Connection between the Haskell Foundation and the broader community

[silky]

@Axman6

I’m not suggesting that is the purpose, but I am always reminded when I see people trying to do the work a community needs done being held back by people wanting to impose some moral absolutism on a group.

i don’t represent but myself, and my want to not see the same thing that’s made good people leave communities in the past happen to this community, when to me it is already at a fairly fragile stage in its life. Interest in Haskell has waned, commercial support is drying up, and now we want to attack the people who’ve stepped up to do the best for us in good faith?

I would suggest to you that you see these kinds of issues in communities where the board is disconnected from the community.

You are right that Haskell is in a very bad place; yet, it seems the board and several vocal members of this community refuse to acknowledge that.

I personally have never seen a statement from the foundation along these lines; to the contrary I’ve often felt that they see Haskell moving from strength to strength. But you ask the average “working” Haskeller (like myself) and you’ll get a completely different story: the extreme difficulty of finding work; the dismay of people at the “fringes” of the community; the lack of interest from peers not working in Haskell, etc, etc, etc.

I think if I was on the board I would be compelled to reflect on the connection with the community, and how well the present structure of the HF is actually furthering the adoption of Haskell. (Bias: I applied for the board a few years ago, and was rejected, and would not consider applying again.)

I don’t personally think it would serve any useful purpose to rename the board; but I do think that the fact that this attitude is out there, and other mistakes and misteps that the board and HF are making (in my opinion) should be cause for reflection and redirection.

But in order to do that, the leadership has to be willing to listen and engage; i.e. more than just the chair actively posting and more fire-fighting; there has to be actual expression of opinion and desire to do something new. In the mean time one can only hope that they manage to do that.

[hasufell]

@silky

But in order to do that, the leadership has to be willing to listen and engage

If you have ideas about the strategy the technical leadership committee needs to take, you can:

• open an issue here
• write an email to technical-leadership@haskell.foundation
• drop me (or another member you trust) a DM

My experience is that it’s often more fruitful to engage with people in positions directly than to comment on public discussions. I think many of us in open source have shifted to direct communication over the past few years. Maybe that has to do with our public discourse culture, which seems to have taken a hit.

[silky]

@hasufell

If you have ideas about the strategy the technical leadership committee needs to take, you can:

I have tried to interact with the leadership and the foundation in many ways over the years; for example posting issues ( Document community recommended community moderation policies · Issue #345 · haskellfoundation/haskellfoundation.github.io · GitHub ) or posting messages here in this discourse.

Almost everything results in some response like the above - an invitation to participate, and a complete and utter lack of followup, engagement, and action.

Here’s an example from this forum - Haskell Foundation 2026 Update - #8 by silky - where I posted a strong opinion and vision; and the main conclusion of that that I saw was “let’s sponsor writing a book” and @simonpj arguing that everyone wants to invest in Haskell but “something” keeps getting in the way. Sorry to say but this is just completely untenable. It’s completely disconnected with most peoples reality.

I’m sorry but my personal opinion is the haskell foundation is a complete failure [bias: I applied to be the ED years ago and was rejected]; and I don’t have any trust in anyone there for it to be worth my effort, yet again, to get involved with a positive attitude. As people I’m sure you’re all lovely. As a functioning organisation directing Haskell to success; I am, as a Haskell community member, seeing absolutely nothing.

Let me turn the question on you: What have you or the board or the foundation done to show that the community should trust you? What have you done to show that you’ll listen? What have you done to show that you care about the regular people; not just the famous and most vocal? Where are useful meaningful interesting thoughtful changes being discussed? What are the big problems you’ve indentified and who is working on them?

[Execute]

(bias part may not necessarily invalidate ur point if the process of rejection wasn’t very respectful)

[silky]

( the rejection was very respectful ; correct on the other hand … )

[hasufell]

@silky

I applied to be the ED years ago and was rejected

Me too.

@silky

What have you or the board or the foundation done to show that the community should trust you?

That’s a fair question and maybe that needs to be communicated better. Although I find it a bit strange to lay out all my personal open source credentials here. I can share my TLC application with you in private, if you like. Would it help if such applications were public and everyone in the community can see what the candidates bring to the table and also better understand board decisions?

All of the board (and TLC) members have rather impressive track records in the Haskell ecosystem and it was my impression that these records are well known (I’m sure you do) and are also proof of their commitment to the community. But I get the feeling that is not what you are asking.

