[opam-devel] [Caml-list] GODI is shutting down

[Pierre-Etienne Meunier]

Hi,

I do not like the troll happening on the caml mailing list, but I must recognize it is a nice ad for opam, because the "real" arguments for opam get told, and there is more to it that what your website says.
This is why I would like to ask a bunch of frequent questions, so that you can hopefully add them to your collection. I am no software engineering expert, nor am I a programming expert, or anything. This is the opinion of an amateur programmer, with an enthusiasm for freedom and sharing.

- I wrote something about dictators in a previous mail. This is a general tendency today, from startups. You are a startup. Therefore, unless you explicitly state the following argument, by Thomas Gazagnaire in a recent email:

> I disagree, people should be free to use whatever system they want.


I will suspect you of trying to become dictators, and I will not use your software. Answering to this concern in mailing-lists is not enough to convince someone like me.


- Ok, now I want to use it. I know how to write a package, how to make my own repository, how to install a package, how to submit it to the "official repository" (whose name would look more friendly to me as "Ocamlpro's repository"). I have a big problem, though: I do not know how to *use* a package. Are you using ocamlfind? I would guess not, right? You must have a more clever algorithm to tell ocamlopt what options it should get to use a library, can you tell me what to do if I want to use my package?


- Finally, I understand you used really cool state of the art algorithm for sorting dependencies out. I am already pretty impressed by debian's system, how is your system different? Can you give a link to the papers describing these algorithms?


Cheers,
Pierre