Re: Kawa future and governance

[Lassi Kortela <lassi@lassi.io>]

> I'm also less involved with the Scheme community, and I've expressed
> dissatisfaction with how SRFI and R7RS-large is evolving, with
> too many large large APIs that I fear will see little use.

Your criticism is on point. We have definitely bit off more than we can 
chew this year. With so much work to do by a few volunteers, mistakes 
have been made, and will be made.

> I am happy to continue in this "maintenance mode" as long as needed,
> but fresh blood would be welcome.  So far Kawa has is mostly the result
> of my vision, opinions, and prejudices, which I think has resulted in
> a coherent, efficient, and powerful language - but it is limited what
> I can understand and implement.  It is great what others have contributed
> to Kawa, but we need to encourage and enable more contributions  I have
> not been as open as I should have to other ideas and impulses, wanting
> to full understand and implement the "right" solution, even when I have
> lacked time, knowledge, and energy to do so.

A coherent vision is the only known defense against complexity getting 
out of hand as a system grows so you have made a good trade-off, and it 
shows. It's a heroic effort for one man as it is.

> Next year Kawa will be 25 years old.  It is the oldest continuously-active
> compiler-based non-Java language on the JVM, which is quite an achievement.

A major accomplishment indeed. Congratulations, and a thank you for 
sticking with it all these years!

If only we could advertise this feat to more people. It's tricky to get 
people to believe that Schemers do such excellent work to no fanfare.

> Thoughts?  Volunteers?

Your plans all sound very reasonable. I'll continue to make sure my 
stuff runs on Kawa, and can help with individual features now and then.