From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=AWL,SPF_NEUTRAL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA345BC6C for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:31:42 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CAPM3n0fAXQImh2dsb2JhbACDI40CAQEBCAopgRQBllmHNA X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,271,1199660400"; d="scan'208";a="6722346" Received: from discorde.inria.fr ([192.93.2.38]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 29 Jan 2008 23:31:42 +0100 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by discorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m0TMVduj022272 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128 verify=OK) for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:31:42 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CAHQWn0dA6bjvkWdsb2JhbACDI40CAQEBAQcEBAsIEQeBFAGWNYch X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,271,1199660400"; d="scan'208";a="21951806" Received: from wr-out-0506.google.com ([64.233.184.239]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 29 Jan 2008 21:07:36 +0100 Received: by wr-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id c57so1351867wra.9 for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:07:35 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; bh=JBLid3d3lc3J13KftPGRbcwQ3Y80OP4e5ga9YDR407c=; b=D7e8A7tUJQdMv/ytCCPNV8Iz45pKEG4DUAhmonhVXevz9U/9FHbnCOqkMK8M+mEjOXWz+hNXuK7Hm+8Fq/+de7kngfPXYifmwAJluH+YbPKrU5gImfR0ulibwBpF34XSJJWKFlcfNHl8wx+irqmUbI77oOADRmvUGixnaV57NYc= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=B+fWGa/T113Ine6EwxXN3qKeMVBQ7IxEX/mQBKqy/kMLMzCzBAzc5KLkuJRHrp64qLbOGI3oFRQ1cH4XpKvlxk7DFybm5acMGNi1z3Ingnmbbs6nP9SZd3QIkv1g1xnt1qVbbcilJeWN1GS7JLX+46pT8D2Uz+yuIoJYsGjvNuw= Received: by 10.142.214.5 with SMTP id m5mr763525wfg.51.1201637254470; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:07:34 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.114.8 with HTTP; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:07:34 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:07:34 -0500 From: "Markus Mottl" To: "Gerd Stolpmann" Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Community (aka back from the Developer Days) Cc: ocaml , ocaml-users@janestcapital.com In-Reply-To: <1201614300.24248.23.camel@flake.lan.gerd-stolpmann.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <1201439362.6302.15.camel@Blefuscu> <1201480729.479d2419c2f08@webmail.in-berlin.de> <1201519661.6747.27.camel@Blefuscu> <479E050B.3010306@fmf.uni-lj.si> <1201614300.24248.23.camel@flake.lan.gerd-stolpmann.de> X-Miltered: at discorde with ID 479FA94B.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; markus:01 mottl:01 markus:01 mottl:01 ocaml:01 gerd:01 gerd:01 stolpmann:01 ocaml:01 lacaml:01 compiler:01 bug:01 compilation:01 haul:98 pet:98 Dear Gerd, On Jan 29, 2008 8:45 AM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote: > 1. GODI is meant as an effort to bundle the activities of the community. > It is not a commercial offer, and there is no customer support > complaints can be directed at. If you want to improve it, the only way > is to spend time and energy, and to enter a constructive discussion on > godi-list. It is a pity that nobody at Jane Street wants to do this. It seems to me that the OCaml mailing list is an appropriate place to discuss the future of package management systems for OCaml. We would certainly gladly contribute to the development of Godi, since we, too, think that a good package management system is essential for the success of OCaml. It's just that we feel that the basic design of Godi, especially it's reliance on NetBSD-like package management, would not play out well in the long haul, because we came to the conclusion that it is not sufficiently developer-friendly. We don't see that as a failure on your side, because finding the right solution to notoriously complex problems of this sort is, to a large degree, a matter of trial and error. It seems that the major problems that people faced back then as package users were addressed well. Experience taught us that better support for other roles, especially developers, is needed, and this may require a substantially different approach. > 2. As I'm the guy who mainly developed the core of GODI I can tell you > that every hour I work on GODI is an hour I cannot work for one of my > customers. So GODI produces opportunity costs for me. From that point of > view I cannot understand a (probably) rich company that profited from > this project for free, and is unwilling to share some of the costs. > There is an economy behind free software, and Jane Street seems not to > have understood it. I think you have to admit that you are not being fair here. Our company has spent a fairly significant amount of time and money on contributing to OCaml. Organizing the OCaml Summer Project alone has easily cost us many tens of thousands of dollars. And that's not counting lost developer time. > 3. Jane Street announced several times that they wanted to release > software into the OSS world. Nothing happened. This, too, is not true. We certainly haven't released as much as we would like to, since, as you might guess, we are extremely busy making a living of our work, too. But I think you are doing us a big disfavor with such false remarks by disregarding contributions we have made, newly developed libraries like Sexplib, substantially rewritten ones (Sqlite3-bindings), feature extensions (e.g. to Lacaml), compiler patches (e.g. function call backtraces; tons of bug reports and fixes), etc., and there is much more, very well-tested code in the final stage of our release process. Note that not all our contributions are published on our website. We are not into marketing. > From that experience I think your "new approach" is also nothing but vaporware. I haven't said anywhere that we already have a "new approach". In fact, I said the exact opposite, namely that we are not sure yet what exactly a better alternative would look like. This is the reason why we want to contribute to the discussion, and pointing out the downsides of existing software, too, is important to make progress. Lets face it: the vast majority of people just want to install a few libraries they need for their work on their research or pet projects. Godi is perfectly fine for maintaining such environments. But if sharing code and collaborative work is high on your list of priorities (as it is for large teams like ours and surely also open source development teams), Godi seems more like an obstacle. A more integrated and sufficiently standardized approach that combines version control, build systems, automated compilation and test suites, and packaging seems necessary to really give a boost to our productivity. > Sorry for the direct language, but you provoked it. It is a pity to lose > Jane Street as supporter of GODI. If you still want to enter into a > constructive dialog, I'm open to it. Constructive dialogs cannot only consist of positive remarks, and I'm sure you understand that. You have pioneered an area that nobody else in the OCaml community had tried before, because it's hard and a lot of work. As much as pioneers discover fruitful areas, they also discover parts that are not worthwhile going. I appreciate this effort, and I can understand your defensive and natural reaction to our criticism. But note that this is not a criticism of you but of the potential of Godi as the foundation for a standardized package management system for OCaml. Best regards, Markus -- Markus Mottl http://www.ocaml.info markus.mottl@gmail.com