Re: Team Collaboration Considerations

[Jerry D <jvdelisle2@gmail.com>]

On 12/13/22 12:10 AM, Janne Blomqvist wrote:
--- snip --
>> Any thoughts from all?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I haven't commented earlier as I haven't been active in GFortran
> development for a couple of years (new job, kids, etc. etc.). So don't
> take my opinions too seriously.
> 
> But in general, yes, I do think IRC is showing its age in an
> increasingly multi-device and mobile world. From a Free Software
> perspective, adopting a closed platform like Slack is perhaps not
> ideal, if alternatives exist. And I believe the free (as in beer)
> version of Slack has some significant limitations compared to the
> licensed one. Matrix is perhaps the one with the most future
> potential, but maybe it's not really there yet. While I haven't used
> Mattermost myself, I've heard good things about it. And as long as
> it's not used as some sort of permanent record of things instead of
> the mailing list, I guess it's relatively easy to switch to another
> platform in the future. Just to be sure, this is some hosted version,
> and not something which Jerry must maintain himself on some server in
> a dusty corner?
> 
> As for the perennial question of how to attract new contributors,
> yeah, it's hard. I'm happy to see that Harald has gotten off to a
> flying start, amazing! I also do note with some satisfaction that
> there's some good efforts to make modern Fortran attractive for
> developers, and not just something you use because the codebase you
> work on was started 4 decades ago. Gtk-Fortran was an early example of
> this which showed that modern Fortran could be useful outside the core
> numerics domain. I'm also thinking of the https://fortran-lang.org
> site and associated efforts like the 'stdlib', a more fleshed out
> 'standard' library (https://stdlib.fortran-lang.org/ ), and the
> package manager FPM (https://fpm.fortran-lang.org ). Keeping in touch
> with these people, and suggesting that people help that effort if they
> aren't comfortable with hacking on the compiler outright, could be a
> way of growing the open source Fortran programmer base, which could
> eventually grow into contributors to the compiler itself? In
> particular if they want to use some newfangled Fortran feature that
> doesn't work in GFortran; scratching your own itch is always a good
> motivator!
> 

Hi Janne, great to hear from you and thanks for mentioning the efforts 
of others.

Best regards,

Jerry