<html><body><div>Dear Haskell community,</div><div><br></div><div>The three-year term limit of some of the GHC Steering committee</div><div>members has expired. We are really grateful for the awesome work</div><div>that Iavor, Richard, and Joachim have done through these years</div><div>(especially the latter, who has acted as secretary.) As a result, the</div><div>GHC Steering committee is seeking nominations for new members.</div><div><br></div><div>The committee scrutinizes, nitpicks, improves, weights and eventually</div><div>accepts or rejects proposals that extend or change the language</div><div>supported by GHC and other (public-facing) aspects of GHC.</div><div>Our processes are described at</div><div> <a href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals">https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals</a></div><div>which is also the GitHub repository where proposals are proposed.</div><div><br></div><div>We are looking for members who have the ability </div><div> * to understand such language extension proposals,</div><div> * to find holes and missing corner cases in the specifications,</div><div> * foresee the interaction with other language features and </div><div> specifications,</div><div> * comment constructively and improve the proposals,</div><div> * judge the cost/benefit ratio and</div><div> * finally come to a justifiable conclusion.</div><div><br></div><div>We look for committee members who have some of these properties:</div><div> * have substantial experience in writing Haskell applications or</div><div> libraries, which they can use to inform judgements about the</div><div> utility or otherwise of proposed features,</div><div> * have made active contributions to the Haskell community, for</div><div> some time,</div><div> * have expertise in language design and implementation, in either</div><div> Haskell or related languages, which they can share with us.</div><div><br></div><div>The committee’s work requires a small, but non-trivial amount of time,</div><div>especially when you are assigned a proposal for shepherding. We</div><div>estimate the workload to be around 2 hours per week, and our process</div><div>works best if members usually respond to technical emails within 1-2</div><div>weeks (within days is even better). Please keep that in mind if your</div><div>email inbox is already overflowing.</div><div><br></div><div>The GHC developers themselves are already well represented already. We</div><div>seek Haskell _users_ more than GHC hackers.</div><div><br></div><div>There is no shortage of people who are eager to get fancy new</div><div>features into the language, both in the committee and the wider</div><div>community. But each new feature imposes a cost, to implement, to learn,</div><div>(particularly) through its unexpected interaction with other features.</div><div>We need to strike a balance, one that encourages innovation (as GHC</div><div>always has) while still making Haskell attractive for real-world</div><div>production use and for teaching. We therefore explicitly invite</div><div>“conservative” members of the community to join the committee.</div><div><br></div><div>To make a nomination, please send an email to me (as the interim committee</div><div>secretary) at trupill at <a href="http://gmail.com">gmail.com</a> until February 28th. I will</div><div>distribute the nominations among the committee, and we will keep the</div><div>nominations and our deliberations private.</div><div><br></div><div>We explicitly encourage self-nominations. You can nominate others, but</div><div>please obtain their explicit consent to do so. (We don’t want to choose</div><div>someone who turns out to be unable to serve.)</div><div><br></div><div>On behalf of the committee,</div><div>Alejandro Serrano</div>
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