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Postings from July 2000
> Last week I sent a long list of complaints to Jon Orwant about how the
> module list had been run. I believe many of the problems would have
> been corrected a long time ago if the discussion process had been more
> open. The module list folks would make some half-baked namespace
> decision about someone's module, and then they would win the
> subsequent argument about it because there were five of them against
> only one module author. Then the following week they would make the
> same half-baked decision about a different module and again they would
> win the argument because it was still five against one.
> If the mailing list had been open, it might eventually have become
> clear to the subscribers that the same problems were recurring.
>
> When the module list owners had policies, the policies were unclear,
> because the mailing list wasclosed. There was no way to tell whether
> the policies were applied consistently or not, and I suspect that they
> weren't. I don't know whether the policies were well thought out,
> because the mailing list was closed.
<counterrant>
My reply will be grossly off-topic for the bootstrap list but I simply
cannot resist because I'm one of "secret cabal" of the module list you
are slamming here. Yes, Jon read your rant to us in the CPAN meeting.
Yes, some of the problems you describe exist. Your module naming
suggestion was once opposed by yours truly. But claiming that the
policies were unclear and they were not applied consistently is simply
incorrect.
The policies are written down in the PAUSE author guidelines. Please
go read the archives and you will see how many simply bad, obscure,
cutesy, vague, module names have been avoided over the years. Yes, we
do have serious problems with the modules list, but the policies were
not the problem: the main problem was that none of us has enough time
to read the list and reply carefully to each and every author.
The list is not a naming monopoly, a module naming registry, it is
just an advisory board. If an author wants to upload his or her
module with a name we don't like, he or she is free to do so. We
haven't ever stopped anyone from uploading a module. Also, we don't
retroactive try to get authors to rename their modules to fit any new
(hopefully better) naming conventions we come up with, like Lingua.
</counterrant>
--
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
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