[stdlib-sig] Breaking out the stdlib

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:53:38 BST, Michael Foord writes:

>1) Virtually no changes or improvements to the standard library at all - 
>nothing beyond maintaining compatibility with language changes. (Laura)

This isn't my position at all.  What I think is that there are
some modules in the standard library which have already reached
that state, as part of their natural evolution.  And these are
great modules, which should never be removed, even if there are
more modern ways to do things.  I've not been opposed to the addition
of new modules, though I do think that 'who is going to maintain
this module in 10 years' is a question that needs an answer before
we start sticking things into the standard library.  And 'well, if
nobody wants to maintain it, we can always drop it', is not an
acceptable answer.

There may be a need for a not-standard-but-we-love-you-anyway library
full of things that people would have put in the standard library
except that they strongly want the right to drop support for the
thing as soon as it is no longer actively maintained.  

Laura