10th Birthday for GDC

[Iain Buclaw]

Hi all,

On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/

This is a great landmark achievement in brevity for GDC, but we 
still haven't achieved in my personal opinion any levity of 
worthy note.  So much to the point I'm beginning to give doubt 
myself as to how long things can continue with a bus-factor of me.

Lets talk history.

In late 2010, Digital Mars raised awareness with the FSF to start 
the process of merging GDC into GCC.  Nothing then happened until 
a year later when the copyright assignment/disclaimers had been 
completed by most parties.

More silenced followed for a further year until the first set of 
patches were ready for submission, and over the year that 
followed resolving implementation issues, most were spent waiting 
for GCC development to re-open for feature pulls.  Now a further 
year has gone by with that merge window open and shut and we are 
once again two releases away from seeing any possible inclusion.

On top of this, to this day I am yet to hear that the assignment 
papers have been completed by the original author, which would be 
a major blocker in itself.

Alarm bells should be ringing, but at times there seems to be an 
indifference from the core community on the matter, as if letting 
a valued D compiler coming up to 10 years of age go awry because 
of a lack of TLC is O.K.

Before this comes to sound like a death note, please be rest 
assured that my continued contribution shall remain, but some 
form of serious support really is needed to speed up process and 
development if we are even going to achieve any target we have 
set our sights on.

Lets discuss what we can positively do about the situation and 
start working together to a pillar goal in D's continued success. 
  Unless the more proactive thing to do would just be to walk 
in-front of that morning or afternoon bus instead of board it. :)

Regards,
Iain.