A few questions

[Chris]

On Friday, 19 June 2020 at 14:41:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote
On Friday, 19 June 2020 at 14:41:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
>> 
>> No answer from the D Language Foundation? Walter, Andrei, Ali, 
>> Atila (?), Mike Parker (?)?
>
> Thanks for asking. These are reasonable questions to ask; 
> however, your posting history has caused us concern that this 
> is a provocation. Once we reply in any way, the answer can be 
> used to pick a fight (I don't agree with this policy, I demand 
> more information on that etc), all framed as an exchange that 
> we must engage in lest we have shady things to hide. We don't. 
> Also we can't commit to hanging out on the forums and 
> satisfactorily engage with anyone with an Internet connection 
> and a zest for stirring stuff up.

First of all, thanks for your answer.

Allow me to say something regarding my "posting history". It 
certainly didn't help that members of the D Language Foundation 
were stonewalling, answering in an evasive manner or even 
twisting my words. So it shouldn't come as a surprise when you 
get reactions that appear disgruntled, I'm not the only 
(ex-)member this has happened to (some left D altogether, 
understandably so). And if you go back a bit further in my 
"posting history" you will see that I was quite happy with D (for 
years). It wasn't until I noticed that things were going 
seriously awry (instead of getting better, as one would have 
expected after the advent of the D Foundation), and that I feared 
for the future of my software written in D that I started to 
address certain issues that deeply worried me (e.g. code 
breakage, mobile platforms, autodecoding / string handling). I 
had "skin in the game" but was met with indifference as my 
concerns were not "valid" or important concerns as far as the 
leadership was concerned.

It doesn't help to just ignore / stonewall a user, if you don't 
like the questions / issues raised or think they're unimportant. 
This will only make things worse and lead to the suspicion that 
there are "shady things" going on, and think of the impression 
others might get, people from the outside who are interested in D.

I also object to the expression "framed as an exchange" which 
implies dishonesty and trolling. A few simple and _honest_ 
answers are enough. Being evasive in your answers is not. How am 
I supposed to know if I should "watch this space" or not.

> That said, even a provocation may embed good ideas. Some of our 
> documentation is publicly accessible by law. Of course more 
> details are better for our existing and prospective donors. We 
> have long looked into providing detailed reports on the use of 
> financing (we also did some in the past vision documents), the 
> main difficulty being finding the time to compile the 
> information. Mike is working on that. The answers to 1, 2, and 
> 4 are as expected - no change, updated as per our knowledge, 
> and no.

Now there's an answer at last! And no, my questions weren't 
supposed to be "provocations". I'm certainly not the only one 
who'd like to have a general picture of how the money is spent, 
so more transparency is definitely a good idea. And who knows, 
maybe people in the community / investors can come up with ideas 
how to make better use of the resources available, especially now 
that DConf didn't happen, there must be additional resources that 
can be used for tooling, cross-platform development or even D3.

As for D3, a pity there are no plans for it, it galls me that D 
should remain in its current state as it undoubtedly has good 
features.