On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Brendan Eich <bren...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> On Oct 11, 2011, at 1:47 PM, John J Barton wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Brendan Eich <bren...@mozilla.com>wrote:
>
>> On Oct 11, 2011, at 12:49 PM, John J Barton wrote:
>>
>> > We don't know what the standard will be so we need some why to try out
>> different features.
>>
>> That's not how the committee has worked since 2008, and even before then
>> (pre-Harmony), with a split committee, we still had two groups working on
>> consensus by drafting proposals and prototyping them.
>>
>> The way we try to work is to propose before implementing, including
>> prototype features. Individual vendors don't deviate from proposals
>> unilaterally and silently.
>>
>> If old proposals were implemented, and then the proposals changed, we may
>> have some work to do adjusting implementations (certainly true of
>> SpiderMonkey, and we will do it). But we do not go off on our own, as
>> individual vendors, and try out features never proposed on the wiki.
>>
>
> You're making something out of nothing.
>
>
> Somehow I suspect the shoe would be on the other foot if other vendors did
> likewise.
>
> But I'm tired of arguing in favor of keeping consensus. If it's not
> important, let's all go off and run our own experiments and see what
> happens. Biggest company wins, best two out of three in case of a
> order-of-magnitude market cap tie :-P. That will be fun.
>
>
> If you have a beef with how Google works with the committee, then contact
> a Google rep on the committee and complain to them.
>
>
> I already have, but that's not the topic here: you just wrote "We don't
> know what the standard will be so we need some why to try out different
> features" (cited above) and I wrote back arguing with you, not with anyone
> else.
>
>
> But don't paint the Traceur project as some weird plot to derail your work.
>
>
> I never said anything like that ("weird plot" -- come on!). I don't know
> why Traceur was developed the way it was, and then abandoned (I have some
> theories, but really, who cares?).
>
> Maybe it's someone else's turn to maintain Traceur, and Google has done its
> fair share. The problem is no one else knows the code and Jake said he got
> no response when he asked (but maybe he asked in the wrong channel or
> something). It's hard for others to pick up where things left off.
>
I have quite a lot of first hand experience in picking up where things left
off. No question it's hard, but you may get further by building on Traceur
rather than starting over.
>
>
> It's just like a thousand other open source projects, a risky labor of
> love, a gift to the community of engineers.
>
>
> There is a lot of abandon-ware in open source, but that's a very low bar to
> meet.
>
>
> Well we don't have a Mark and Tom for Traceur. We just have some great
> source code. If anyone here wants to try to match Traceur up to Ecma
> consensus, please step up.
>
>
> So you, another Googler, exhort anyone, or Jake, to "fix it" and "step up"
> (but thanks for the "please" the second time :-/).
>
> I think it's fair to ask why anyone would do that, instead of choosing to
> work on other projects that seem to have active maintainers and open source
> communities going back to their genesis.
>
Juan asked about Traceur. Advocates for other projects can reply if they
like.
>
> Beyond this, I'm still picking a fight with your "We don't know what the
> standard will be so we need some why to try out different features" line,
> which you have not defended. But we can table that, or forget about it if
> you prefer.
>
Well we don't know what the standard will be, that's just a fact. I happen
to think that one needs to gain experience with language features by trying
them out. I know you have a lot of experience so perhaps you don't need this
step. I totally don't understand why you want to prevent Juan or Jake from
trying out ideas related to JS.
>
> Something's wrong here. Jake cited specific concerns about Traceur and got
> a lecture to be grateful for it being open source, and to get to work fixing
> it. Is that really the best answer?
>
I'm sorry if I came across as lecturing. I was taken aback by Jake's
puzzling comments. I was just trying to being things back to reality.
Traceur seems like a useful bit of code; it does not look like it will be
maintained by the original authors. I was trying to encourage Jake and Juan
to participate in taking it forward.
>
> /be
>
>
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