When I started this gardeners project in early January 2006: Package and Resource Directory http://wiki.alu.org/Package_and_Resource_Directory
I set this milestone: The goal is considered fulfilled if at least 500 new entries will be added to CLD within 3 months from the project start [i.e. by early April 2006] The good news is that we have reached this milestone a few weeks earlier than expected. As of now, the Common Lisp Directory has 509 entries, 238 of which are for libraries/tools/software. The bad news is that the contribution from gardeners was minimal. Of the current 509 entries, 434 (85.3%) were submitted by CLD administrators (262 by me), the remaining 75 (14.7%) by package authors, gardeners and other users. Is this all the outcome of the Reddit furor? Where is all the initial enthusiasm? Where are the hundreds of subscribers to the gardeners list? If there are so few resources even for such simple tasks as submitting entries to the CLD, how can we hope to improve Common Lisp's attractiveness for new users? I realize that my frankness may sound harsh. I am aware that volunteer labor is a gift, and that Real Life takes its toll. But I would like to understand why the CLD has received so little help, and whether this may have any implications for current and future gardeners projects. The Package and Resource Directory project is a sort of litmus test, because contributing is trivial. It does not require any coding skills, just a general understanding of how an open-source project works. Submitting an entry takes a few minutes, and the work on more entries can be conveniently spread over a number of short, isolated sessions. Yet only a handful of users did that--a big thank to all of them. We can still win big if we realize that many small contributions can significantly add up. In the case of the Common Lisp Directory, for example, there are still many valuable Lisp packages and resources waiting to be mined. Avoiding duplicate work is now even easier: the CLD search feature makes it possible to check whether an entry is already present. Volunteers can also take up maintenance of existing entries for keeping them up to date. Just ask the CLD administrators to become a maintainer of an entry. I hope that my comments will stimulate the realization that the future of Lisp is in the hands of its users. There are probably no fundamental technical reasons why Lisp is not more widespread: the fragmentation of implementations, the lack of cross-platform GUI toolkits, the difficulty of generating standalone executables, the parentheses, the lack of standardized APIs, whatever. It's just that not enough users do something. Ideas and discussions are no longer enough. Lisp needs labor, not praise. Paolo -- Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log - http://www.paoloamoroso.it/log _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
