Warning: comments based on mailing list/internet obesrvations which may
be more representative of what people say than what they do.
On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Mark P Jones wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> | Out of curiosity, how big is the user community? How many downloads of
> | the software? How many are on this list?
>
> I don't know the answers to any of these, but I think you're implying
> "very small", and I'm sure you're right. Perhaps you're also suggesting
> that our community is too small for this kind of development model, and
> again that may well be true. What does this say about the future of
> Haskell?
The other question to consider is the `sociological makeup' of the user
base. Looking at most people who hack on Free Software projects they are
either people doing undergrad computer science degrees or who work in
computers after finishing/dropping out part way through computer science
degrees. I'm tempted to suggest that as a consequence this means that
they've got a reasonable background in computers and a desire to do
something interesting (those that are working tend to imply their jobs
bring in money but aren't terribly fascinating).
The impression I get of the Haskell community is that it's made up to
quite a large extent of either post-grad students or people with Phd's
working in academia. (I know there are people like Alex who use Haskell in
their work but I get the impression there's far fewer of them than of the
other two.) In both those cases I could argue that these people have jobs
they find interesting and are relatively un-inclined to spend long
evenings working on code outside their direct work `for the fun of it'
(certainly applies to me). As partial support for this I'd mention that
the only academic I can think of who I know has done some work on
`mainstream' free software without (as far as I know) it being done as
part of one of their research programmes in Lennart Augustsson.
Are there any undergrads/just graduated & got a job people out there on
the list who could give a first-hand account of their opinions about free
software and their attitudes to whether they'd prefer to be working on
something mainstream like hacking GNOME as opposed to doing something
`cool but hidden under the hood' on a Haskell implementation? These people
seem to be the sort of people who are the `workhorses' of the free
software community in general.
___cheers,_dave______________________________________________________
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "He'd stay up all night inventing an
www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~tweed/pi.htm alarm clock to ensure he woke early
work tel: (0117) 954-5253 the next morning"-- Terry Pratchett
