Making decisions

[Edward Kmett]

I for one strongly support the creation of such a committee.


On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:48 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones
<simonpj at microsoft.com>wrote:

> This "burning bridges" thread has really got us going!
>
> I'm a bit concerned, though, that we don't have an effective mechanism for
> resolving such debates.  If everyone feels that they have a vote, perhaps,
> but only one among many, then one feels either mandated or indeed willing
> to invest the extra cycles to summarise pros and cons based on feedback,
> crisply articulate alternatives, and so on.   And, worse still, no one
> feels mandated to actually decide anything.   That's fine when there's a
> clear consensus; not so fine when there isn't, as here.  Several people on
> the "Burning bridges" thread have commented on the interminable nature of
> the debate.
>
> Our general procedures for library changes are described here:
> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions.  For specialised
> libraries (eg MD5 checksum, or even containers) the situation is clear: the
> author or current maintainer decides.
>
> But for the basic core libraries, whose influence is pervasive, matters
> are murkier.  Looking at
> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions#The_Core_Librarieswe see that many are maintained by "GHC HQ".  But the plain fact is that
> GHC HQ is not up to the task, especially now that Simon M has moved on to
> Facebook.   To be absolutely explicit, I'm worried that decision making may
> get stuck because I don't have the capacity to participate, lead, drive,
> propose, and ultimately make a decision.  So there's a decision-making
> vacuum for the "GHC HQ" libraries.  If that's the case, then the best thing
> is for GHC HQ to get out of the way!
>
> Is that what others feel, or are you all happy?   My proposal would be to
> form a Library Tsars committee, that
> * Takes ownership of the "GHC HQ" libraries
> * Also owns any global library issues; ones that can't be resolved
>     by a single maintainer
>
> Like any maintainer the Library Tsars would be expected to follow the
> guidance on the wiki
> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions#Guidance_for_maintainers(responsiveness, consultation, etc).  But they could actually decide things.
>
> One other thing.  I'd certainly consider well-argued proposals for
> changing GHC to better support backward compatibility in the face of
> library change.  One such proposal was the "class alias" story, but that
> was a big, complex general mechanism (and arguably big benefits).  Because
> of its complexity it is currently stalled.  But there may be other much
> more modest things we could do to help; the question about ad-hoc
> deprecation of Monad without Functor is a  small, highly-specific, ad-hoc
> idea.
>
> Simon
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