Idea #1 on integrating RC with GC

[Francesco Cattoglio]

On Monday, 10 February 2014 at 08:59:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> It won't happen until the leads of the project COMMIT to a 
> MEASURABLE goal and a major effort is made to meet that goal. 
> That means putting other goals aside until that measurable goal 
> has been met.
I'm sorry, but I think you are misinterpreting how the community 
works. Don't get me wrong, I've only be here for 2 years and I'm 
not a guru of social interactions, but to me it's clear that the 
D "project" is a bit different from your usual "leaders decide, 
everyone else follows".
The "heads" (read Andrei and Walter) surely have some "powers". 
Perhaps they have abused those in the past (introducing features 
without general consensus), they might be able to impose a veto 
on a feature, but they won't prevent you from contributing, if 
that contribution is approved by the rest of the user base.

> Yeah, but that games company needs to commit to taking a lead 
> role so that the goal post and vision changes in that direction.
"Leading role" is rather generic in this kind of organization. A 
"leader" is more or less someone that you listen to, someone you 
trust because you think what they are asking and proposing 
rational stuff. Personally, as an example, I listen to Manu and I 
listen to Daniel Murphy, because they appear to have a nice 
project that can give some great visibility to D.
There is a problem: most of the times the user of a tool has no 
time to work on the tool itself. What should Manu do other than 
going to Dconf, presenting their hard work, and convincing his 
coworkers?
The "project leaders" have really limited resources. Stating a 
vision for the D as a language is useless if you don't have the 
resources to achieve it. Sure, if you have your voice heard (like 
Andrei) it's easier to convince other people to share your 
vision, but this doesn't mean you can force people on working on 
something extremely specific. This nets to having zero 
"traditional" leader power.
What could be done is doing a massive crowdfunding campaign, get 
a few full-time hired developers, and change that.

> The leads believe in meritocracy, that means the project will 
> flail around in any direction that is fun. That means there are 
> no rails. There is no reason to pull or push a train that is 
> not on rails. To get D to be a true better C++ you need a 
> concerted effort.
No, first of all you need the same amount of economic backing. 
The one backing the project will shape it the most. True 
democracy is pure utopia. People have different interests and 
different ideas, which are often conflicting. In the end it's all 
about resources.