meeting notes from 'management'

[Matthias Felleisen]

Every few months, the principals of the Racket world meet for a day to
discuss the state and near (and, occasionally, distant) future of the
Racket world. We met on September 3 and discussed the following
topics, revisiting some that had been on the agenda before:

-- License

At this point we have agreement from all high-frequency contributors.

About a half-dozen contributors with a 2-digit number of commits have
not yet responded, plus some 60 of committers with commits in the single
digits. Nobody has responded negatively so far.

We are optimistic that we can wrap up the re-licensing process soon.

Once the license is changed, 'raco pkg new' will place the same license
as the default license into new package directories. Of course, package
creators will remain free to replace it with their favorite license.

-- beta releases

Northwestern will wrap up the beta release page soon.

-- packages

People have provided feedback on the recent change, and we're
listening. Recall that we changed the package server's front page so
that it advertises flaws in the state of every package (e.g., missing
docs). While such feedback is highly valuable for package developers, it
may project the wrong image for package consumers.

Moving forward, we plan on unifying the documentation pages with the
package pages, but this plan will likely be revised as we try to
implement it. Here are the specifics:

-- The page will simply provide a search box where users can enter
keywords, function names, etc. to find documentation on
functionality.

-- The search results will display both the matching words and where
they are located as well as meta-data on such attributes as download
frequency.

-- Furthermore, all racket pages will provide a 'login' feature. Once
logged in, the 'login' feature will display (a link to) the currently
visible status page for the package server, restricted to the user's
packages. This will give a developer a chance to check up on the
status of his/her packages.

-- local vs on-line documentation

In the same spirit, download bundles will include some amount of data of
the package server from the time when the bundle was created. The local
documentation page will display the same search results as the remote
one, except that it will also specify whether a package with the
matching words has already been downloaded.

Additionally, Jay McCarthy will compile a small committee of package
library curators who will monitor the state of the package server and
suggest improvements.