<div dir="ltr"><div>Swift Breeze <a href="https://github.com/swift-breeze"><i>was</i> on Github</a>,, i don’t know whose argument that strengthens here :)<br><br></div>Here was <a href="https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20160125/008134.html">the original thread</a> it was introduced in. It got a lot of attention and +1’s but never attracted much involvement, possibly because the Swift FOSS community was much smaller back then, possibly because people on mailing lists are by nature all-talk, no-action. I’m also a library author so I understand the reluctance to give up your children to a collective repo lol.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Xiaodi Wu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:xiaodi.wu@gmail.com" target="_blank">xiaodi.wu@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hmm, I'd never heard of Swift Breeze. Doesn't seem like it'd be a successful model to follow. Is there a reason why GitHub itself doesn't meet these criteria?<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 21:42 Taylor Swift <<a href="mailto:kelvin13ma@gmail.com" target="_blank">kelvin13ma@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>Trying to gather together a bunch of unpaid people won’t automatically solve the problem. (We <i>can</i> agree that there <i>is</i> a problem, yes?) I think Swift Breeze demonstrated that. (Incidentally, throwing a bunch of money at the problem won’t automatically solve it either — look at the US government.) But then again, it can still <i>help</i>, and while it sounds cheesy, <i>how much</i> it can help depends entirely on the attitude of the contributors; whether they see themselves as solo authors listed on a package index, or as part of a bigger effort. I’m not really a fan of waiting for Apple to save the day. One of the things I’ve argued for that <i>can</i> be done without Apple’s help is setting up another Swift library incubator like Breeze. Obviously it won’t magically lead to a Swift math library but it does remove some of the obstacles I mentioned earlier:<br><br></div>- it links together disparate solo projects and provides discoverability to users<br></div>- it provides a package index and serves as a dashboard to check up on the “state of Swift library support”<br></div>- it gives a venue for interested people to discuss the general topic of library support <br></div>- it helps network people who are working on similar things (a “soft factor” but important!)<br><br></div>tldr; self-organization isn’t a panacea, but it helps.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 10:14 PM, Xiaodi Wu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:xiaodi.wu@gmail.com" target="_blank">xiaodi.wu@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm responding to your contention that no library without "backing" will see wide adoption: if, as you say, you would like to have a math library with sufficient "backing," then realize that you're arguing for someone to devote financial resources to the problem. Your proposed solution of getting together a bunch of unpaid people does not address your identified problem.<div class="m_-7797809717581522071m_6144649398585833316HOEnZb"><div class="m_-7797809717581522071m_6144649398585833316h5"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 21:07 Taylor Swift <<a href="mailto:kelvin13ma@gmail.com" target="_blank">kelvin13ma@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 9:18 PM, Xiaodi Wu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:xiaodi.wu@gmail.com" target="_blank">xiaodi.wu@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span>On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 7:29 PM, Taylor Swift <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kelvin13ma@gmail.com" target="_blank">kelvin13ma@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></span><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="m_-7797809717581522071m_6144649398585833316m_1907563226546909108m_-722453076561754286m_-1326882306088456029gmail-">On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 7:54 PM, Xiaodi Wu <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:xiaodi.wu@gmail.com" target="_blank">xiaodi.wu@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span>On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 6:29 PM, Taylor Swift <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kelvin13ma@gmail.com" target="_blank">kelvin13ma@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></span><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>See, my problem with statements like this one, is that the answer “should be supported as a third-party library” can also be interpreted as “not my problem, go figure it out yourselves”. The idea that central entity can only pay attention to what they want to, and the Community™ will magically take care of the rest is one of the most pervasive, and untrue, myths about open source. What’s worse, is that Swift has the benefit of hindsight, in the form of many, many examples of languages that came before and fell victim to this fallacy, and now have 15 competing “private” classes for basic mathematical objects like <i>vectors</i>.<br><br></div>I agree that a core math library, for example, <i>could</i> in theory be supported as a third-party library.</div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>The core team has said that they're open to a core math library being part of the Swift open source project; they just outlined that the _process_ for doing so is best initiated with a third-party library as a starting point.</div><span><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>But this will never happen on its own, for reasons that I will reiterate here:<br><br></div>- no one influential enough has bothered to jump start any such project <br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>Karoly Lorentey has a wonderful, and quite mature, BigInt project: <<a href="https://github.com/lorentey/BigInt" target="_blank">https://github.com/lorentey/<wbr>BigInt</a>>. Also, as I mentioned, I just started a project for protocol-based additions to Swift's basic numeric types. These are just two examples.</div><span><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div></div><div>- there are no avenues to encourage members of the community to come together and organize a project (look how this thread got derailed!)<br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>You're welcome to join me in my endeavor to create a math library. I'd bet Karoly feels the same way about his project.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>You don’t know how happy reading that sentence just made me, i’d assumed no one was willing to team up to build such a thing. In which case, it’s a good idea to start an incubator organization on Github. I think David Turnbull tried doing that 2 years ago, I’ll reach out to him if he wants to be a part of something like this.