Dear subscriber,

Unfortunately, it is no longer possible for me to run the GODI
distribution. GODI will not upgrade to OCaml 4.01 once it is out, and it
will shut down the public service in the course of September 2013. The
website, camlcity.org, will remain up, but with reduced content. Existing
GODI installations can be continued to be used, but upgrades or bugfixes
will not be available when GODI is off.

Although there are still a lot of GODI users, it is unavoidable to shut
GODI down due to lack of supporters, especially package developers. I was
more or less alone in the past months, and my time contingent will not
allow it to do the upgrade to OCaml 4.01 alone (when it is released).

Also, there was a lot of noise about a competing packaging system for
OCaml in the past weeks: OPAM. Apparently, it got a lot of attention both
from individuals and from organizations. As I see it, the OCaml community
is too small to support two systems, and so in some sense GODI is
displaced by OPAM.

The sad part is that OPAM is only clearly better in one point, namely in
interacting with the community (via Github). In times where social
networks are worth billions this is probably the striking point. It
doesn't matter that OPAM lacks core functions like deleting all files when
a package is removed, and that it lacks many other features GODI has. So
there is some loss of functionality for the community (partly difficult to
replace, like GODI's support for Windows).

If somebody wants to take over GODI, please do so. The source code is
still available as well as the package directories. Maybe it is sufficient
to move the repository to a public place and to redesign the package
release process to give GODI a restart.

There is also another point that was driving me mad in the past weeks,
namely missing respect from the OPAM guys. Given the fact that OPAM is
only a thin layer around ocamlfind (and guess who wrote it), and given the
fact that GODI was pioneering in many fields, I was expecting nicer
wordings, and less dumb campaigning ("we have 400 packages, and you only
170"). OPAM is only harvesting what I seeded many years ago.

Let's hope these guys get now some kicks into their asses, and are forced
to add all the functionality to OPAM the OCaml community deserves.

Hoorn (NL), the 22nd July 2013,

Gerd Stolpmann
--
Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
Creator of GODI and camlcity.org.
Contact details:        http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html
Company homepage:       http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de



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