Re: [Caml-list] OCaml maintenance status / community fork (again)

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

Benedikt, just a methodology remark

> There were already a few useful comments on the topic, but no statement from the current INRIA officials.
> [..]
> In either case, it'd be great if the official core team would at least take the time to comment on this issue.

This is not the right way to ask feedback. You launch a polite but
quite critical fork of some people's codebase, without giving them
previous notice, and expect an immediate public response. It would
have been better to contact the INRIA people privately before raising
the issue on the list, just to give them notice and gather feedback.

I'm confident this awkwardness is not a result of bad will on your
part and won't be held against you. Still, please keep in mind that
there are human issues in play here, and try to be a bit smoother
here. "Be strict in what you send, but generous in what you receive",
the saying applies to human interactions as well.

Note: I have no idea what the "INRIA officials" opinion is, and of
course you could have contacted them first without making it explicit
in your mail. Apologies for being wrong in that case.


PS.: I'm sorry if you felt discussions about other aspects of the
OCaml community were prompted by your initial mail -- and I'm partly
responsible for this. I just wanted to say that, contrarily to the
message you sent, compiler hacking is not the only field welcoming
participation. I think everyone agrees that it is a legitimate topic,
and that each should participate according to its own interest, with
no value judgment of "better" contributions area. Your hacking feats
on the compiler are greatly appreciated.

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Benedikt Meurer
<benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dear caml-list,
>
> I'd like to get back to the original topic, which BTW had nothing to do with Web 2.0, documentation, books, teaching, Batteries, PR, or whatever other topics came up. Of course those are important topics too, but hijacking other threads won't help with either.
>
> There were already a few useful comments on the topic, but no statement from the current INRIA officials. Opening up the development of OCaml is a great suggestion, for example. Personally I'd even suggest to disconnect OCaml and INRIA, with an independent team of core maintainers (with appropriate spare time and knowledge). INRIA would still contribute to OCaml, but no longer control OCaml.
>
> And to respond to those who think that the current development process is a "good thing" and leads to stability: By no way. It leads to stagnation and ignorance (most probably). For example, have a look at PR/3746, a great example. It took almost 4 years(!) to update the ARM port to softfp (and EABI). At the time the issue was finally fixed, most ARM application boards were already shipping with VFP, so the port is lacking behind several years. And even after all that time, the ARM port is not implemented properly, i.e. it's of the IP for argument passing does not only cause trouble with position independent code, but is forbidden in general because IP is reserved for linker stubs, both static and dynamic. The relevant bug report PR/5404, which includes a backward compatible patch, is already waiting for a sign of life for 3 weeks now (maybe wait another 4 years to get the port fixed). And what about the ARMv7-a / armhf port? I almost got it working, but looking at the past !
>  of the ARM port, I'm already pissed off by the fact that it will probably take ages for someone to even respond to the patch, not to mention that it will take forever to get it out to the users (well maybe Debian will include the patch for armhf, but that means the Debian developers have to do upstream work...).
>
> Granted, ARM is not (yet) the main target platform, it's just to illustrate the inherent weakness of closed development combined with lack of time/interest. Sure there will always be areas where projects cannot keep up because of lack of knowledge/time, but it is unnecessarily frustrating and harmful for an open source project to lack behind in areas with active contributors with both knowledge and time. That's why I'd suggest to set OCaml free, either with the help of INRIA and by leaving INRIA behind if there's no other way to move on.
>
> In either case, it'd be great if the official core team would at least take the time to comment on this issue.
>
> best regards,
> Benedikt
>
> PS: Please avoid hijacking this thread.
>
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