New libraries process

[Johan Tibell]

Hi Simon,

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Simon Peyton-Jones
<simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:
> But I understand you as saying "fine, let's try it and see".

Lets try and see.

> There's a balance isn't there?  Changing the API of a widely used library imposes costs on lots of other people, and it's reasonable to take their concerns into account.

If "legalization" was needed to prevent maintainers from breaking APIs
and upsetting users, we'd expect to see lots of upset users as the
absolute majority of packages is not maintained using any such
legislative document. We must therefore conclude that there must be
something else that prevents maintainers from breaking their APIs
(unnecessarily). These other effects (i.e. social dynamics) are much
more flexible than prescriptive documents that by their nature
typically are more absolutist.

Cheers,
Johan