RE: Future of cons?

[Nadim Khemir]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Allen [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 5:27 PM
> 
> I normally stay out of emotionally charged discussions like this, but I
> have
> to agree that we have to have a reasonable amount of response and support
> of
> Cons if we are to grow, get more users on board, and spread the word.  IF
> users have legitimate problems
> 
> Let's not get cranky about it.  

I can't agree more, Doug didn't seem to take it that bad and Brad and I
agreed to keep our colorful discussion out of this group. For this not to
happen again, understand that I am a big fan of "egoless computing". 

Whatever I say about the persons doing the job has to do with the job or the
organization around it(till I get to "jerk" of course but that seldom
happens ;-) and I really want cons to live in a form or another, so back to
business.

It is actually good that the discussion is emotionally charged, it means
that we care.

Where did we get during this last week? My impression is that we have three
possibilities and three groups.

1/ Those that want to continue with cons as it is and fix it
2/ Go over to SCons and use python
3/ A core with multiple front-ends

I am for a re-write (and some private discussion tell me there are more out
there that would like that) that allows multiple front-ends but I am not
sure how to do that best. The actual code base is not my favorite code to
read but I adapt if 90% want to go that way.

But all this boils down to one or two questions:

1/ how many are we that can invest 5 hours+ per week for this project?
2/ what architecture and language do we use?

When we have an answer to 1 we can go further. We came to a point were
something must be decided. I think this is the more dangerous point in any
open source project because it's when people give up. IMHO Cons is going
through this point again and again. 

Nadim.