@silky

Where are useful meaningful interesting thoughtful changes being discussed?

In terms of the TLC, we are in the process of formulating a joint vision. You can already read most of our individual manifestos here: Pull requests · haskellfoundation/technical-leadership-committee · GitHub

Concrete changes are being discussed in public (as always). Through proposals… whether that’s through the TLC, the GHC SC, CLC etc., doesn’t matter. It has always been transparent.

Anyone is invited to comment on those manifestos and challenge them, open tickets about their alternative ideas of a vision, etc.

We do of course also have internal discussions that are not public.

However… I’ll be honest that overly broad discourse posts like “Hey community, what should we do?” probably won’t be very enlightening. We may run more specific community surveys to better identify issues, but all of us have been deeply involved in the community and have a wide network.

If you think any of us is out of touch, then that’s fair. But I’d need more specific commentary as to why that is the case for the TLC (I cannot speak for the board and I’m not a board member).

@silky

What are the big problems you’ve indentified and who is working on them?

You can see them in my own manifesto here.

I’ve had a conversation with the HSRT last week about the state of Haskell Infrastructure security. Tomorrow I’m going to chat with some people about how to best connect to industry (which I find much harder than connecting to the open source community).

Finding contractors to execute our agenda won’t be trivial. We are budget constrained and need to find ways to show incremental improvements, deliver small successes and attract more funding, before we can tackle larger projects… and do all that in the probably most chaotic time frame that software engineering has ever experienced, as unpaid volunteers.

Maybe you can help us?

[silky]

I like your response @hasufell ; and all I can say is I hope you have success, and perhaps other members of the board will follow your example

[LaurentRDC]

Hey Noon,

Until recently, I, personally, genuinely thought of the HF as being a way to improve the way we interact with Haskell-the-language; a neutral, technology-focused organization.

Forgetting for a second the situation, I am ready to say that this is misguided, and I think I’m basically coming around to the idea that the HF is really about empowering people first (and sharing that empowerment second). I don’t think I’m fully aligned on everything Noon posted here, but I’m much more aligned than I was even 6 months ago.

Not to say that the HF doesn’t have a role in technical matters; I have pushed for the TLC to be created, and I will defend its ability to operate tooth-and-nail, so that the HF spends its resources on improving our interaction with Haskell-the-language and its ecosystem.
This actually frees the HF from managing the technical agenda, so the Board can focus on everythign else.

Now, what I personally see the HF being more and more, is, as you suggest, a way to reach in and out, and share the love of Haskell. I want people to be enthusiastic about Haskell, and I want to share that enthusiasm.
Even though it’s not at all visible from the outside yet, there’s a lot inside the HF that we’re working on to make this a reality. Things that are visible, or nearly so, include:

• Being more visible. It starts with being more active on social media. There’s tons of people that interact with the Haskell community outside of Discourse, so we’re expanding there.
• More regular communication. It’s really unfortunate we dropped the monthly updates, but we’ve started them again
• Community events. We had AmeriHac last year, having it again this year. Last year, 30% of people were new to Haskell if I recall correctly. We’re also thinking about supporting other affiliate events in big cities (Lisbon when?), and of course we have our Zurihac-adjacent events which are a little further away.
• Having a community of industrial users of Haskell, without necessarily being a sponsor of the HF. Arseniy, having recently joined the Board, has great ideas on this and more. Once the situation is handled, I’m really excited about tackling this with him and the Board.

I haven’t addressed everything in Noon’s post, but I hope you can see that things are happening, and what you (and others) say does make a difference.

[sclv]

Just to give a bit of history newer people may not know. HF did face an important problem at outset, which was how to establish legitimacy in a context where many groups and teams did things informally out of volunteers of various sorts, all of whom have many opinions. As an advisor on the effort, and someone who later played a role in the technical working group, and also as someone on a few of the teams HF sought to cohere (cabal, admins, etc), I witnessed both sides of things. It was a very long, respectful process, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes upfront, to try to get different groups to cohere more formal structures, understand what they did, how they operated, and then secure from them agreement to general principles and alignment to work with HF without necessarily subordinating themselves to it. There were suspicions to be worked through, and doubts, but also there was general broad support and will to make it happen, because the most respected and responsible figures in the community (i.e. those who were already the de-facto leaders) were behind the effort.

