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Unfortunately, IMHO Clojure’s maintainers hold an iron grip on the language and actively limit the growth of an ecosystem around it. See “Open Source is not abo

Unfortunately, IMHO Clojure’s maintainers hold an iron grip on the language and actively limit the growth of an ecosystem around it. See “Open Source is not about you”. It’s too bad, because itself is really terrific.

pjmlp 3y ago
To their right, Rich Hickey almost got bankrupted while developing Clojure. The usual "expect all for free, give nothing back" attitude.
- threatofrain 3y ago
  Rich Hickey basically wrote this in response to one of the notable and respected contributors of his ecosystem. If Rich wanted open source to be nothing more than a license and delivery mechanism then he shouldn’t have accepted volunteers. But a language without an ecosystem of volunteers is a dead language.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Many languages do quite well as commercial products.
  - erichocean 3y ago
    Clojure "the language" is certainly ossified, but Clojure "the ecosystem" is doing very, very well.
    - nocman 3y ago
      I'm genuinely curious. What about the language do you feel is "ossified"? I am interpreting that as being a negative description. Stability is extremely valuable. A lack of change to the core language over extended periods of time can be a very good thing, especially if certain changes would break existing code. Rich has made it clear that he is indeed targeting this kind of stability. Again, I would be very interested to hear what specific changes you think need to be made to 'Clojure "the language"'.
      - erichocean 3y ago
        No changes, I'm a happy Clojure user. Long-term stability is one of its selling points.
        nocman 3y ago
        Been busy and didn't see the response... So... you meant 'ossified' in a good way?? If so, I guess I would have used a different term that didn't have such a negative connotation.
wartijn_ 3y ago
Link to Open Source is not about you: https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba9519972d9 https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...
fulafel 3y ago
I think being conservative about evolving the language, and ecosystem growth are mostly different issues, the open source post was about the core language. Comparing to other languages I think the stability of the language has served the user community really well and been an enabler of the ecosystem. I guess the continuous language additions and resulting complexity & library/framework chuirn in some otherlanguages can also be seen as vitality and growth, but for many of us it's the wrong kind of growth. (And yes there are also disadvantages to the centralised development model of the core language) edit: there's a good summary of the discourse surrounding this post in the reddit comments at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/a0pjq9/rich_hickey_open_source_is_not_about_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/a0pjq9/rich_hickey...
waffletower 3y ago
The iron grip is on a decidedly double-edged sword. I applaud the continuity and maintainability of Clojure and its ecosystem. The consistency of the language has come from this stern stewardship. Rich makes very clear that the source code for the language is available to be forked. Very interesting developments have come from this, most notably babashka.

pjmlp 3y ago

To their right, Rich Hickey almost got bankrupted while developing Clojure. The usual "expect all for free, give nothing back" attitude.

threatofrain 3y ago
Rich Hickey basically wrote this in response to one of the notable and respected contributors of his ecosystem. If Rich wanted open source to be nothing more than a license and delivery mechanism then he shouldn’t have accepted volunteers. But a language without an ecosystem of volunteers is a dead language.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Many languages do quite well as commercial products.
- erichocean 3y ago
  Clojure "the language" is certainly ossified, but Clojure "the ecosystem" is doing very, very well.
  - nocman 3y ago
    I'm genuinely curious. What about the language do you feel is "ossified"? I am interpreting that as being a negative description. Stability is extremely valuable. A lack of change to the core language over extended periods of time can be a very good thing, especially if certain changes would break existing code. Rich has made it clear that he is indeed targeting this kind of stability. Again, I would be very interested to hear what specific changes you think need to be made to 'Clojure "the language"'.
    - erichocean 3y ago
      No changes, I'm a happy Clojure user. Long-term stability is one of its selling points.
      - nocman 3y ago
        Been busy and didn't see the response... So... you meant 'ossified' in a good way?? If so, I guess I would have used a different term that didn't have such a negative connotation.

wartijn_ 3y ago

Link to Open Source is not about you: https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba9519972d9 https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...

fulafel 3y ago

I think being conservative about evolving the language, and ecosystem growth are mostly different issues, the open source post was about the core language. Comparing to other languages I think the stability of the language has served the user community really well and been an enabler of the ecosystem. I guess the continuous language additions and resulting complexity & library/framework chuirn in some otherlanguages can also be seen as vitality and growth, but for many of us it's the wrong kind of growth. (And yes there are also disadvantages to the centralised development model of the core language) edit: there's a good summary of the discourse surrounding this post in the reddit comments at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/a0pjq9/rich_hickey_open_source_is_not_about_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/a0pjq9/rich_hickey...

waffletower 3y ago

The iron grip is on a decidedly double-edged sword. I applaud the continuity and maintainability of Clojure and its ecosystem. The consistency of the language has come from this stern stewardship. Rich makes very clear that the source code for the language is available to be forked. Very interesting developments have come from this, most notably babashka.