On Wednesday, February 26, 2014 4:04:26 AM UTC-5, Matteo Cavalleri wrote: > > > What should we do? What happens to your sources? > > > > Do you not have a clone of the Mercurial repository? What kind of > > question is this? > > I think he's talking about Bram sources, not vim's. I'm not sure we can clone > a human right now... science needs to advance further.
Thanks, Matteo -- you picked up on my veiled humor there. The question was meant to get everyone thinking about how this project works and about what would happen if Bram were gone. In the corporate world, a company might take out a "key man" insurance policy that would provide them with the necessary resources to recover from the untimely death of an irreplaceable or highly skilled/specialized person in the company. It was short and maybe a little flippant-sounding the way I asked it, but I'm serious, and I hope Bram and everyone else will ponder the question a little. I am in no way meaning to denigrate anyone here -- it's been Bram's vision, dedication, and discerning guidance that has made vim the most excellent editor that it is today. When I was considering the situation, I too had a vision like what Andre mentioned -- dozens of forked projects and no clear direction for the average user or even the empowered one who simply doesn't have the time to evaluate all of the choices. Further, I can envision a scenario where someone does take the helm of the project by nature of his/her leadership skills, yet lacks Bram's vision and steers us all into the rocks. As for the assertion that governance by committee does not work, I challenge you to consider the longevity and the vastness-of-reach in each and every one of our lives that has come out of organizations like ANSI, ISO, and IEEE. Consider, also, POSIX: It's a mix of certain things that were not standardized, but were essentially de facto standards of a certain epoch, and other guidelines that were decided upon by committee. Even vim itself is mostly compliant with the POSIX vi standard, and effort was clearly made to document the places where it breaks that standard (vi_diff.txt). So, yes, barring the possibility of cloning Bram, we should consider how we might continue to keep vim going as strongly as it is today with him at the helm. He himself is in a position to structure the future of the project beyond his own corporeal involvement, and I merely ask him to consider the question and the possible scenarios that he could influence now if he wanted to set such wheels in motion. -- -- You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to vim_dev+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