<br><br></div><div>We should also maintain an index of promising pure swift libraries so they are discoverable (like <a href="http://docs.rs" target="_blank">docs.rs</a> does for Rust).</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>I believe there has been mention on this list that the core team would like to revisit this idea at some point.</div><span><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="m_-7797809717581522071m_6144649398585833316m_1907563226546909108m_-722453076561754286m_-1326882306088456029gmail-"><div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div></div>- there is no “soft” infrastructure in place to support such collaboration (look at the fuss over discourse and mailing list spam!)<br></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>The GitHub environment has excellent tools to support such collaboration, IMO. For example:</div><div><br></div><div>Based on my experience implementing a library, I wrote a Gist to outline some lessons learned and suggestions for improvement. Not only did the document find an audience, these suggestions were in turn used to inform core team-driven revisions to the integer protocols. As a result of these revisions, it became possible to implement some initializers that could be useful for people writing generic numeric algorithms. Recently, I submitted a PR to the Swift project on GitHub to implement these initializers. Now, everyone will be able to use them. Collaboration, positive feedback loop, win-win for all involved.</div><div><br></div><div>Likewise, Karoly used his experience updating BigInt for Swift 4 to inform certain improvements to the integer protocols. He implemented these improvements in a series of PRs. Now, as a result of these developments, Karoly's library will be better designed *and* everyone else will benefit from a better implementation of the integer protocols. Again, collaboration, positive feedback loop, win-win for all involved.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>Great!! can you link me to the gist?<br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div><a href="https://gist.github.com/xwu/d68baefaae9e9291d2e65bd12ad51be2" target="_blank">https://gist.github.com/xwu/<wbr>d68baefaae9e9291d2e65bd12ad51b<wbr>e2</a> </div><span><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="m_-7797809717581522071m_6144649398585833316m_1907563226546909108m_-722453076561754286m_-1326882306088456029gmail-"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div></div>- there are no positive feedback loops whereby a promising project can gain market share and mature<br></div><div>- because there is no organization backing these projects, potential users are reluctant to depend on these libraries, since they will logically bet that the library is more likely to fall out of maintenance than reach maturity.<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>Addressing this point is clearly impossible. When Apple wishes to commit its own resources to the maintenance of a Swift math library, swift-corelibs-math will appear on GitHub. Suggestions such as opening an empty repo and letting people contribute to it would either give the illusion of organizational backing that doesn't exist or would in fact commit Apple to support a repo that it doesn't wish to support. I fail to see why the former is good for anybody; in fact, it's strictly inferior to the same repo honestly representing itself as a third-party effort. And asking for the latter is essentially asking Apple to create a Swift math library--which, again, is not in the cards.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>My point wasn’t really to exhort Apple to create a Swift math library, just that people are more willing to depend on a library if the library’s bus factor is greater than 1. A lot of great Swift packages in one one guy or girl’s github repository who later disappeared. Turnbull’s SGLOpenGL library is a good example of this; his library no longer compiles which motivated me to write <a href="https://github.com/kelvin13/swift-opengl" target="_blank">swift-opengl</a>. Then again, I’m sure people feel the same way about depending on swift-opengl today as I felt about depending on SGLOpenGL.<br><br></div><div>There just has so be some semblance of organization. That organization doesn’t have to come from Apple or the swift core team. A community initiative with sufficient momentum would be just as good. (The problem of course is that it is rare for a community initiative to arise.)<br></div></div></div></div>
</blockquote></span></div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">Well, hang on now. There are plenty of products put out by even major organizations that are unceremoniously and abruptly cut. There are plenty of projects worked on by one or a few major people that are long-lived. Projects that have longevity have some sort of financially sensible model for their continued existence. Three, thirty, or even 300 unpaid people working on an open-source project won't make it much more reliable (in the eyes of others) than one unpaid person, and again I disagree that the veneer of an organization is superior to presenting the status of the project honestly. (Example--what is commonly thought to be a bigger threat to Firefox's continued health: the possibility that there will be a shortfall in unpaid contributors, or the possibility that there will be a shortfall in funding?)</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">Rounding up all the goodwill on this list will not do you any good if your goal is to convince users that a certain project will be maintained into the future--because it won't rustle up a single dime. Whether or not you explicitly equate these in your mind, "backing" == money, and if you want this point addressed, you're claiming that someone somewhere should be spending money on a Swift math library. I'm personally committed to making sure that my code will work for the foreseeable future, but I fully accept that there's simply no way for me to convince a sufficient number of people of this fact without a credible showing of funding. In that sense, a community initiative with "momentum" is decidedly not going to be a just-as-good alternative to a core library.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra">Well that there is a rather defeatist attitude. If you are correct that Apple-funded development is the only way to get core libraries built (and maintained), and Apple has expressed they have no intention of doing so, then we are all pretty much f****d. <br></div></div>
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