[shiro]

IMHO, Scheme has two, somewhat conflicting, goals. There's the desire to make it a practical language, with rich libraries (the central package repository is ok, but it'll require quite an infrastructure to implement portable package manager client.)

On the other hand, Scheme has been a toolkit to test out ideas of programming languages since its origin. We still keep call/cc not because we use it for daily application development, but rather because it is invaluable to implement new idea of control abstraction portably. With this goal, we don't want to restrict implementation too much (hence the loose definition of "error"), nor want to raise the hurdle of standard conformance by requiring too many libs.

R7RS small/large split reflects this view, and I think it's a good thing. I also think SRFI process is working. If there ever is a common package manager thing, R7RS-large is a step to it. I've been using Scheme at work for last 20 years; let's see what we have in the next 20 years.