From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id JAA21094; Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:48:12 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA18001 for ; Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:48:10 +0100 (MET) Received: from mwinf0402.wanadoo.fr (smtp4.wanadoo.fr [193.252.22.27]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i2J8mdKW006722 for ; Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:48:39 +0100 Received: from lambda (AStrasbourg-206-1-23-200.w81-49.abo.wanadoo.fr [81.49.251.200]) by mwinf0402.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 9B6538000C9; Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:48:09 +0100 (CET) Received: from luther by lambda with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1B4Fg3-0005E4-00; Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:48:27 +0100 Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:48:26 +0100 To: Oliver Bandel Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library) Message-ID: <20040319084826.GB14831@lambda> References: <00cd01c40cdb$71c34410$4500a8c0@warp> <200403181312.i2IDCaDI010697@nerd-xing.mit.edu> <20040318135650.GB23915@redhat.com> <20040318184118.GC702@first.in-berlin.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040318184118.GC702@first.in-berlin.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i From: Sven Luther X-Miltered: at nez-perce by Joe's j-chkmail ("http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr")! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml's:01 caml-list:01 run-time:01 sven:01 luther:01 sven:01 luther:01 2004:99 oliver:01 bandel:01 2004:99 shelves:99 specialists:99 shower:99 bugfix:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 197 On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 07:41:18PM +0100, Oliver Bandel wrote: > On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 01:56:50PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 08:12:36AM -0500, John Carr wrote: > > > 1. Nobody else knows the language. > > > 2. It doesn't run on our platform. > > > 3. It will break and we can't get support. > > > > These things will always be a problem until OCaml becomes (to use a > > marketing term) a "whole product". This means that it has a full > > suite of supporting skills and documentation. There are currently two > > books, and a few web tutorials. For OCaml to become a whole product > > we'd need to see a few shelves full of books at the local bookstore, > > and specialists in each city offering support, and major external > > companies signing on. > > Point 1 => same problem as with Linux about ten years ago > > Point 2 => really not running on that platform? > > Point 3 => The INRIA-cathedral will help to prevent this problem > in the sense of "we do not allow any hacker to make > changes in the core language" Again, as the debian maintainer of the ocaml package, i have to agree here. I package mostly the pure ocaml distribution, with a serie of patches, applied as needed, but always either picked up from CVS or discussed with upstream. The time i choose to apply a random patch, like the early ocaml -i support one, i had the bad surprise of breaking .cmi generation compatibiliy between the native and byte code compilers, which was a cold water shower for me (err, bad french translation, i suppose you don't say that in english). Anyway, since then i refrained from applying random external patches. Now, what would really make my day would be for the ocaml team to decide to go the professional way, and to maintain both a development CVS branch, and a stable bugfix CVS branch, which would avoid having to get some random brokeness when one want to get serious bug fixes. Sorry Xavier, i know i told you that many times already, and you told me that your devel model was yours to choose, but i couldn't resist a gentle proding :). I also don't believe this will be so much of a cost over the current model, and maybe even be less expensive in the long run. Friendly, Sven Luther ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners