My $0.02 on this is that the original reasoning is Childish in the least. To my knowledge, Ivand has asked for a merge more than once, and as I recall, there was at one time a PR rejected that would have resulted in a merge. Am I incorrect here?
This shows that there is the desire to maintain parity with Official spring. I don't think any of us really like the idea of just forking off (pardon the pun) and splitting the party. In my personal opinion you, Abma, bear
some of the responsibility for the state of things as they are. To illustrate my point, here are a few things that line up, in my mind, that lead us where we are today...
1. Question is posed in the forum of whether to drop old ogl, even though there would be some pain points.
To this I was in support, providing that it was done gradually enough and plenty of help were provided to move our old stuff into the new. What actually happened was spring was split in half. One half ended up as 105, aka the only one that most if not all projects could actually use, and 106 that, after a flurry, bwas barely worked on (maybe I'm incorrect here?). I hated to see kloot give up in frustration. Kloot is an amazing developer, but I'm guessing that there was probably a lot of resentment built up over time (like having to deal with ares & co, and then going back as far as the great pathfinding flamewars of yesteryear), so I get it.
To my knowledge, no support was ever provided in order to help us update things to new ogl. I know that I never received any support, at the very least. Perhaps larger projects did?
2. You have roundly rejected any of the attempts to broaden communication with the larger community. I'm guessing that to you, this community probably seems to be dead and buried, when in reality, on Discord, it is flourishing. Even the main spring discord sees a lot of conversation. I understand that you have based this rejection upon the basis of discord not being FOSS (although, that isn't
entirely accurate). I'm not real sure what to tell you here. You are actively cutting off your nose to spite your face. It isn't realistic to expect everything infrastructure to be FOSS. This wasn't realistic in 2004 - 2006, and it isn't now. I don't know how many OG dogs there are still here, but I remember when this shit was TA Demo Recorder, and the demo released showing spring with ota units in a simulated battle. I suppose taking the hardline FOSS stance was ok back when this was all about OTA, but circa 2007 or so, spring became so much more than that. I understand that "history" "history" "history", I get it, I really do, but at the same time, by stifling communication, everything and everyone suffers.
"But, IRC..." "But, Matrix Bridge..."
3. So now, here we are. We have the BAR engine soft "fork" (soft fork because it wasn't intended to break away from official, hence the requests to merge), and we have Spring Official, which basically no one can realistically use. I suppose you could argue that evo uses 105 official, but evo has been out of development for like 1.5 years at this point.
As I said, I don't think anyone really wants to split the party here, but if I'm being completely honest, I don't see where you are leaving much of a choice and given the just groundbreaking advances that have happened the moment that the old guarde spring devs were no longer in strict control, I have to say that personally I would support a fork. If a merge were ever granted, I have a fear that further innovation would be stifled by red tape and grown men throwing tantrums (myself included), which has been the history of this place since Tobi left.
Returning back to the original point. To draw some sort of line in the sand this way seems petty and childish. I do not wish to paint you in this light. I realize that this is all over a post on the official forums and front page spread, but your first reply makes it pretty clear what your feelings are/have been. Perhaps I'm wrong and have reached an incorrect conclusion?
This is knorke level BS, pettiness, false justification, and you know it. You're better than this.