The fork means nothing dramatic. I'll make a short summary of both positions:
Typesafe: we need to offer our clients a good guarantee on stability and compatibility with Java 8 or they won't take Scala seriously. So, for the moment we won't introduce new features or make big changes in the compiler.
Typelevel: we are OK with compatibility and stability, but there are some features that we really want which either don't exist or are a bit quirky with the current compiler. So we will make a fork in which we can add these things while staying binary and merge compatible with yours.
If they make it work, this is great news. There wouldn't be fragmentation as "bleeding edge Scala" would be binary and merge compatible with "stable Scala". And nobody should have hurt feelings, both positions are completely sensible.
Comments
The fork means nothing dramatic. I'll make a short summary of both positions:
Typesafe: we need to offer our clients a good guarantee on stability and compatibility with Java 8 or they won't take Scala seriously. So, for the moment we won't introduce new features or make big changes in the compiler.
Typelevel: we are OK with compatibility and stability, but there are some features that we really want which either don't exist or are a bit quirky with the current compiler. So we will make a fork in which we can add these things while staying binary and merge compatible with yours.
If they make it work, this is great news. There wouldn't be fragmentation as "bleeding edge Scala" would be binary and merge compatible with "stable Scala". And nobody should have hurt feelings, both positions are completely sensible.