New Libraries Proposal process

Ignat Insarov kindaro at gmail.com
Wed Sep 16 16:28:39 UTC 2020


I apologise for intrusion but I have a question.

I would like to ask if all this was ever supposed to work for simple
folk — a hobbyist or a small-time freelancer. _(I am that.)_ I tried
bringing up small _«proposals»_ on this list previously, such as
adding `\x → (x, x)` to `Data.Tuple`.[1] It was akin to throwing a
stone into a pond — there may be a splash, a few responses, but in the
end nothing is accomplished. On the other hand, bringing issues up on
the issue tracker of an individual package would result in a rebuttal
with a reference to the higher authority of the faceless crowd on the
mailing list.[2]

So now it looks like things are going to get even more industry and
research oriented, even less friendly to people of common standing.
Has any thought been given to that?

[1]: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2019-July/029747.html
[2]: https://github.com/haskell/containers/issues/744


On Sun, 13 Sep 2020 at 04:26, amindfv at mailbox.org <amindfv at mailbox.org> wrote:
>
> I'd like to +1 everything said here, and say as an observer it's strange to have the decision made privately and announced here as a fait accompli.
>
> Another thing to note about email is that it's decentralized and has (and presumably always will have) plenty of clients and tools. I've seen discussions linking to email conversations that are significantly older than GitHub itself - there's value to archives of old discussions. If GitHub folds or starts charging money or redesigns its site in an unhelpful way, all discussion would be lost or made less accessible. Whereas mailing list archives can jump to new hosts indefinitely.
>
> Tom
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 03:44:10PM +0200, Bertram Felgenhauer via Libraries wrote:
> > Carter Schonwald wrote:
> > > Are you sure about this approach? I think you need to start with an
> > > open discussion , And have a open ended thread about ideas for how to
> > > improve how we do things.
> >
> > I totally agree with this, though fleshing out ideas in a smaller
> > forum first is helpful.
> >
> > An important consideration here is that there are several types of
> > stakeholders in the library proposal process, including
> >
> > * the CLC members, who ultimately decide on core library changes;
> > * proponents ("authors"), who originate proposals for such changes;
> >   and
> > * observers ("the wider Haskell community"), users of the core
> >   libraries who want to keep track of upcoming library changes and
> >   chime in when a proposal affects their own uses of a library.
> >
> > I suspect that the observers are a silent majority, and that a mailing
> > list with public archives is close to optimal for them. (I consider
> > myself an observer and I do like the mailing list for precisely this
> > reason. But I also grew up with mailing lists, not forums, so I'm
> > surely biased here.)
> >
> > In any case I think that any change to the library proposal process
> > should cater to all three types of stakeholders (and possibly others
> > I have failed to think of). In its current form, I believe
> >
> >   https://github.com/haskell-core/core-libraries-proposals
> >
> > fails to do that for observers.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Bertram
> > _______________________________________________
> > Libraries mailing list
> > Libraries at haskell.org
> > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/libraries
> _______________________________________________
> Libraries mailing list
> Libraries at haskell.org
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/libraries


More information about the Libraries mailing list