What makes a language popular - and how to manufacture D popularity

[Mike Parker]

On Saturday, 28 May 2022 at 09:35:10 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

>
> Right now the D project is like a bunch of headless chickens.
>

I'm starting to feel like a broken record! The vision document is 
coming before DConf. Probably by the end of June. We're also 
working on migrating critical ecosystem services to the control 
of the foundation.

Those two steps are foundational to the next steps. The first of 
those will be to establish a team to oversee the ecosystem (call 
it the Ecosystem Team/Committee or whatever). They will be 
responsible for setting up ecosystem roadmaps based on the vision 
document, and coordinating contributions. The full details 
haven't been worked out yet, but it will be derived from a 
proposal Mathias Lang brought to a meeting a few months back.

This is a two-way street, though. Once the team is in place, 
we'll be asking for people to sign up as volunteers, letting us 
know the kinds of project they're interested in working on, how 
many hours per week or month they can be available, etc. The team 
will make use of them. We'll put out contract work now and again 
as well, when funding allows, but as always we'll be relying on 
people willing to volunteer their time. Even the ecosystem team 
will be all volunteer (though we already have a few people 
tentatively willing to participate).

I've mentioned most of this in meeting summaries here in the 
forums, particularly in the summaries of our monthly meetings. 
Please keep up with those if you want to stay abreast of what's 
going on before any announcements are made. This is the sort of 
stuff we discuss.

In short, we know there's a need for more management and 
guidance, and we are working to address it. It's going slowly 
because there are always a gazillion other things that need to be 
done, but it is going. You can expect the vision document before 
DConf, the services will hopefully be migrated by the end of the 
year, and the ecosystem team should be in place sometime early 
next year if not sooner.

In the meantime, there is nothing stopping anyone who wants to 
contribute to reach out to Razvan and Dennis to be on call for 
fixing bugs. Let then know which repositories you're willing to 
work on and your skill level, and they will throw things at you 
now and again.

You can also reach out to me (aldacron at gmail.com or 
social at dlang.org) and ask how best to contribute in other ways. 
Let me know where your interests lie and I'll link you up with 
whomever can best direct you where to go. You don't need to 
contribute blindly or randomly in the absence of a vision 
document or a roadmap. Just ask!