2023: Focusing on stability, GitHub Sponsors, and Frozen DIPs
Mike Parker
aldacron at gmail.com
Mon Feb 20 12:38:56 UTC 2023
As we are now nearly two months into the new year, I'm becoming
both excited and anxious.
I'm excited because some of the ideas and goals I and others have
had for D, the community, and the ecosystem, are starting to take
shape. I'm eagerly anticipating the announcements I'll be able to
make as the year progresses.
I'm anxious because the work needed to be able to make some of
those announcements is not trivial. We have a lot to do and, as
always, we're faced with limited resources. At the moment, we're
learning some skills that we can apply to both organize the
resources we do have and pull in more. I'm confident we can make
it happen, but it sill feels a bit daunting.
I can't be more specific than that at the moment, but the time
that I can start being specific isn't too far away.
For now, I do have a few announcements I can make.
### Gripes and wishes
For starters, please keep your gripes and wishes coming in to
social at dlang.org. The flood became a trickle and has been quiet
for a bit now. I'll post a separate reminder about this at the
end of this month, but I plan to keep taking emails on this until
the end of March. At the end of March or in early April I'll
start organizing everything that people have sent in. I'll
publish it for everyone to view and discuss, and we'll start
discussing internally what we can and can't achieve, what is and
isn't a priority, etc. The more data we have the better, so
please keep it coming!
### Focusing on stability
As a result of a discussion that took place during our January
meeting (summary coming this week!), Walter and Átila have
decided to shift gears a bit. For the next year, they want to
emphasize stability and robustness.
Generally, that means giving priority to issues deemed
fundamental, such as features that aren't working as advertised,
or long-standing bugs that detract from the user experience. As a
start, Walter has lately been working on circular reference bugs,
issues with features like `export` and `.di` generation, etc.
Over the coming months, I expect we'll start looking beyond
one-off issues from Bugzilla to see how we can tackle more
complex problems, like reducing compile times, solving template
emission bugs, etc.
This is one area where the gripes lists will come in handy. So
again, please keep them coming!
### GitHub Sponsors
As of last month, our Flipcause account is no longer active. Most
everyone who was supporting us there has already moved over to
PayPal or Open Collective. Thanks to all of you who continue to
support us.
Now we have a new option. We've finally gotten GitHub Sponsors
set up. For now, the tiers are set up to roughly mirror those at
Open Collective. That's just a start. We'll look at adjusting all
of the tiers across both sites in the coming months. I haven't
yet [added it to the donate
page](https://dlang.org/foundation/donate.html), but I'll get to
it soon.
If you are able to support us, even if it's only a few dollars
here and there, please consider doing so when you can. In the
coming months, we'll need all the funding we can get in order to
carry out much needed change. For example, we're going to ramp up
a number of servers to migrate various ecosystem services to
Foundation management (the plans are on hold right now, but only
for a short while longer), and some of the work that needs doing
will have to be done on a contract basis if it's going to get
done at all.
As an example, our server bill is only around $50/month right
now. That's the server to which Vladimir Panteleev recently
migrated the documentation tester for a 50% increase in build
times. We should be able to use the same box for some other
things, but our server bill is going to increase at some point.
Down the road, I plan to set something up to show our financial
flow. But in the meantime, any amount we can stash in the
reserves right now will come in handy at a later date. So thanks
to any financial support you can give us.
As a reminder, please keep an eye on our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheDLanguageFoundation
Now that we're in the YouTube Partner Program, watching, liking,
and sharing our videos is one of the easiest ways you can support
us.
### Frozen DIPs
As of now, **the DIP queue is closed to new DIPs**.
DIPs that are already in review or that are already in the PR
queue can still go forward, but please do not submit any new DIPs
for the time being.
The DIP process is getting a long-needed overhaul. Over time,
I've had feedback from people who have authored DIPs and those
who decided not to. There are a number of different opinions
about how things can change, but there are some common themes
among them.
I'll write in more detail about this later, but there are a few
major goals I have with the overhaul:
* reduce the burden on the author
* reduce the amount of time a submitted DIP is in review
* establish support for fleshing out ideas before a DIP is even
written
* establish support for developing initial DIP drafts before they
are submitted
Previously, I'd always considered development of the DIP separate
from the DIP "process", which I saw as beginning with the
submission of a pull request. In reality, the process begins even
before an author opens an editor to start typing. I hope that by
recognizing that, and by providing support for discussing ideas
and writing the DIP, we'll foster an environment that still
maintains a relatively high bar for DIPs that get submitted, but
also creates a filter such that potential DIP authors can be more
confident that they aren't wasting their time once they get to
the development stage. By the time they get there, they'll have
no doubt if it's an idea worth pursuing.
I expect the freeze to last a few months. I'll be more concrete
about dates when I can.
In the meantime, as I have mentioned before, I'm eliminating the
Final Review round from the process we have now, and I'm willing
to run more than one review at a time. If you have submitted a
DIP to the PR queue, I'll be in touch soon to see if you're ready
to move forward.
### More to come
I intend to publish the January and February meeting summaries by
the end of this week. As I mentioned before, I botched my
recording of the January meeting (the audio output wasn't
recorded, only my microphone was). Given the black hole that is
my memory, I had to enlist the help of some of the attendees to
gather up enough info for the summary. It won't be at the level
of detail you're used to, but it's the best I can do. The
recording of the February meeting is fine, so that summary will
be normal.
I hope very soon now to finally be able to share some news that
I'd agreed to be quiet about for a few weeks. It's the first step
we've taken to a new future for the D Language Foundation. We're
all very excited by it. I don't know if it will have the same
effect in the community at large, but I hope it shows how serious
we are about rolling up our sleeves and belatedly adapting to
circumstances that have changed and continue to change.
I'll say more about that as soon as I can. I'll close now with a
few reminders.
* If you can contribute to a project anywhere in the ecosystem,
please do so!
* If you can contribute to the core DLang projects and aren't
sure what to do, please contact Razvan or Dennis!
* If you are able to support us financially in any way at all,
[please do so](https://dlang.org/foundation/donate.html)!
* Blog and tweet about your D projects!
* Share [our YouTube
videos](https://www.youtube.com/@TheDLanguageFoundation) far and
wide!
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