[fpc-pascal] Re: Delphi's anonymous functions in Free Pascal

[Jonas Maebe]

On 07 Nov 2011, at 18:45, Jürgen Hestermann wrote:

> Jonas Maebe schrieb:
>> That's exactly what he said: you are free to create a fork (= take the FPC source code and do whatever you want with it), and then the currently active FPC developers are also free to take whichever of your patches they consider useful. What's not possible is that other people dictate what you must do with the FPC source code, just like you can't dictate what other people must do.
>> 
> This argument is pulled out each time someone suggest things that the main developers don't like. But despite from the work this requires it would result in my own island solution. It cannot be the goal that thousands of people spawn their own Pascal dialect. I don't think that anybody is wanting this. I thought this open source project is about having a *public* Pascal language which can be discussed and argued about. I know that there will be no common sense about each and every topic but it should be possible to say opinions which possibly make others change their mind (or not).

The problem is that the work needs to be done. And once it is done, it needs to be maintained, and must impact other potential work as little as possible. Because of these reasons
a) people who implement stuff have way more influence than people who only voice their opinion about what/how something should be implemented
b) people who have already implemented lots of stuff have more influence than people who have not done that

It's not that longtime developers won't listen to other opinions, but they do have the final say. Without such a dynamic, the project simply cease to exist. After all, without the people who do the work there is nothing at all, not even a project going into a direction that you don't like.

The reason that this argument is always used is simply because that is simply how it is. You can argue that it should be different, but really the only way to do that is to do the work yourself. That may well be an uphill battle if you wish to fundamentally change some things or the development direction of an entire project, in which case starting your own project may be the best option. After all, that would give you the opportunity to demonstrate that your way is actually better and will attract more/better/whatever developers and users, or otherwise will result in something more useful, rather than just arguing that this will be the case and that people should understand that.


Jonas