[erlang-questions] : Was Re: Bug ?! now Erlang comment (LONG LONG)

[Ulf Wiger]

Den 2006-10-27 20:08:11 skrev Jeff Crane <jefcrane@REDACTED>:

> If the only barrier to a language adhering to it's own
> standards is commercial pressure, I would think that
> fork is appropriate. Otherwise, the standards should
> be modified to be more practical (less restrictive),
> since that ends up being the overriding factor in
> deciding changes to the language.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand what you're
trying to say. What standards?

Since Erlang is Open Source, there is of course nothing
stopping you from forking. There have, in fact, been
competing versions of Erlang in the past (e.g. HiPE,
ETOS), but I've gotten the impression that several
users stick with the Ericsson distribution since they
really want something that is as reliable as possible.

A conservative stance on backwards compatibility tends
to come with the territory if you want to boast having
your products running in several "five nines"
installations. But as Erlang grows into different markets,
perhaps there will eventually be sufficient interest in
a sligthly different, perhaps "sexier" Erlang, that a
fork may stand a chance of attracting enough users.

Maybe after 14 years, I've gotten so used to Erlang's
quirks that I'm blind to the need for a more aggressive
stance on language evolution. But I still think it
would be much more fruitful to spend some energy on
developing good analysis and refactoring tools to
help migrate the millions of lines of existing Erlang
code to new, incompatible versions of the language.

BR,
Ulf W

-- 
Ulf Wiger