On 4/23/2012 10:17 PM, Brandon Allbery wrote:
Brandon, I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I think you have
given these issue much thought. That is good.
No, I don't think I "went straight past it". I we are trying to
address the same issue, but from different directions. If you take
the time to look at my history, you'll find that I spent my career
bridging the very gap you make so very salient.
Here's where we differ, you see an untenable political issue, and I
see a technical one. The question of how to support rapid innovation
and stable deployment is not an us versus them problem. It is one of
staging releases. The Linux kernel is a really good example. The
Linux development team innovates faster than the community can
absorb it. The same was true of the GNU team. Distributions
addressed the gap by staging releases.
I fought this very battle in the 1980s with the Andrew system. The
technology coming out of the ITC (research community) was evolving
faster than users could absorb. Researchers want to innovate and
push the limits and users want stability. I've spoken with many in
the Haskell research community, and I never heard anyone say "no, we
want to obfuscate Haskell so that we never have to make is stable."
I think both communities want success. The question is how to build
a system that will address both.
From your history, I see you are knowledgeable and well known on the
deployment side of technology. You also understand what Haskell
needs to move forward. So I ask you again, are you volunteering to
help?