[Haskell-community] Downloads page & Haskell for Mac

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

> Nicolas Wu <nicolas.wu at gmail.com>:
> On 24 October 2015 at 11:48, Manuel M T Chakravarty
> <chak at justtesting.org> wrote:
>> Would it be appropriate to just add a fourth bullet point to the current list of three (Minimal, Stack & HP)?
> 
> I'm not sure. I feel nervous about placing a product that isn't free
> to use on the main Haskell.org downloads page. In fact, I even feel
> nervous about putting links to a toolchain if it explicitly endorses a
> particular product or company. I don't know if that's a sentiment
> that’s shared amongst others, but we should definitely discuss it.

I think, the downloads page ought to be clear and objective. As such commercial software needs to be clearly identified and the descriptions must be factual (and not read like ads). 

Other than that, isn’t it the purpose of haskell.org to make it as easy as possible to get up and running with Haskell? From all the feedback that I got from users so far, Haskell for Mac is by far the easiest way to get started with Haskell on a Mac. If we are up front about its commercial nature, visitors to the site can decide for themselves whether the purchase costs and the commercial nature are worth the added convenience to them.

> My preference is that the haskell.org/downloads page should be
> targeted at beginners and be as simple and prescriptive as possible,
> while allowing the exploration of libraries and projects made
> available by the Haskell community.

Haskell for Mac is squarely targeted at beginners. It is arguably much more beginner friendly than any of the other alternatives. In particular, it requires no knowledge of the command line and no separate installation of an editor.

Manuel