So the HF didn’t just come out of nowhere and name itself that – it was a long process by which different groups were incorporated, the community was brought onboard, and at every step, folks made sure that voices were heard and concerns were addressed.

Now, as to the health of the HF since, I have mixed opinions – it has been on the whole a good thing and I support it, but also as the discussion reveals, it hasn’t always had exactly my set of priorities, it has had a bit of a rotating cast of directors, and I’ve definitely felt and heard that the board at times has been too indecisive, or dragged its feet on many issues, or perhaps chased projects that I did not think would be the most productive use of resources. However, that’s democracy for you! I’ve tried to remain supportive and push in the directions I felt best, including in the TWG, because I knew that I could contribute to Haskell that way, and because I knew that the path to improving things was trying to help the HF move in the direction I felt most useful. My view today is the same – it does reflect most aspects of the broader Haskell community, but that doesn’t mean its necessarily where I wish it was as an organization, or in purely structural terms, and that isn’t the fault of individuals, but because this sort of thing is hard, we have limited time, and the more we can all figure out how to row in the same direction, the more we’ll be able to accomplish.

[mastarija]

I’d just add that while some of the decisions may very well be worrying at times it’s important to resist the urge to add more “checks and balances”.

While these things may make sense in some settings, usually much larger organizations, Haskell is too small IMHO to shoulder any more administrative machinery, rules and regulations, than what we have right now.

[jmct]

I’ve mostly refrained from community discussions as I’m on a bit of a sabbatical from open source for a bit as I deal with some personal stuff.

That said, I felt compelled to chime in on this one.

It’s true, the HF is a flawed organization (I was a flawed ED, for that matter) and the Haskell community is facing many challenges. Despite these flaws, my personal view is that the HF is net-good and I intend to help and volunteer when I get back on the open source wagon.

Even if the HF renamed itself, or somehow became “not official” (whatever that would look like), it wouldn’t change much because the HF doesn’t “control” very much at all! The HF is really about coordination and community. As @LaurentRDC pointed out, organizing events and coordinating between various stakeholders is real work that improves the Haskell community, regardless of the name of the org that does it.

There’s good criticism in this thread and there’s a lot to learn from it. I just don’t believe that the solution is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Let’s improve things together.

[Axman6]

Something I left out earlier that I should have mentioned, is that while I feel interest in Haskell has waned and I at least feel the community has shrunk somewhat, I also feel that some of the best work we’ve seen around tooling at least has been seen in the past few years. I don’t think that happens by accident, we’ve seen quite a lot of work to corral people together to focus work on tools like HLS and GHC, and have seen amazing work on various tools for debugging and profiling. In many ways the community has built the things people told us were missing years ago. I think in many ways the community, at least from a code and project perspective, is much stronger than it used to be. So a big thank you to any and everyone involved in making that happen, I try to call it out whenever I see announcements for new tools and released because I know it often goes un(vocally)appreciated.

I do think as a community we still struggle to band together to work on larger projects, much more than some other language communities, and I’d love to know why that is so we can help improve it.

[simonpj]

Perhaps I can add a few thoughts about the Haskell Foundation.

• The Haskell open-source ecosystem finds itself in an “uncanny valley”.

  • One stable place (A) is the enthusiast project, where project community is relatively small and consists entirely of volunteers, people know each other, there are few governance issues, and no one truly relies on the software for mission-critical applications so they are tolerant of technical shotcomings.
  • Another stable place (B) is where the project has a large (usually corporate) sponsor, companies absolutely rely on the software in a mission-critical way, there are a substantial number paid staff to deal with engineering, people typically don’t know each other, and there are somewhat heavyweight governance structures.

• Haskell is in the middle: we have scaled beyond the enthusiast stage, companies do rely on Haskell, quite a lot of people know each other but many do not, and volunteers remain the driving force.

  Lying between (A) and (B), the Haskell ecosystem has some of the strengths of both, but also some of the weaknesses. In particular we suffer from the tragedy of the commons. There is tons ot stuff that we all rely on every day, but which none of us wants to pay for. That stuff ranges right the way from nitty gritty things like what servers Hackage runs on to organisational questions like how we can bring the creative energies of volunteers together (e.g. a topical one is: what does Cabal need to do to support a build system based on Buck2 and who might pay for it?).

