I was directed to this thread from an issue I opened on Github, which asked two questions:
- Why were the projects (ZIO, Scalaz, Argonaut, etc.) removed from the build, particularly an explanation of the commit message, “Removed CoC-incompatible projects”
- What steps would be necessary to get some or all of these projects back into the build (i.e. eligibility criteria)
I was disappointed when the thread was closed without explanation or resolution, and I was redirected here. Although I have not read every word of all 230+ posts here (I commend those who have!), I cannot find any answers to these questions from official project maintainers.
While disappointed, I’m still very grateful to Lightbend for sponsoring the community build, and I think it provides tremendous value, helping to ensure a stable Scala compiler for users worldwide. I think the build provides even more value to the Scala community when it includes important projects (for example: Scalaz has 1 million downloads a month; ZIO pushes the type system in novel ways at the intersection of subtyping and FP, and has already identified a number of issues for Scala 3).
More than that, I’m personally grateful to Seth, whose positivity, work-ethic, generosity and commitment to the betterment of the community are evident in his every interaction; and to Adriaan and others whose important work at Lightbend have helped make Scala the production-worthy choice that it is today.
I believe that Scala-the-language belongs to all of us who live and breath Scala, and who have chosen to devote our careers and sometimes our personal lives to the language and ecosystem. I also believe that when companies sponsor work inside the official Scala organization on Github (scala), they are assuming the position of stewards of the Scala community.
Quite unlike being the maintainer of a personal or commercial open source project, I believe that being a steward of the community carries with it great responsibility.
In my opinion, being a good steward of the community means, first and foremost, making decisions in a transparent and equitable fashion, which can withstand close scrutiny; it means making decisions considering only the community as a whole, without consideration of the interpersonal dynamics that often do (and should!) drive personal, third-party and commercial projects; and it means conducting oneself (in that venue) as a consummate professional, including, of course, sometimes making hard choices that not everyone will agree with.
Looking back at the removal of these open source projects from the community build, my own Github issue, and the followup in this thread, I personally believe that there is ample room for improvement in stewardship of the Scala community build.
This is not a knock on anyone, however. It’s very important to recognize that we are all human, and part of being human means making mistakes and learning from them; and moreover, that there’s no guarantee that anyone participating in this thread would do a better job, if they were in the same circumstances and had the same life experiences.
Moving forward—and that’s precisely what we must do, because it’s too easy to remain fixated on the immutable past—I hope that answers to questions such as the ones I’ve raised will eventually become clear to all; I hope transparency and equitability will improve; and I hope and trust that all the well-intentioned people working for the good of the community will learn from this experience, and set an example for other communities of what great community stewardship looks like.
I encourage everyone to lay this issue to rest; and I thank so many for taking the time to share their perspectives on the way forward. Although emotions flared at many points in this thread, it’s obvious a lot of people care deeply about improving the Scala community, and at the end of the day, that is a very positive thing.
P.S. I would rather build the future than argue about it, so I won’t engage further in this thread. Find me at https://github.com/zio/, ZIO’s new organization (unaffiliated with any third-party organizations!), at the new ZIO chat room https://gitter.im/zio/core, or at my personal blog, http://degoes.net. Happy hacking!