Please rename Haskell Foundation

Haskell Foundation
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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.

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23

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

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.

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What is the foundation you want to set up that is currently blocked by the name?

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jesse what are you talking about

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I have tried to interact with the leadership and the foundation in many ways over the years; for example posting issues ( https://github.com/haskellfoundation/haskellfoundation.github.io/issues/345 ) 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?

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

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

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Me too.

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.

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).

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?

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30

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 :slight_smile:

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31

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.

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When a thread with a provocative title like that and a starter claim of “you’re an out-of-touch big bad private entity choking the non-represented community” (hope I got it correctly) goes this copacetic, I’m reminded of the good old xQuasar enters the chat history :smile:

This time it seems to be a clash of cultures, though?

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33

You weren’t blocked. You were banned from /r/haskell on reddit, and others banned you from other subreddits for the same issue: you can’t take feedback. That’s entirely off topic and personal attacks can’t change the facts.

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So someone who wasn’t me and agreed with what i said, said the same thing to you and you disagreed again? That’s precisely the issue we’re all telling you about. It’s not some conspiracy. HTH

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As above, this is a personal contribution. I can’t speak to your experience but, as far as I know, the members of the board of the Foundation have no connection with the Haskell subreddit on Reddit. I’ve looked at the list of moderators, and none of them jump out at me as Foundation directors. I think one of them is a former director. Directors of the Foundation often contribute to other Haskell-related things.

I have been Secretary to the board since about April 2024. During that time, I am confident that the board has never sought to limit the content of the subreddit or otherwise influence its moderators.

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I’m surprised not to see my name in there, interactions like that have happened many times in #haskell. It is also still alive and well, and mostly devoid of drama because there is mostly anarchy and bad behaviour is dealt with promptly if needed (including like the above). I wish we had more IRC and less Discourse and Reddit, but that’s just me. I learnt so much there.

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I can’t see the posts that you’re referring to, but now I recognise the name, I’d like to thank whoever made the decision to make the ban on Reddit. The stream of consciousness, context free posts were frustrating noise that I, among many others, had complained about. They were so bad they were reputational damage for the community as a whole. For all I know, there might be some good stuff in there, but obfuscating all of it intentionally to seemingly invalidate the whole point of writing about it in the first place just made it all feel like intentional trolling.

Also I really want to thank you for all your posts here and the other thread, you’ve put into words much of how I feel much more clearly than I’m able to. :heart:

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Thank you for that remark. It was an eye opener: apparently it’s possible: to just trust people-in-charge && not have checks and balances && that mistakes are just mistakes - nothing more - and fixable(to an extend).. Must be nice to afford that.

I’ve chose Haskell knowing the lack of opportunities and the risks. Recent HF controversial decisions that I happened to notice, made me jumpy, made me see HF as another risk to Haskell’s future. So I’ve just grab the first idee: minimize the risk by minimizing HF visibility/importance. Hence this topic.

I now take back my imature request to rename HF. It’s not my place to ask for that; and also it’s more of a ‘me’ problem here.

I propose that this topic to be closed.

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That was me, and np I’m just glad to end the nonsense.

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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.

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