My two cents... Given that we committed to Clojure to get our product out in production, it's something we took into account when we decided to go forward with it. After all we did not want to change the core of our product in 5 years... :)))
The way Clojure dev is handled presently is for us a plus more than a drawback. Group decisions are never as fast and as clean cut as the ones taken by a single individual that has a clear understanding of the issues that need to be addressed. It's like that ugly management by consensus thing, it scr... up most of my customers organizations :))) Rich on some delicate design issues took some significant time to choose the right approach. The delays involved never exceeded the ones you would expect from a group based decision. He beats group based decisions by a significant factor time wise and also on coherency of his decisions... The Clojure code quality benefits from the dictatorship approach, it's a side effect from a clear consistent vision from a single individual. The day Clojure becomes well established, a change could be implemented in the way it is driven but that's not in the near future. We would rather see Rich drive the game as far as he can and he wishes to. Picking up after if he leaves is not much of an issue for us. We think that the core will reach it's maturity faster than most other "new" languages. Clojure can be self extended by anyone who needs some features not present in the core. Even if these extensions do not make it in the "official" release or in contrib, they should keep working for years before a change to the core breaks them. Rich has been careful also about avoiding breaking stuff as much as he could. Bug fixing should not be hard on us, java is java and bug fixing is something we already do on a day to day basis in "foreign" softwares. I would not worry too much about this for the next three years at least. Of course Rich when you decide to take an early retirement, let us know .... :)))) Luc On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 20:35 +0800, J Aaron Farr wrote: > On Sun 02 Aug 2009 10:24, Chouser <chou...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 6:22 PM, Vagif Verdi<vagif.ve...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >> Since i'm using clojure in my business i got worried at a sudden > >> thought what would happen to clojure if Rich calls it a day. > > ... > > However, I do think the community already has sufficient > > knowledge and experience to fix Clojure bugs as they turn up > > and perhaps even make modest incremental improvements. The > > code (the complete history even) is widely distributed, so > > there's essentially no risk of losing anything important > > there. The docs, name, and website might have some > > stewardship issues, but nothing that can't be solved with > > transparency and goodwill, I would expect. The thought of > > everyone trying to get all this organized is quite daunting, > > but people would manage. > > I hope Rich is considering this issue. While there's nothing wrong with > having a "benevolent dictator", and in fact most programming language > projects are governed that way, it's also important to build a strong > enough community and infrastructure to survive regardless of who > specifically is at the helm. > > Over at Apache, we try to achieve this through requiring diverse groups > of committers and discouraging dictator-style project management. We > also have a full non-profit foundation setup to keep the infrastructure > alive and provide a legal shield for contributors. > > That said, I don't recommend Clojure setup its own foundation like > Apache or Python. It's way too much work and way too early. In fact, > should the day come that Rich and the rest of the community is > considering a Clojure Foundation, I suggest you first consider joining > and existing organization before starting your own. > Luc Préfontaine Armageddon was yesterday, today we have a real problem... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
