qualified imports, PVP and so on (Was: add new Data.Bits.Bits(bitZero) method)

[Omari Norman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com> wrote:
> because the affected users are just
> users and apparently not important enough to consider when setting
> versioning policy.

Users are important enough to consider, but their needs should not
trump all others.  In particular, (nearly?) all software on Hackage is
given to users at no charge.  Developers invest their time.  Their
needs are important too.  If policies make it too troublesome for
developers to maintain software or publicly post it on Hackage, they
will just stop posting it.

Obviously there is a balance to be struck, as if you make things too
hard for users then there will be no users.  The problem is that the
PVP is putting a considerable maintenance burden on developers but
it's not even clear there is commensurate benefit to users.  Often
it's hard to get different packages to work together because upper
bounds are too tight.