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Why does it matter if he can or cannot capture the majority of that market? The points can still be valid. A few thousand users is still a win for him.

agbell 5y ago
Agreed and also it is valuable to not have a total monoculture. It's helpful to have people out and exploring other ways to do things.
sgbeal 5y ago
> Why does it matter if he can or cannot capture the majority of that market? Amen to that. FWIW... i've actively contributed to fossil since 2008 and can say with some authority that we (the "regulars" on the project) have never done "PR pushes" for more users. It's simply not how any of us function. We welcome those who stop by, and we're happy to evangelize when approached, but we don't go actively hunting for more users. We're more of a "build it and they will come (or not)" project. Every couple of years someone pops up in the mailing list/forum proposing ways we could gain more users if we'd just do this and that and that other thing, but that's simply not a priority for any of us who actively work on Fossil. Continued work on Fossil is not about dominating the DVCS field (git has, for better or worse, long since done that). As Richard is quoted in earlier responses in this thread, Fossil is, first and foremost, a tool for maintaining sqlite. Similarly, i make use of Fossil for literally all of my own code because it's a great tool for the job, whereas git is... errr... less so. PS: the overwhelming majority of FOSS projects are far closer in size and scope to sqlite than they are to the Linux kernel (for which git was created).
- mscrnt 5y ago
  > PS: the overwhelming majority of FOSS projects are far closer in size and scope to sqlite than they are to the Linux kernel (for which git was created). It's amusing if not ironic how many comments are something to the effect of "...but how messy and clumsy would the Fossil approach be when working with the Linux kernel that has 1000s of contributors pushing 1000s of commits..." when the sum total of projects approximating the size of the Linux kernel can be counted on one hand, and the authors of such comments are almost certainly not working on such projects. Not to mention the author of Fossil has clearly stated that Git is great for Linux kernel development, and Fossil was not developed for such a project.

agbell 5y ago

Agreed and also it is valuable to not have a total monoculture. It's helpful to have people out and exploring other ways to do things.

sgbeal 5y ago

> Why does it matter if he can or cannot capture the majority of that market? Amen to that. FWIW... i've actively contributed to fossil since 2008 and can say with some authority that we (the "regulars" on the project) have never done "PR pushes" for more users. It's simply not how any of us function. We welcome those who stop by, and we're happy to evangelize when approached, but we don't go actively hunting for more users. We're more of a "build it and they will come (or not)" project. Every couple of years someone pops up in the mailing list/forum proposing ways we could gain more users if we'd just do this and that and that other thing, but that's simply not a priority for any of us who actively work on Fossil. Continued work on Fossil is not about dominating the DVCS field (git has, for better or worse, long since done that). As Richard is quoted in earlier responses in this thread, Fossil is, first and foremost, a tool for maintaining sqlite. Similarly, i make use of Fossil for literally all of my own code because it's a great tool for the job, whereas git is... errr... less so. PS: the overwhelming majority of FOSS projects are far closer in size and scope to sqlite than they are to the Linux kernel (for which git was created).

mscrnt 5y ago
> PS: the overwhelming majority of FOSS projects are far closer in size and scope to sqlite than they are to the Linux kernel (for which git was created). It's amusing if not ironic how many comments are something to the effect of "...but how messy and clumsy would the Fossil approach be when working with the Linux kernel that has 1000s of contributors pushing 1000s of commits..." when the sum total of projects approximating the size of the Linux kernel can be counted on one hand, and the authors of such comments are almost certainly not working on such projects. Not to mention the author of Fossil has clearly stated that Git is great for Linux kernel development, and Fossil was not developed for such a project.