• The HF was formed to address these system-level challenges. It is, and always has been, primarily a “glue” organisation. The idea is not to take over the creative work of volunteers, but rather to help coordinate our efforts, and fundraise to cover the endless boring-but-essential engineering work that needs to be done. Here is the HF’s vision statement , and a video of my talk launching the Haskell Foundation at the Haskell Exchange in 2020. (Incidentally, this video is itself a tiny example of the HF in action. When SkillsMatter (who ran HaskellX) closed, we coordinated volunters (and found a bit of money I think) to rescue the HaskellX talks and put them up on the HF YouTube channel. Jose, who posted earlier in this thread, did the legwork.)

• Initially the HF employed a full-time Executive Director (Jose had this role). That gave the HF the capacity to actually do things, but it was also expensive. We have now moved to a volunteer-led model with no ED, so that we can spend most of the HF’s funds on specific projects.

• The HF is led entirely by volunteers. I am no longer a board member so I am free to say: we should all be deeply grateful to members of the HF for giving their most precious and non-fungible resource – their own time – to help create an envionment in which the Haskell community and ecosystem can flourish.

• Volunteers are not perfect. They are busy with their day jobs. They may make errors of judgement. They struggle to balance competing priorities for what the HF might do. They are often not very good at fundraising. I myself am guilty of all these shortomings. And yet, I can tell you from first-hand experience: members of the HF board are trying hard to enact the HF’s vision, and they are, without exception, thoughtful, competent, and hard working.

• So the solution is not to undermine the Foundation, still less to imply that the motives of the board members are suspect or that they are incompetent. Rather it is to act as a “critical friend”. Affirm the Foundation and seek to improve it. Offer to help with specific tasks. Make constructive suggestions. Nominate yourself to become a board member.

I love Haskell and its community. I think we can work together to share the joy and satisfaction that we find in Haskell. The HF is, for me, an essential component of that “working together”. If it didn’t exist, we’d be forced to invent it. As sclv put it so well: “this sort of thing is hard, we have limited time, and the more we can all figure out how to row in the same direction, the more we’ll be able to accomplish”.

Onward and upward

Simon

[TeofilC]

@simonpj

• So the solution is not to undermine the Foundation, still less to imply that the motives of the board members are suspect or that they are incompetent. Rather it is to act as a “critical friend”. Affirm the Foundation and seek to improve it. Offer to help with specific tasks. Make constructive suggestions. Nominate yourself to become a board member.

I agree. My feeling is that everyone in the HF was acting in good faith and intending to work towards the good of the Haskell community. Despite that, I believe, serious mistakes were made.

We live in unequal societies, and we carry the biases of our societies with us. Creating an inclusive community often requires us to go against the grain and expend greater effort.

At a point like this, the HF should promptly figure out what steps it can take to restore the faith of the community, but also we should reflect constructively on how we got here. With a bit more oversight, perhaps different decisions would’ve been made.

It is not enough to say that more people should get involved in the HF (although that is something that should definitely happen!), we should also consider why more people, and specifically people who would’ve spotted these issues aren’t already involved. What active steps can the HF take to get these people involved and what active steps can the HF take to make the community more inclusive in general?

Already in this thread, people have expressed that they’ve tried to be involved before but that it hasn’t worked out. We need to figure out how to change things so that folks can get involved and ensure that the composition of the HF’s decision making bodies reflects the diversity of the community

[Elland]

As usual, very well put @TeofilC :

What active steps can the HF take to get these people involved and what active steps can the HF take to make the community more inclusive in general?

Very good reminder that the burden to improve things here is on the HF itself.

I try not to write this much in here or elsewhere. I have a tendency to be both verbose and inflammatory, which tends to be counter-productive.

I will, in spite of it all, give it a try. Here we go.

Whilst I can understand (and yet not sympathise with) the situation the board finds themselves in, it’s also a bed of their own making. It is not the first time we’ve had a similar situation about platforming horrible people. No lesson was learnt. Once again the mindset of form over substance, where a polite racist trying to kill us is viewed more sympathetically than a frothing antifascist fighting for our lives, won out.

What I can’t understand is how it can take this long to come up with a mea culpa, at the very least.

At this point a simple backtracking is not really enough and would only signal that the board has acquiesced to the outcry but it is either unwilling or unable to address the underlying issues that brought us here in the first place.

