On 30 Sep 2024, at 21:26, Antero Mejr <xxxxxx@antr.me> wrote:

> Daphne Preston-Kendal <xxxxxx@nonceword.org> writes:
>
>> I am happy to respond to constructive, actionable criticism of our processes,
>> but ‘I don’t like it’ is neither constructive nor actionable.
>
> 1. It's uniquely annoying to write portable Scheme, because each
>   implementation has inconsistent library support.
>
> 2. In order to find documentation for writing portable Scheme, you need
>   to consult at least 3 different websites simultaneously (the
>   standard, SRFIs, implementation).

If only there were a standards effort attempting to provide a larger base for portable libraries and provide more accessible documentation for the base language.

> 3. No reference implementations, so lots of duplication of work. The
>   SRFI examples often are not portable (especially the older ones), and
>   need to be put together piecemeal, because there is no standard for
>   package management.
>
> 4. The largest program written in Scheme, the Guix package manager, does
>   not have a way to install or (re)use R7RS libraries, ironically.

I am not sure what you expect me to do about this.

> 5. There's no Scheme Foundation, and no way to connect with other
>   Schemers in a given geographic area, etc. Most of the different
>   Scheme sub-communities are really just a few people, a webpage, and
>   maybe a mailing list.

I want a Scheme Foundation too, but the SC has rejected the idea as being too much bureaucracy for a small language community like ours. I’m not sure they’re wrong, honestly.

> 6. The steering committee's activities seem completely opaque. What do
>   they discuss? What decisions do they make? How will it affect the
>   direction of the language? How is their membership decided? How
>   active are they?

The SC generally deals directly with me only, or with others if they want to ask them.

What they discuss: Almost nothing. There were three SC meetings in total last year – two to deal with John Cowan’s resignation, and one for me to give them a status update. Prior to that, they had been inactive since 2014.

How the membership was decided: There was an open, online election in 2009. Should someone currently on the SC resign, there will be a new election.

> 7. As Marc mentioned, the difficulty in following what is going on
>   where. The reason I didn't reply to your initial message for a few
>   days is because I wasn't subscribed to srfi-discuss, and had no idea
>   you responded.

If only the person who started this thread had chosen some other forum than srfi-discuss.

> 8. It's unclear who has the ability/authority to make any sort of
>   change. Could you address any of the above, if you wanted to?
>   Hypothetically, if most people agree that N=3 is not sufficient,
>   would you have to get approval from the steering committee to change
>   it? What would happen if they disapproved?

N=3 is an informal rule of thumb, suggested by the SC when I became chair, and has no official status in the charter. You can read the charter here: <https://small.r7rs.org/wiki/WG2Charter/>

In practice, I intend to get more strict about requiring implementation support and implementer engagement with particular features as the Foundations approach finalization.

>> I am really not sure what we can do to make the process more ‘transparent’. But
>> it’s especially hard to know when people apparently have ideas such as that ICFP
>> is somehow part of the process.
>
> That is part of the transparency problem. I heard about ICFP from the
> WG2 mailing list. Hosting meetings at ICFP is inaccessible and
> problematic: the price and logistics of attending such a conference
> keeps most Scheme users out. Unsure if that is the intention.

My point is that ICFP is *not* part of the process. We don’t make decisions in meetings at ICFP. I have no idea where you got this impression, and I have no idea how you interpreted my previous mail as saying that we do.

> And the WG2 mailing list appears to only be available on Google Groups,
> disjointed from any of the other Scheme sites.

Google Groups hosts that mailing list, yes. But it is a normal email mailing list, and can be subscribed to without a Google Account. I did not make the decision to use Google Groups but it can’t easily be changed.

> It doesn't have to be this way. If a Large reference library were
> provided, then Small implemetations would get Large for free. However, I
> think Scheme currently lacks the coordination to create and maintain
> such a library. I would be happy to be proved wrong on that though!

If only there were a standards effort attempting to provide a reasonable standard library with sample implementations.

Daphne