More radical ideas about gc and reference counting

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/4/14, 5:38 PM, Caligo via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
> <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com <mailto:digitalmars-d at puremagic.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Mostly good points, but the bountysource program is an experiment by
>     Facebook, not by myself. And (without me trying to speak on
>     Facebook's behalf) it would be difficult to argue that Facebook
>     doesn't understand FOSS or is out there to insult contributors.
>     We're just experimenting with various angles.
>
>
> If the bounty system was such a great idea, then every FOSS project
> would be using it.

As I said: experiment.

> Now, hiring full-time engineers to work on a FOSS
> project, that's an entirely different issue.  Besides, if someone is
> trying to figure out how FOSS teams manage to become successful in
> regards to development and all the associated technical and social
> complexities, then all they have to do is study one of the million
> different FOSS projects out there.  Many well known FOSS contributors
> have actually documented their experience and knowledge of managing FOSS
> projects.

Great, a few representative links would be most welcome.

> Here is an idea:  include new features in DMD/Phobos as soon as they
> arrive, and make them part of the official binary release so that the
> average D user can try them out.  Make sure they are marked as unstable,
> and put a on/off switch on them (something like what Rust/Haskell have;
> not a compiler switch).  If the feature receives no implementation bug
> reports for X consecutive days AND no design bug reports for Y
> consecutive days, then the feature is marked stable and officially
> becomes part of DMD/Phobos.  The X and the Y can be decreased as D's
> number of users increases over the years.  The whole idea is very much
> like farming: you are planting seeds.  As the plants grow, some of them
> will not survive, others will be destroyed, and some of them will take
> years to grow.  In any case, you harvest the fruits when they are ready.
>
>   Here are good starting values for X and Y:
> X = 90 days
> Y = 180 days

This is nice, but on the face of it it's just this: an idea on how other 
people should do things on their free time. I'd have difficulty 
convincing people they should work that way. The kind of ideas that I 
noticed are successful are those that actually carry the work through 
and serve as good examples to follow.


Andrei