Though unpleasant reading, somebody has to write this, too. (My appologies to Walter, and to the rest of us.)


Painting Devils on the wall

What happens if Walter gets run into by a drunk, and is off-line for 6 months? Or permanently??

Ideally there should be an explicit plan for such things. And it should be public. Some benefits:

o We'd all know what to do if it really happens

o Firms and corporations considering D have less one-man-show worries

o It simply is prudent

o "The accident doesn't come if you're insured"

o Initial time wasted on copyright issues, language goal etc. vanish

My sincerest appologies, again, for writing this -- but it really needs to be addressed now and not on some rainy fall day.

This topic has been raised before, I think a few times now. Walter doesn't seem to want to comment on it =/

Would you?  Who wants to make plans for their own demise?

-[Unknown]


Jarrod wrote:
> This topic has been raised before, I think a few times now. Walter doesn't seem to want to comment on it =/

I hope that never happens, but if it does ...

"D's passed on. This language is no more. D has ceased to be. D's expired and gone to meet its maker. ... This is an EX-LANGUAGE."

Sorry, couldn't help it.

Georg Wrede Wrote:

> Though unpleasant reading, somebody has to write this, too. (My appologies to Walter, and to the rest of us.)
> 
> 
> Painting Devils on the wall
> 
> What happens if Walter gets run into by a drunk, and is off-line for 6 months? Or permanently??
> 
> Ideally there should be an explicit plan for such things. And it should be public. Some benefits:
> 
> o We'd all know what to do if it really happens
> 
> o Firms and corporations considering D have less one-man-show worries
> 
> o It simply is prudent
> 
> o "The accident doesn't come if you're insured"
> 
> o Initial time wasted on copyright issues, language goal etc. vanish
> 
> My sincerest appologies, again, for writing this -- but it really needs to be addressed now and not on some rainy fall day.

MP Wrote:

> I hope that never happens, but if it does ...
> 
> "D's passed on. This language is no more. D has ceased to be. D's expired and gone to meet its maker. ... This is an EX-LANGUAGE."
> 
> Sorry, couldn't help it.

Yup, as soon as I get Walter waxed I'll be in charge.  Yup yup yup! *cough*

Sorry man, I really couldn't help it.  There are just too many one liners for this spot.

Nah, worst things worst, D goes and we have to progress from the GDC because we don't have an open source back-end.  The code and discussion moves to dsource.org or other.  I'm sure we'll all go "damn...." but D will be fine.

Regards,
Dan

Georg Wrede wrote:
> Though unpleasant reading, somebody has to write this, too. (My appologies to Walter, and to the rest of us.)
> 
> 
> Painting Devils on the wall
> 
> What happens if Walter gets run into by a drunk, and is off-line for 6 months? Or permanently??
> 
> Ideally there should be an explicit plan for such things. And it should be public. Some benefits:
> 
> o We'd all know what to do if it really happens
> 
> o Firms and corporations considering D have less one-man-show worries
> 
> o It simply is prudent
> 
> o "The accident doesn't come if you're insured"
> 
> o Initial time wasted on copyright issues, language goal etc. vanish
> 
> My sincerest appologies, again, for writing this -- but it really needs to be addressed now and not on some rainy fall day.

Walter can cover my worries in two words: "Dealt with". No details needs as long as those involved know what to do. OTOH, he need not say anything at all.

I can't help but thinking about the numerous "Linus don't scale" or "What if Linus is killed by a bus" comments which used to be on lkml.

This was a real concern, but now using a distributed VCS, and a decentralised structure where Linus trust a few person which trust themselves other person etc, the Linux kernel now use contributions from hundreds of developers..

IMHO, D will either die or strive depending of Walter: if he manage to do a similar thing for the language, the website, the documentation, the library (and by this I don't mean Tango which started first by doing a Phobos incompatible library!! *) then D will be the next C++, if he doesn't then eventually D will fade away..

Note that I don't claim that this is easy to do: it took significant efforts for Linus to change his way of working and he could rely on a very involved team..


Regards,
renoX


* a big thank you to the dev who made Tangobos.

renoX wrote:
> IMHO, D will either die or strive depending of Walter: if he manage to do a similar thing for the language, the website, the documentation, the library (and by this I don't mean Tango which started first by doing a Phobos incompatible library!! *) then D will be the next C++, if he doesn't then eventually D will fade away..

If Walter dies, we'll all switch to GDC or llvmdc, but there will be a transition time while we search for people to run the project. We'll probably beg Andrei to get involved. Phobos, being licensed under the GPL, is safe. The Digitalmars website might be toast; I don't know its license.

It would be best for D if there were attractive alternatives to DMD at that point, and a stable language spec. The current system has everyone using the same frontend, and that doesn't work terribly well if Walter dies suddenly.

On 1/26/08, Christopher Wright <dhasenan@gmail.com> wrote:
> renoX wrote:
> > IMHO, D will either die or strive depending of Walter: if he manage to do a similar thing for the language, the website, the documentation, the library (and by this I don't mean Tango which started first by doing a Phobos incompatible library!! *) then D will be the next C++, if he doesn't then eventually D will fade away..
>
> If Walter dies, we'll all switch to GDC or llvmdc, but there will be a transition time while we search for people to run the project. We'll probably beg Andrei to get involved. Phobos, being licensed under the GPL, is safe. The Digitalmars website might be toast; I don't know its license.
>
> It would be best for D if there were attractive alternatives to DMD at that point, and a stable language spec. The current system has everyone using the same frontend, and that doesn't work terribly well if Walter dies suddenly.
>

I'd like to think we'd all be busily observing a moment's silence if something bad happened; in any case the fragmentation pissing contests and potential "land grab" that may occur afterward would only result in better competition, implementations, and perhaps even just, more innovative futures for the language. Consider what happened with NetBSD.

In any case the last thing I'd want to see is some sort of "design by committee" backup plan. D as a language is a work of art, mostly one man's art. The same with Phobos. Let's just appreciate the benefits of this while it lasts*. :)

* I'd like to think, well into the foreseeable future for even the youngest of us.


David.

Georg Wrede wrote:
> Though unpleasant reading, somebody has to write this, too. (My appologies to Walter, and to the rest of us.)
> 
> 
> Painting Devils on the wall
> 
> What happens if Walter gets run into by a drunk, and is off-line for 6 months? Or permanently??
> 
> Ideally there should be an explicit plan for such things. And it should be public. Some benefits:
> 
> o We'd all know what to do if it really happens
> 
> o Firms and corporations considering D have less one-man-show worries
> 
> o It simply is prudent
> 
> o "The accident doesn't come if you're insured"
> 
> o Initial time wasted on copyright issues, language goal etc. vanish
> 
> My sincerest appologies, again, for writing this -- but it really needs to be addressed now and not on some rainy fall day.

I agree.  This is one of the things that turns people away from D.
Walter needs to assign a care-taker who can sort things out during his
absence.  Personally, I think Andrei would be the best candidate but who
knows if he would want the responsibility.

-Joel