Hey, Thank you very much, Clark, for moving the discussion into a more constructive direction and for your opinions and suggestions. On Wed, 12 Nov 2025 at 18:47, Clark Boylan <cboylan@sapwetik.org> wrote:
Hello everyone,
That said as time marches on our choices may no longer be in alignment with our goals and our goals may no longer be relevant. We can and should reevaluate our goals and from there reevaluate the decisions we've made. I think if we approach the process of making changes from this perspective and do so collaboratively as a community we can ensure the health of our software and community going forward. We should also probably try to be more explicit about these decisions and rely less on tribal knowledge or secret cabals. Informed developers should end up making better decisions whatever decisions are made.
Finally, it probably is worth noting that this sentiment may be driven as a reaction to a community that is very resistant to change. We should be better about reevaluating our goals and decisions around those goals. Maybe this should become a regular process (either as part of the release cycle, or PTG or just annually)? The world isn't static and while some choices we made a decade ago may stand the test of time many probably do not. Let's be more open to that.
While I have a fundamental disagreement with some of the points (not personally against you) I am very glad to see another person acknowledging that the world is not static. Refinement is fundamentally important not only in software engineering, but in every aspect of our daily life. Without it we would not even have a moderately good sound amplifier (feedback loop), every research is based on analyzing what was done wrong and how to make it better next time. So yes, we must absolutely have a process of reviewing whether old choices make sense in today's world. In Agile SW development, retrospective/refinement is a mandatory step of the development cycle where it is not only about looking at what went good/bad, but whether old assumptions are still valid.
Clark
Regards, Artem