The current name creates a tension between that private entity and the general Haskell community.
The name gives the impression that HF represents the entire Haskell community, which obviously is not true.
With that name, that private entity’s bad decisions unfairly reflects on the entire Haskell community.
Please change your name. Give me and others the option to not care about you. Also, that change will allow room for other fundations to emerge… Which is always a good thing.
Haskell Foundation is not some nebulous thing imposing its will on the community. It is a framework built to help lubricate and facilitate changes that benefit people in the community, and it consists of its members. If you find that you’re underrepresented, or that the HF does not represent enough of a certain segment of the community, get involved. Institutions have to be actively maintained by a reasonably diverse subset of its constituents otherwise, as you’ve seen in the latest debacle, they devolve into incomplete thinking, poor decisions, and wrong judgements about the state of the world.
I encourage you to do something more valuable than complaining about representation: now that Travis is under review, and I hope will be removed on account of the poor judgement that is very apparent from his twitter feed, that you or someone else who thinks like you will run and be the representation you want to see on the Board.
I am writing in personal capacity, and not on behalf of the Foundation’s board (I am one of its 14 directors and its current Secretary - more information is here).
This is also not a direct response to your post. However, if people generally want to understand better the Foundation’s objectives, governance and other policies and procedures, they are set out in the bylaws and other documents at its GitLab meta repository: Making sure you're not a bot!. Minutes of meetings of directors are published at its minutes repository: Making sure you're not a bot!.
Some things have moved on a little since it was first published, but the Foundation’s original vision can be found at: Haskell Foundation Vision. I think the ‘principles and ethos’ are essentially the same today.
Really?
The Board self claims that it “represent the Haskell community to the world” [1]. Who chooses the Board? The community? No. The Board itself.
The Technical Leadership Committee “is responsible for expressing a technical vision for the Haskell community” [2].
Who choose that Commitee? The Board.
And isn’t that imposing when you say that my choice is to get involved and run for the Board of HF if I don’t agree with some decisions? To get there and be voted by the same Board who made those decisions…?
You say I’m complaining.. I’m saying I’m concern about a private entity who non-democratically impose itself as representative of the community.
Go one step further: who makes up the board? Community members. Only the initial board selection was contrived, and they elected the next series of board members once the HF launched through an open application process consisting of… community members. The technical leadership committee also consists of open applications. I’m not sure you’re making a great point here - semantics matter, not the syntax of what we call the subset of community members who select others.
The criteria and decisions are transparent. What’s not transparent are the specific deliberations regarding any specific candidate. Also, the board is not a homogeneous sample of your peers - so if you disagree… get involved and make a good enough case? I don’t know what you want here other than to say dismantle the whole thing because they disagree with you.
IMO, the board is fine as it is right now. If we start to implement more “democracy” than what we have, we’ll just end up with more “bureaucracy” instead.
Or maybe something like the Debian Project Debian Constitution
The scanal about nothing because of nothingness!
What any of members did something forbidden or criminal? None and nothing?
Do any of members does not do something to Haskell language?
So, what the point of angry?
Do you wish to remane? Why? Where in the name do you hear “democracy” or “fully representative” or “forbidden for privite” .
Please, stop this madeness! (c)
It’s not clear to me what you’re suggesting and I may be misunderstanding you, but if you’re thinking that Debian isn’t self-governing, then I’m afraid that is incorrect.
Self-governance is pretty common for foundations and open source communities. Back in the day it took me probably 6-12 months to become a core Gentoo developer. It involved countless technical contributions and a dedicated mentoring process.
If you’re suggesting to set up a similar structure like Debian (Developers ↔ Project Leader ↔ Project Secretary ↔ Project Leader’s Delegates), then I’m not sure that makes much sense. A Linux distribution has a different structure than a Foundation for an open language ecosystem.
What I did was to repply with an example and show that “more democracy” can be that, “more democracy” and not just “more bureaucracy”.
Of course, Debian is self-governing. There are 1000 Debian Developers with equal vote rights. If they mess up, they mess up together and they mess up their own project. They decide their own faith together and that makes it to be a very very long one.
You haven’t explained how you would implement “more democracy” within the Haskell Foundation.
I’m afraid just linking to a project that has a fundamentally different structure is not such an explanation.
Thanks to God Anubis, we are now frequently reminded that we should make sure we are not a bot. I am pretty sure, but who knows?
(Follow the blue highlighting.)
And that was not even my purpose. My purpose - see the topic title and motivation - is so the existing “less democracy” be so reflected in the reality.
Why do you make it so fundametally different? What is so fundamentally different between Debian Developers and Haskell Developers or Debian projects and Haskell projects? Why Debian Constitution cannot be Haskell Constitution? I’m not that knowledge, yes, but I don’t see the impossibility in that.
A Linux distribution usually has very few (but large) projects:
With 20k+ packages, you need hundreds of volunteers, who often work on the same repository/project.
Haskell does not have that structure. Hackage is not a coordinated repository in any stretch of the word. It’s just a place where people upload stuff. It’s a central resource, but the contribution structure is decentralized and uncoordinated, with no one really inheriting any responsibilities on account sign-up (other than not abusing the platform).
Here is an impressive list of Debian Teams: I Challenge Thee
Yes, there’s like 100 teams that are all related to the same thing, which is “packaging” and that work is coordinated. That all makes them Debian developers… and they have to follow debian philosophy, debian packaging policies and understand the intricacies of the distribution and the end users needs.
There is no such joint vision on hackage. It is not the same structure.
You already have ghcup team, GHC teams, hackage team, Cabal teams, haskell org team, stackage, every library team, etc… etc.. etc..
Going back to your Debian example: the reason this works is, because there’s one central place that has the authority to add (or remove) developers to Debian… it’s the Debian developers (which then in turn can vote on things like project lead).
If you would give voting power to ghcup team, GHC team, cabal team, stackage team… then we either:
Or to say it in simpler terms: either we lose control over who can vote or we would need one shared governance structure for every team that can vote.
I am so, so tired of these “arguments”. I’ve seen it happen in the Scala community and it did very little (other than make some extremely talented developers decide the drama was so awful they’d stop contributing to open source at all), I’ve seen it happen in the Rust community, I’ve seen it happen in the Nix community, and it’s all done very little to improve anyone’s life, their sense of identity, or the feeling of harmony of the members who make up the community. It is decisive, in an already small community, whether intentional or not.
But every time I have seen this happen, I’ve been reminded of the CIA Simple Sabotage Manual from WWII, which includes the all too painfully familiar section for anyone who’s worked in a moderately dysfunctional workplace before:
(11) General Interference with Organisations and Production
(a) Organizations and Conferences
(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
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 anyone 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 just don’t want to see it. I don’t intend to reply to any replies to this, I just want voice my frustration, without the moral absolutism I’m seeing from others.
if you don’t like what the HF are doing, don’t use the products of their work, make your own alternatives. I choose to believe these people are all doing things for good reasons, whatever their personal views are.
