The GitHub repo of the #haskellbasement and foundation packages was just archived, while it currently has 3764 indirect reverse dependencies including cryptonite, pandoc, and accelerate. I don't know why and I don't know what will happen now, but I am concerned.
@mangoiv@jaror I don't really see the problem? To my knowledge, Vincent has not really done any active Haskell work in quite a while, nor should anyone be forced to. Isn't it more honest to archive the repositories to reflect that state properly than to continue providing some illusion that these are active libraries? People can still use the code and fork / revive. Isn't this how open-source projects are supposed to work?
IMHO he should at least allow for the ecosystem to take over these packages without forking. There’s also the technical problem that packages on hackage share one namespace.
@mangoiv@jaror I totally agree with the namespace problem. As to handing things over: while I would almost certainly be willing to do that in a similar scenario, I also think that "you can just fork" is a totally valid position.
@mangoiv@jaror Yes, it's of course ok if you see it that way. I just think we should appreciate any volunteer work, even if volunteers stop providing that work. I'm worried we're discouraging other potential volunteers and contributors if we start calling people who have done a lot names. And BTW, cryptonite was already forked to crypton by Kazu a while ago (but to my knowledge, that still depends on other libraries by Vincent, such as basement and memory).
@kosmikus@jaror totally. I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t respect the work of that person, to clarify, I absolutely do - and I also indeed use crypton myself currently.
@kosmikus@mangoiv@jaror I have no more patience for loud "look at me, I have too many successful projects" martyrdom while turning down every offer of help, it's just unnecessary.
@chris__martin@mangoiv@jaror I agree that this is not incoherent. If the person in question has done something bad. In the concrete situation, I see the clarification of basically already established facts via archiving the repos as a good thing, not a bad thing, but it's totally fine if you and others disagree. The wider context and history is admittedly much more complicated.
Also, I'm concerned that this goes unnoticed. Hackage does not currently show maintenance status very well, so people might think these packages are still suitable to use in new projects.
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