[kccqzy]

My favorite sentence from the response is this one: “The presumption that everything is or ought to be a community endeavor is severely broken.” Community is a broad word. It can mean a bunch of very smart people working in concert to produce something truly magnificent, or it can mean giving the keys to a bunch of clowns and watching them mess around and make fun of themselves.

I really wonder this whenever I see some new-fangled open source project putting out a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md stating community is a top value. Look, you are primarily writing software not trying to foster a community. A community can be helpful to produce great software, but a community can also mean additional mental and emotional toll, and clowns introducing discussions with little merit.

[mshenfield]

That sentence also struck a chord with me.

The dictionary definition of community:

> n. A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international business community.

The "Clojure community" is a group of people having a common interest in Clojure.

The sentence doesn't disparage the community, or discourage engaging with the community. Rich Hickey's 1000 word response makes the case, and is evidence itself, that he and other Clojure contributors care about the community. He is explaining that he will continue to design and develop the language as a Rich Hickey thing instead of a consensus or community driven process.

> A true community respects the autonomy of its participants... the ultimate authority and stewardship of Clojure remains with me

[zcaudate]

There's a difference in the language and the ecosystem around the language.