[Ecls-list] Project status and changes (please read)

Mon Oct 14 04:06:46 UTC 2013

Dear Juanjo,

Thank you very much for your diligent and hard work over such a long period
of time!

It is very sad to hear about your decision.  But as you say:  sometimes it
is better to accept reality than to fight against it.

> * First of all, ECL no longer relates to my own work. On the contrary,
other open source projects that I carry on (
https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll?tab=repositories) are more directly
related to my research and are demanded by my group. This is detracting
development time from the project, but there is little I can do, as that
numerical software is what feeds our bellies right now.

It seems that your other projects are based mainly on C, C++ and Perl?  I
imagine that ECL could be an ideal wrapper / scripting tool to unify them
into one powerful framework which would make experimentation with your
libraries much easier.

It would be wonderful if there was funding for such a project so that you
could "feed" your "bellies" at least partly by working on ECL.  But I am
sure you thought about this yourself...

> [...] I spend more time writing grant applications and bureaucracy than I
do in front of Emacs. Quite frustrating as it is, I only see it worsening
in the near future.

Unfortunately this seems to be the general tendency.  I wonder if some day
we will spent all our time "managing" each other - while there is no time
left for actual work.  Getting rid of all this bureaucracy and being able
to use the money for the research itself would be wonderful.

> * *I am resigning and opening the position of ECL maintainer for anyone
to take*. I will grant him or her with full administrative rights and full
responsibility over the project's future. No need to fork the project: if
you really feel you can make it better, step ahead and take it. I will
remain as a support developer and help you as much as I can.

It will be very very difficult to find somebody with the necessary
knowledge, experience, and motivation to take over your position, I fear.

Thanks again for all your help and work,  with my best wishes for you and
ECL's future,

Dietrich

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll <
juanjose.garciaripoll at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> as you may have noticed, my level of responsiveness in the last months has
> gone down to almost zero. At the beginning I expected it would be
> transitory, but it seems that it is here to stay. The situation is such
> that I decided to write this email, both as an explanation and also to
> gather your feedback.
>
> * First of all, ECL no longer relates to my own work. On the contrary,
> other open source projects that I carry on (
> https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll?tab=repositories) are more
> directly related to my research and are demanded by my group. This is
> detracting development time from the project, but there is little I can do,
> as that numerical software is what feeds our bellies right now.
>
> * Not only does my work consume most of my open-software development time,
> but the job overall does significantly constraint the time I can spare for
> the project. As group leader in a research environment with scarce
> resources, I spend more time writing grant applications and bureaucracy
> than I do in front of Emacs. Quite frustrating as it is, I only see it
> worsening in the near future.
>
> * The consequence is that the time I can devote to ECL has serious ups and
> downs. In an environment of rapidly developing tools and libraries, this is
> quite unfortunate, as the project may lag behind and become obsolete. This
> is indeed what has happened with several of the ports out there.
>
> * On top of this, there are a lot of frustrating things that I did not
> want to care about but which are bugging me right now and also stealing
> time. The first one is the license issue. I put out a suggestion to migrate
> to MPIR because I knew that MPIR had an effort to stay with LGPL2.
> Regrettably, I did not know that this effort was abandoned so that if ECL
> wishes to upgrade to any more recent version of GMP/MPIR it has to migrate
> to LGPL3.
>
> * Another nagging issue is testing. You have suffered this in the past and
> it still is a problem: my testing environment is broken and I do not have
> time to fix it. Despite Anton's wonderful library, the fact is that it is a
> heck of a problem to maintain several virtual machines and computers in an
> uncooperative computing environment with frequent blackouts.
>
> * Finally, on the one hand, there are many new upcoming implementations
> out there, some with promising results and features that I do not have the
> time to incorporate -- but which would be simple with resources -- and
> certain forks are consolidating. On the other hand, despite ten years of
> development, I have failed to aggregate any number of *contributing*developers around this project. This may be blamed on the community or on
> myself, and it does not match the supportive and helpful user base that ECL
> has always had, but the fact is that it is a problem and a time has come to
> accept it [but please, I do not need your pity on the IRC channels, ok?]
>
> Though I did not have time to develop, I had time to think, even if on the
> bus trips and planes, and I came to the following conclusions:
>
> * *I am resigning and opening the position of ECL maintainer for anyone
> to take*. I will grant him or her with full administrative rights and
> full responsibility over the project's future. No need to fork the project:
> if you really feel you can make it better, step ahead and take it. I will
> remain as a support developer and help you as much as I can.
>
> * If no one takes over maintenance, I will *continue working as I can*,
> when I can. This may be *unsatisfactory* for many of you -- if this is
> the case, I am sorry, but that's all there is.
>
> In this later case, the following actions are needed:
>
> * I am not going to change ECL's license. LGPL3's restrictions on web
> applications seem stupid to me and, as experience has shown, making such a
> move will only make things worse. Already LGPL2 is a hindrance, but I can
> live with it.
>
> * This said, GMP v5 is insufficient for several platforms but I will
> maintain it as it is. *On platforms where GMP becomes obsolete, it will
> shift to building with "C"* (i.e. no optimized assembly code). I tested
> this on Cygwin/64 and it works -- *indeed it is part of the source tree
> right now*. If you need a better GMP, build ECL with the one that your
> operating system provides and be tied to its license.
>
> * I am abandoning things that I cannot support or that represent an
> inconvenience. *CVS support is dropped as of now*. I will probably remove
> the repository in a few weeks to enforce this. Git is working pretty well
> on Windows, as I have been able to verify, and SF's git repository works
> behind a firewall just nice, while CVS does not.
>
> * On a similar line, if integrating third-party libraries becomes an
> issue, they will be completely *dropped or frozen*. For instance, ECL may
> end up demanding that *you* install libffi or libgc, leaving an old but
> working version for me to enjoy building on Windows only.
>
> * I am also *abandoning the effort to do extensive testing of ECL on
> various platforms*. If you are interested on a particular platform, you
> will have to build and test yourself and report problems through SF's bug
> report.
>
> * I am *no longer providing support through the mailing list*, which is
> relegated to discussing other topics on the development of ECL itself
> --i.e. design flaws, patches, project future, etc. If you hit a bug, report
> it through the mailing list with a reproducible case. If you need help,
> hopefully you will get it from other users here.
>
> I am sorry that things reached this point, but sometimes it is better to
> accept reality than to fight against it. Now it is time for you to speak or
> act. If you feel that this hijacks your interest on the project, there's no
> worry: just say it so :-)
>
> Best,
>
> Juanjo
>
> --
> Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
> c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain)
> http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com
>
>
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