[ghc-steering-committee] Proposal #111: Linear Types

[Richard Eisenberg]

> On Aug 28, 2018, at 9:32 PM, Vitaly Bragilevsky <bravit111 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I don't understand the meaning of "the road towards acceptance". Doesn't it mean discussing the proposal forever? I think we should accept it instead as it is or at least set strict timeframe for the final decision.

This is a good point. The truth is that the committee has no experience dealing with a proposal of the size of this one. It's hard (for me) to accept this proposal as is, because it's not a full specification. The big missing piece is inference. We also don't have a solid description of how much complexity the implementation will have to adopt. Yet, it would be very unfortunate for the authors to put in a ton of time into writing a paper, a proposal, and a prototype implementation only to get turned down. So, my understanding is that I'm recommending something of a conditional acceptance: we say, as a committee, that we're pleased with the general direction of travel and to encourage the authors to keep working. This means that we expect to accept, barring something large and unforeseen. The difference between conditional acceptance and outright acceptance is that it gives the committee further opportunities to suggest amendments to the proposed change. (Even an accepted proposal can effectively get retroactively denied if, say, the implementation requires a 10% slowdown on all programs to support an esoteric feature.)

Does this help to clarify?

Richard
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