the committee 
mailing but please do not
flood it with messages so that we can keep it fully open.

   For more details, the intended working of the committee is described at:
- https://github.com/ocaml/RFCs/blob/master/Committee.md

Happy hacking,
Florian Angeletti for the OCaml Language Committee