On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 1:23 PM, Luke VanderHart <luke.vanderh...@gmail.com> wrote: > For what it's worth, I am really glad of the position Rich is taking > on a roadmap and Clojure's future development. I would much rather > Clojure remained fresh, innovative and agile, and that it continues to > offer unexpected, delightful new features and abilities. It can't > really do that if Rich has to work through a years worth of mundane > improvements he's already committed to before he can implement a new > idea.
About roadmaps: I think there are a core set of Clojure developers who meet regularly on IRC and discuss all kinds of interesting issues surrounding Clojure. They post ideas on the separate dev list, and on the various group development sites (assembla, github, confluence, etc. -- it has changed over time where the active discussions are happening). I believe that those "in the core" don't fully realize how little of that information trickles out to the masses. Improved information flow can generate excitement and enthusiasm in the community. For example, to those outside the core, sometimes it feels like development is proceeding at a slow pace. We mainly see the new, stable releases, which occur only occasionally (just 1.2 in the last year, right?). The inner group knows what's going into 1.3. They know how much effort has been spent testing out ideas, some of which were discarded, and some of which are highly likely to remain in the pipeline for a future stable release. The know what time has gone into creating build tools and other mundane things that are necessary as the project's infrastructure grows. For those outside the core, seeing a summary of the past year's accomplishments is tremendously exciting, creating a sense of "Wow, Clojure's development is really progressing, with lots of great things happening. This is a fast-moving train that I want to be a part of." Similarly, when looking ahead, it is possible to provide a glimpse in the form of "Here are the areas we're actively investigating (e.g., primitive math, pods, etc.). It's hard to know exactly which will bear fruit, but these are some of the things we're trying out, and some of the problems we'd like to solve." Furthermore, it's useful to know when past ideas have been officially discarded. For example, a couple years back there was a lot of discussion surrounding streams, as a way to handle stateful i/o interactions. Are those ideas officially dead, or are they just lower priority than a lot of things, or are we awaiting a fresh new insight? These sorts of communications to the community are certainly essential when trying to generate excitement about Clojure's forward momentum for funding purposes, but even if Rich has abandoned funding in the interest of not being tied to a specific set of commitments or expectations, I hope that the core developers will still realize the great community-building value of summarizing "where we have been and where we hope to go". About funding: Last year, when Rich appealed for funding, he explained that without the funding, it did not make rational economic sense for him to devote his full time to Clojure development. He would be forced to take other contracting jobs, and less of his time would be spent on Clojure. So to me, the sad part of this announcement is that it carries with it the implication that Clojure development is going to slow down, because Rich will have to focus on things other than Clojure in order to make money. Is there any kind of middle ground possible here? -- 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
