
New Emacs maintainer - ingve
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-11/msg00118.html
======
mbrock
Nice to hear this from Mr. Wiegley:

> Actually, there were no compromises made. I found Richard to be an absolute
> delight to talk with. We discussed the architectural history of Pompeii,
> admired his reading library, his tea collection... :)

> I think many people misunderstand his devotion to freedom as being
> unreasoning in his views -- as I had, not just a few month ago! On the
> contrary: I proposed several Emacs-related ideas that I expected him to balk
> at, only to find he happily considered everything, even suggesting further
> improvements. At no point did I ever get the feeling that I was speaking to
> a closed mind.

> I only wish I lived nearby so I could spend more time with him. He is truly
> an amiable fellow. I have no worries about our ability to find a common path
> in future, if issues that threaten his goals for software freedom arise.

------
dkns
John Wiegley is the author of (completely awesome in my opinion) use-package
for emacs [https://github.com/jwiegley/use-
package](https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package)

~~~
kirubakaran
He wrote ledger, which is also really cool. [http://www.ledger-
cli.org/](http://www.ledger-cli.org/)

~~~
kinleyd
He's also very friendly and helpful on the ledger forum. Looks like an
excellent choice for Emacs.

------
lighthawk
Thanks to rms for all of his work!

Emacs is still my favorite text editor when in a terminal window, which is
most of the time. Maybe one day I'll really embrace vim also, but it's always
been a struggle.

~~~
jordigh
There was another maintainer between rms and John Wiegly: Stefan Monnier.

~~~
djcb
And, for completeness, Chong Yidong, how co-maintained together with Stefan
for quite a while (and did a great job as well). I think both of them were
quite a big part of the "emacs renaissance" of the last few years.

[http://emacs-fu.blogspot.fi/2009/08/interview-with-chong-
yid...](http://emacs-fu.blogspot.fi/2009/08/interview-with-chong-yidong-and-
stefan.html)

------
nodivbyzero
Mr.Wiegley's emacs setup: [https://github.com/jwiegley/dot-
emacs](https://github.com/jwiegley/dot-emacs)

~~~
txru
It's pretty funny that it has three contributors listed.

------
mziulu
Best of luck to John!

I've been following the discussions on emacs-devel lately and he's been
showing a lot of enthusiasm for what he has in front of him, and given John's
previous endeavours (use-package, eshell) I really think emacs has found a
worthy successor to Stefan Monnier.

------
mjhoy
If look for John on Youtube you'll find some great demonstrations of Emacs
that he did along with Sacha Chua. I find his enthusiasm infectious. Excited
to see what directions Emacs takes in the next few years.

~~~
vmorgulis
[http://sachachua.com/blog/2015/04/john-wiegley-on-
organizing...](http://sachachua.com/blog/2015/04/john-wiegley-on-organizing-
your-emacs-configuration-with-use-package/)

------
gnuvince
What excites me most about the selection of John is that he's interested in
bringing modern IDE features to Emacs without transforming it into Eclipse or
Visual Studio. I think that he'll show us just what an excellent tool Emacs
can be even in the 21st century!

------
davexunit
John seems like he is fit for the job. Hoping to see Emacs get even better
with his stewardship.

(BTW John, guile-emacs would be great)

------
zokier
It will be interesting to see if the controversial clang completion etc stuff
will get now merged in. I think johnw previously was supportive towards that
while RMS was strongly opposed.

~~~
pzone
That's a little different: the situation was that rms has denied GCC to
provide the AST inspection features which Clang provides. This is to prevent
non-free tools from using GCC's core. For the same reason, It is highly
unlikely that Emacs core will ever build in support for Clang.

In the meantime, if you want great Clang integration, there's Rtags.

------
toomim
John did a great job building "ledger" too, the command-line accounting tool.
Good guy!

------
zos
John Wiegley is totally awesome, this is awesome. I AM EXCITE!

~~~
noufalibrahim
Apart from his many superb technical contributions, I've always been fond of
his poetry
[http://johnwiegley.com/category/poems/](http://johnwiegley.com/category/poems/)

~~~
zos
"I am the mystic sailor", indeed.

------
LukeHoersten
I know John W from the Chicago Haskell group. He's great. Nothing more to say
really. Perfect choice for the role.

------
cauterize
I met John briefly at a Haskell hackathon a few years ago. I was impressed
then, and ever since I keep seeing his name pop up (pipes, now emacs). Happy
he's steering my IDE of choice!

------
jordigh
The interreGNUm is over! Hail the new maintainer!

As part of his first edict, a Code of Conduct may happen:

[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2015-11/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2015-11/msg00117.html)

He also hangs out in #emacs in Freenode (username: johnw), which makes him
seem very approachable in my eyes.

