I know I was sounding a little angry on the chat, but I want to be clear that Sobyk is not a fork of Tcl. Sobyk is an attempt to provide a stable distribution mechanism for applications developers. This includes signing binaries, packaging extensions, and providing long term support. These are all things that are decidedly NOT the bailiwick of the Tcl Core Team (TCT). And they will tell you as much.

I picked a name that was not TCL for three reasons.

  1. Most people don't honestly know what the heck TCL is
  2. Of the people that do, many don't remember it fondly
  3. Because distributing binaries is not in the Tcl Core Team's charter, trying to call my distribution "Official Tcl Binaries" could complicate any future effort on their part to secure trademarks, developer IDs, etc.

If Sobyk succeeds, Tcl wins. If Sobyk fails, it was just the work of some guy. And if in the process Sobyk (or one of the design decisions of Sobyk) doesn't fit a particular group's needs, they can fork Sobyk and call it whatever they like. As I mentioned in another post, the name Sobyk means literally nothing to me. It was randomly generated.

What I am hoping will happen down the road is that Sobyk, or a project inspired by Sobyk, or developed in spite of Sobyk, finally does become part of what the Core Team does. I'm still attending Tcl Conferences. I'm still participating on the chats. I'm still contributing to the Tcl community directly and indirectly as a volunteer.

Sobyk is just an opportunity for "Some Guy" to take a stab at a complex problem and solve it in a way that not everybody is going to agree with.