I can’t see a way forward that does not include some people stepping out and resigning.

We’re not that far off from that whole podcast episode situation, and we went from platforming the worst amongst us, to giving them board seats.

At this point we’ve spent a lot more time and effort discussing and complaining that it took the HF board to vet him.

It’s a lot harder to regain trust that is lost, and just saying “oops we didn’t really check” is not how you do that.

Let’s not throw away the good we did and can continue to achieve here. Perhaps not having to justify you very existence all the time eating at you 24/7 in a constant state of stress makes it difficult for some of you to see the level of emotional distress these things cause on the very people foundational to the success and health of our little niche ecosystem, but I urge you to try and do better, not just say we’re going to.

Right now it all feels yet again like some theoretical discussion where we’re all so happy to have, exchanging pretty words and patting each other on the back because we’re so good at taking criticism, yet nothing substantial has been done to repair the undeniable harm committed against this supposed community of peers.

Hopefully this discussion raises at least some awareness to the level of the damage.

[mpilgrem]

As above, this a personal contribution. The Foundation’s board can be no more representative of the community than the pool of people who respond to its open calls for applications to join the board. Rightly or wrongly, the Foundation does not publish the identity of people who apply but are not successful, and I will respect that.

However, I think I can say this. I have experienced a few of those calls since I joined the board in April 2024. As Secretary, I handle some of the administation of the process. First, the board has not been inundated with applications. Board members have had to make choices, and some of those are difficult (different members often make different choices and the Schulze voting method works through that) but we have not been ‘spolit for choice’. Second, in my view, the composition of the current board is not markedly different from the composition of the pool of applicants.

[Elland]

I can certainly understand and sympathise with the lack of applicants but…

What active steps can the HF take to get these people involved and what active steps can the HF take to make the community more inclusive in general?

You’ve identified a problem, what is being done to address it? I don’t think there’s been any public discussion or communication from the foundation itself to this problem until now, has there?

This is not a ‘build it and they’ll come’ thing. IMO active action is needed.

[ppkfs]

@simonpj

• still less to imply that the motives of the board members are suspect or that they are incompetent.

Why? It is quite clear that the statement one or more people on the board were incompetent in this specific instance of discussion is the best possible interpretation of events. I don’t think listing out less positive interpretations is helpful, even if there are strong visible signs that it this best interpretation is not the most likely one.

To be incredibly clear: The problem I am describing is the whole “tech is apolitical” angle, debate, and minefield.

[MangoIV]

@mpilgrem

can be no more representative of the community than the pool of people who respond to its open calls for applications to join the board

This is obvious, yes, but it’s not the problem that we ought to solve. If we assume that our community is in fact diverse, then the problem is rather why is there no diversity on the board, to the degree where board members don’t realize that they are putting people into positions of power over a community whose members they hatefully attack.
There must be a reason why there are no applicants. Maybe because the potential applicants with such a background are aware that, indeed, this board does not represent them?

Obviously, this is a self-reinforcing chicken-and-egg effect. But that’s exactly why leaders of a community that wants to be inclusive and diverse has to actively try and foster such a community, it won’t happen by “voting for members based on their technical merits” or disregarding the fact that they are oblivious to The Haskell Foundation’s guiding principles.

[chreekat]

You know, as an American I despaired for a long time that our two big political parties no longer seemed to adequately champion my interests. As a nerd I had dumb ideas about getting into politics to fix things™ but that seemed pretty hopeless, too. I’m obviously not cut out to be a politician.

Eventually — quite lately, I’m ashamed to admit — I realized there’s a path that’s actually more achievable and more likely to have results: form my own groups. Don’t hang out with people who bother me or who I disagree with. Find like-minded people and create/build/discuss/enjoy life together. Not every bubble is a bad bubble. Grassroots means a lot of different small groups growing over time and finding common interests and common causes. And guess what? With enough such activity, the big parties change their focus to adapt to what’s happening at the grassroots level. You can’t say that the American political parties haven’t changed a lot over the last decade! They’re reacting to what voters want!

Anyway, same goes for Haskell. We’re in an extremely nice situation where our “big party” doesn’t have an army and a navy and a police force that wants to enforce its own particularly narrow views on reality. We can really just walk away and build something else if we want.