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

[Amir Chaudhry]

Hi Pierre, I'm not one of opam devs but I do have some questions for you.

On 24 Jul 2013, at 19:38, Pierre-Etienne Meunier <pmeunier at caltech.edu> wrote:

> 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.

I don't really understand what you mean about dictators.  What would dictatorship look like to you?  I'm always free to remove software from my machine (assuming that it was sensibly installed) so I find it difficult to understand your viewpoint.  If it's a case of contributions I've made to software, then I guess I can't revoke my actual commits but I can stop contributing more.

Side note: I think your characterisation of 'startups = dictators' is overly broad and not particularly useful.  By that reasoning *any and every* new project is trying to be a dictator.  Do you really believe that?  I notice that Patoline's site doesn't explicitly state that you're not trying to be dictators (but of course, I wouldn't have assumed that you were).  I don't really want to get into a debate about free vs open vs closed software, I'm just trying to understand what 'dictators' means to you.


> - 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'd find OCamlPro-Repository to be quite confusing.  I'd expect it to be 'opam-repository' and also for it to the be first one I get with opam.  Not sure how this comes across as 'unfriendly'.

Amir