The forked elephant in the room

[Paolo Invernizzi]

On Tuesday, 16 January 2024 at 10:06:47 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
> On Monday, 15 January 2024 at 18:33:07 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 10:11:33AM +0000, IGotD- via 
>> Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]
>>> [...]
>>
>> This is true, we have been repeating over the last decade or 
>> so the pattern of attracting enthusiastic contributors due to 
>> the technical excellence of D, only to have them turn around 
>> and leave after coming to an impasse with the project's 
>> management.  As I have said previously, the problem isn't so 
>> much that things did not go their way; I think any reasonable 
>> person would understand that in technical decisions there's 
>> always pros and cons and one could go either way, and that 
>> whichever way a decision goes, it would work out, one could 
>> live with it.
>>
>> [...]
>
> Thanks for the write-up. I think it's true that these 
> perceptions exist, and would like to ask you what you think we 
> can do about it.

My humble proposal is to add another, language maintainer with 
good social and technical abilities, (like Steven), and more 
delegation (and trust!) towards 'experts' (Timon ...)

> If I can summarise my own opinions about contributions, it's 
> that they're absolutely welcome, but that every change has 
> trade-offs and each diff has to justify itself with positive 
> ROI. Of course it's going to be frustrating to work for free 
> and not have it pay off (it's happened to me multiple times), 
> but it also can't be the case that the default is to merge PRs 
> unless "there's a reason not to".

That was Andrei way of working, and Theo already wrote about the 
drawbacks of that.

I think you guys should move away from seeing ROI only from a 
technical point of view, you should include also the impact on 
all the other aspect, you should look it at 360 degree.

I think UCORA can really help on that, but you all should first 
recognise that this is a problem, and ask them directly for 
suggestions.

My impression is that this change is happening, slowly but it's 
happening. The elephant entered the room, don't loose this 
opportunity to make a step towards D brilliant future.

/P


>
> My own perception is that we keep saying this, but maybe not? 
> Perhaps we need to update the contributor guide.