~~~
username223
> As part of his first edict, a Code of Conduct may happen

Given the silliness endemic to many Codes of Conduct lately, this had me
worried until I read through the message. But he's really just talking about
trying to focus emacs-devel@ on development, while moving tangential
discussion to another list. (I guess tagging subjects "[OT]" or "[TAN]" would
be a bit too retro.)

~~~
jordigh
Codes of conduct are not silliness. Almost everywhere that I have seen them
implemented, I have seen a better atmosphere over that community.

And while John may have phrased the need for a CoC as a matter of making sure
things stay on topic, there are several people who are put off by the
hostility of e-devel and would like it if people remained civil.

~~~
Karunamon
I'm curious, could you give a concrete example of a thing that a CoC has
improved without simultaneously causing implicit pressure on people to remain
silent about bad ideas in a project?

"Civility" is, IMO, the least important thing in a project. Firstly because it
can't be objectively defined, since some people find being told things like
"no", "this is a terrible idea", etc to be uncivil, secondly because it means
that people stop calling stuff crap that is _actual_ crap.

I also think it's silliness. If someone is an utterly disagreeable jerk, they
should be ignored, or perhaps approached privately about their behavior, and
then ignored if they don't knock it off. I don't see the need for a rigid,
legalistic framework that can be abused as a cudgel against dissenters.

This on the other hand sounds like less about "conduct" and more about
dividing the lists into topically based groups, something that has zero abuse
potential and is probably always a good idea.

~~~
jordigh
You're sealioning a bit with your first request, but off the top of my head,
Python and Pycon are two examples.

Also, codifying "be nice" isn't so impossible. It's the basis of all laws. And
laws are not programming languages. They are all subjective and open to
interpretation. This doesn't make them useless.

~~~
Karunamon
"Sealioning a bit"?

Did you _really_ just accuse me of bad faith for asking you for the most basic
of discussion content? Asking someone to prove their stance is a negative,
ever?

Is this a thing you'd accuse someone of in a face to face conversation?

Which, by the way, you did not do, which is why I asked for "concrete". A
concrete example would be "This particular behavior in this particular
community happened before the CoC was implemented, here's an example or two
(link), the CoC addressed it in this way (link), and the negatve impacts
you're worried about didn't manifest".

Just saying "Python and Pycon" doesn't even begin to provide enough context.
The only Pycon example I can think of off the top of my head is the height of
incivility: getting people fired for jokes.

~~~
jordigh
The sealioning is because you are requesting me to provide you with an
extensive example that will satisfy your stringent needs and seem unwilling to
do your own research. A more charitable approach would be to go and try to
find examples on your own, explain what you looked for, and could not find.
Instead, you are (in your eyes very politely) asking me to catalogue a
comprehensive example that satisfies all of your bullet points to the letter.

Yes, there was a much-publicised donglegate in Pycon 2013. But there was also
a waiting line for the women's bathroom in Pycon 2015. Have you seen a waiting
line for the women's bathroom at any other tech conference? And guess what,
both Adria Richards and the man whose name I can't find quickly via a Google
search were there at Pycon 2015 and the CoC was updated to indicate how to
better handle incidents.

Overall, Python has done a great work in being a friendlier place, and its
insistence upon the code of conduct has in all probability helped.

~~~
Karunamon
I've seen a waiting line at every bathroom for every conference I've ever
attended. Waited in many of them too. One of the constants of the universe it
seems - no matter how big the venue, there are never enough toilets.

...though what this has to do with people being jerks is unclear. Am I to
understand the Pycon CoC addresses event coordination and venue selection? And
there's a section in there about number of bathrooms? If so, now I definitely
want a link, if not, I'm just grasping at straws admittedly, because I have no
idea what your comment is supposed to be about otherwise.

But apparently, asking you to prove a statement is "sea lioning". Asking
someone to uphold the most basic characteristic of discussion among
intelligent people, the burden of proof, is now somehow seen as a thing to be
avoided.

If we're going to talk about things on Hacker News, could they be please be
done using the normal rules of debate/discussion instead of these bizzaro
world ones?

~~~
jordigh
The point of mentioning the women's line is that most tech conferences are not
inviting enough to women for there to be enough women to form a queue. The
actual proportion of female participants can be easily found online, I think.

~~~
rockdoe
There's the prior of the total number of women involved with the (respective)
tech, though.

Of course it's a self-reinforcing cycle because the conferences being hostile
is clearly one thing that'd keep them out.

