[Haskell-cafe] Re: poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?

[Don Stewart]

trentbuck:
> "Neil Mitchell" <ndmitchell at gmail.com> writes:
> > The darcs 2.0 announcement read like an obituary
> 
> I don't know why, but a lot of people I spoke to seemed to have that
> impression, and I essentially had to wave changelogs under their face to
> convince them that darcs was still being worked on *at all*.  I had to
> point out that it was a *release* announcement -- how could a dead
> project have a new major version?

The 2.0 release should have been a triumph.
 
That announce was a strategic error of pretty immense proportions. And
as a result, it's basically impossible to justify work on the project to
outsiders, or new transition to darcs on projects. And it made those who
recommended darcs look foolish. The once shining "smart dvcs" brand of
darcs has been trampled.

To really turn things around -- which maybe could be done -- we'd need
new leadership, and an aggressive change in project direction, to
counter the slide. And that's a *lot* of work: full time, active project
leadership, lots of public activity, clear goals, clear direction. It
could make someone famous. Do we have a young turk to take up the challenge?

And all this delay while the git juggernaut takes over the internet.

> Perhaps a chirpy journalism major should be writing vapidly up-beat
> announcement posts, denying even the possibility of problems :-P
  
I think Eric's doing language processing, not journalism ;)

-- Don