Ah thanks! That totally clicked in my brain. Systemically, the issue at hand (in my words) is how to “shorten” or “close” that particular feedback loop.
We have two disparate knowledge domains, even three:
- the ones that produce a particulat piece of software
- the ones that package it for nix (our eternal bottleneck)
- the ones that use it.
In my way of looking at this, producers and consumers are already sufficiently close in open source (thanks to github/etc). If we can eliminate the need for packagers to insert themselves into that (already established) feedback loop, we might have discovered a pathway to a solution.
I might been having a similar impetus while I was redacting this “sister” post: