On one side, everybody agrees that both FPC and Lazarus need more and more volunteers, especially from younger generation to ensure these great projects will have a bright future. But on the other side, sometimes new people aren't very welcome to contribute if this new people doesn't conform to the seniors way of thinking.
Or if they have problems cooperating and functioning in a team with people with different priorities etc. Posting mails like
this doesn't help, and I understand there was also some friction in personal mails between Michael and Maciej.
Nobody is happy on how this went down, but the common view on this is simply wrong. Note that when Maciej became committer, there were already some reservations about temper and cooperation with part of core, but due to huge work done, it was given the benefit of the doubt.
However the comparisons with other cases in this thread is systematically wrong, and is usually based on exit mails of frustrated people that had cooperation difficulties, and threw a tantrum when they didn't get their way soon enough, or when core didn't drop everything they were doing and rallied around their opinion. Most never got as far as Maciej did. Often they did even get as far as Maciej
before he made core even.
In this case it is fairly unique.
This Maciej's case is the latest example, but I've seen similar cases since I joined FPC/Lazarus.
Maciej's case is different, because he made committer and actually functioned quite alright for quite a while. People usually grow significantly when they do that, also in cooperation perspective. The only somewhat similar case is Almindor aka Ales Katona in the 2005-2008 timeframe.
He was terribly noisy and radical as early user and bugreporter, but as he grew older and made core he adapted. Parts of fcl-web and LNet are still his. His exit however was more related to changes in his personal life (graduation and marriage). Lnet became only part of FPC after he left.
On one side, everybody knows that we need to get popular so this project could attract both volunteers and fundings, especially from younger generation.
It wouldn't hurt, certainly.
But on the other side, I don't see much effort has been done to overcome this problem.
The problem is that most people wait for commitment from an overworked core or some revolution and then throw a tantrum when it doesn't happen. Things take time, and significant commitment and persistent.
The list is numerous fcl-web, fcl-db (multiple people actually Sebastian Michael Joost Lacak), fpreport half of packages is from people that came and wanted to add but did cooperate.
Maciej also belongs to that list because rtl-generics is there, nevermind what happened after or what will happen in the future. And that is just FPC, there are also his contributions to Lazarus
The core devs barely think about it, because they mostly think about the technical things.
They have seen 50 such initiatives stumble because the people starting it burned out. They all start too hot and expect change and uptake on a too short timescale and get frustrated. Paradoxically some of those effort succeed later building on those initially failed initiatives. Sometimes by the same person, older and wiser, sometimes by somebody else, and sometimes because it slowly evaluates to become mature enough to be maintained by core and patch submitters.
I don't blame them because it's their focus and concern, but if nobody would tackle and handle these non-technical problems, then we'll getting nowhere.
Plans are not the problem. The manpower to do them is. And the radicals usually burn out before their goals are met. Even partially.
We'll be forever a niché in software development. Nobody cares about Pascal but a bunch of old people who still maintaining their projects in their niché market.
It is possible that remains the case. Most languages are pushed by giga large enterprises. Even with sometimes-paid committers you might not be able to duplicate that.
I think it is better to focus on some uses where strengths lie, than to spread the resources too thin trying to duplicate things in popular fields where you never be considered an equal anyway. Or at least find a clear different angle than just "Pascal".
Now I think I understand why CodeTyphon chose its way. Rather than contributing directly to the project, Sternas (CT's author) simply took the project with him and do it his way so he didn't need to bother with core devs approvals and agreements.
Sternas had never any serious relation or cooperation with core. The project grew from a distro within his company where he combined development versions with his own patched Delphi packages. He had some very doubtful practices like renaming all files, removing or editing copyright messages and not keeping the originals, that made usage of those packages within FPC or Lazarus impossible. There were some attempts to reason with him, but he was unwilling to improve his ways, and that was about it. It was never on any serious level.
Afaik the people working on the lazarus packages repository actually go back to the original packages and merge in CT fixes if necessary, but don't base themselves on CT originals.
Although he did some nasty things with the licenses, but look… FPC/Laz devs don't mind, even support him.
Not that I know. Most work is duplicate effort which could have been avoided if Sternas had cleaned up his act.
So, I think Maciej's decision to work on his own FPC fork is correct. As long as he keeps following FPC development and base his work on it, I'll support him.
I think it is unfair to compare Maciej with Sternas. Before he made core, Maciej was already accountable, and during core he improved how he delivered his changes. Also I see CT more as a distribution with a external packages than a fork. The real work is fairly thin. Newpascal had original new work from the beginning.
A fork is always bad, if only due to the synchronization, but maybe the impact is not too bad long term.
Short term, the impact is horrible. Somewhere in the coming 6-9 months a new major branch must be made for stabilization, and some things could have made it which now won't. This is horrible.
Maybe it's time for FPC and Lazarus to have a new "competitor" other than Delphi so they will start to be more open minded accepting new ideas from new people.
We were, and accepted Maciej as core as a result of it.
If Maciej keeps continuing his work and regularly release stable New Pascal with new features that offers something more than the orginal FPC, I'm sure New Pascal would have its own users and fans. Just like CodeTyphon.
For now I consider it a testbed and development snapshot for Mormot, some of which will remain "unstable" for a long term, see above.
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