Re: Where is the maintainer?

[Sather User]

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Michael Taylor wrote:

> Hello Michael,
>
> I am subscribed to both info-sather and bug-sather.  I have been

Michael, thank you for your detailed reply.  I looked at the archives
and the only traffic seemed to be a few questions posted months or
years apart which were not responded to, or at least there were no
responses to the lists.  To all appearances, there was nothing there.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think this might have been your first post
to the list.

> of the list.  Those two lists are a nightmare of spam.  It makes them

I'm not seeing that.  There was a lot of unfiltered spam a couple of
years ago.

> almost worthless to anybody that isn't subscribed to the list since
> their email might be easily tossed out with the spam.  The only
> solution I know of to this is to make them member-only lists.  I'm
> open to any other ideas, though.

I think that's quite right.  You can't allow non-members to send
messages to a mailing list.

> As to the list of bugs.  The only one that I'm aware of is the one in
> Dr. Dussault's email regarding the Tk Browser.  There are many other
> areas that could be improved, etc. that I know of, though (pSather
> needs to be updated, build needs to be made easier, Windows support
> would be nice, etc.)  Due to the extremely low volume of GNU Sather
> traffic, I mostly assume that there isn't much interest in the
> language except for research and legacy programs.  For that reason,
> I've just maintained it and haven't added any new features or risked

I know there are 1000 computer languages out there and the chances
that any one of them will become major are slim, but I think this
attitude is a little unfortunate.  For the maintainer to quietly steer
the language into oblivion is unfortunate.  I know you are busy like
the rest of us, but to assume there isn't much interest and therefore
do nothing does not seem sufficient.

> upsetting legacy code.  However, I am interested in Sather as a
> language, especially the pSather extension and how it could help
> programming today's multi-core processors.  I would be interested in
> helping to modernize GNU Sather if there is some interest.  The
> Savannah page would be a good central place for development and I own
> the domain sather-lang.org that I wanted to use as a central point of
> Sather information.

Sounds good.  But there will be interest when you have modernized
Sather.  You can't wait for the interest before starting.

What can be done to generate interest?  Or to avoid killing off
interest?  I think even dumb questions to the list should have
generated responses in public, to the list.  (Provided, of course,
that they were on-topic, about Sather programming.)

There are wikis on a hundred topics of OO programming, what is
multiple inheritance etc. etc.  Contributers have supplied details on
how the languages they are familiar with fit the hundred of so paradigms.

And there are comparative language sites, some with contributed
benchmarks, some with little programs to do a particular things in
different langues.  Somebody has to contribute the programs.

Regards,
Mike

-- 
Michael Talbot-Wilson