Clean and the Open-Source community (was: Re: [clean-list] future of clean)

[Arnout Engelen]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:05:29PM +0100, Bas van Dijk wrote:
(snipped: several good reasons why Clean would benefit from having an
active open-source community around it)
> 
> To sum it up, I can see no reason why research and an active opensource 
> project can't coexist nicely. In fact, I think the two can complement 
> eachother.

I - basically - agree. I think the main reason there is no `Clean Open-Source 
Community' yet is, simply, that nobody did it yet. 

Building a community takes more than releasing a piece of software under
an OSS license.

To build this community, there are a couple of things that could happen:
* List Clean on freshmeat.net and similar sites
* Better, community-oriented, documentation for beginners, particulary
  un*x users. A good idea would be, imho, to set up a Wiki (not familiar
  with the concept? look at http://wiki.wxwidgets.org for example).
  It could also try a bit harder to explain the virtues of Clean (and
  functional languageis in general) in `newbie/geek language'.
* Maybe infrastructure for reporting bugs and sending in patches?
  (for example a page on sourceforge.net or an installation of bugzilla)

Note those aren't really things that only the `Clean Team' can do. It
might well be that the `Clean Team' isn't really interested in an
open-source around Clean - or at least not interested enough to put
effort in making it happen. 

In a way, it's a kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: you'll need a couple
of dedicated enthousiasts to get it off the ground, but those hardly
come falling out of the clear sky. 

On a more positive note: if you're willing to get all this rolling, I'm
quite prepared to provide some hosting. Actually CNCZ will probably be
willing to make some space available too, but it might be what you need to
get started. I'm sure efforts will be warmly welcomed by the existing
Clean community.


Just some ideas. Kind regards,

-- 
Arnout Engelen <arnouten at bzzt.net>

  "If it sounds good, it /is/ good."
          -- Duke Ellington