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Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:42:12 -0400
From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>
Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Subject: Re: [lojban] the future of Lojban's leadership
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On 9/10/2014 7:02 PM, TR NS wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 1:30:07 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:
>
>
>     This project is some 60 years old and we have a lot of history of
>     people
>     explicitly leaving because of changes imposed from on-high.  More
>     importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of conlangs
>     whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop fiddling with
>     the language design.  Those that have survived and spread have stopped
>     being developed, and are simply USED.
>
>
> Do you truly believe people would leave the language if a change was
> made form "on-high" if it were a clear improvement? Just because it is a
> change?

Yes, because they would not see it as a clear improvement BECAUSE it is 
a change (and the reference grammar that they understood as a standard 
is now declared to be incorrect.

Furthermore, I know this from experience, because the change to Loglan 
called the "Great Morphological Revision" that remade a significant 
fraction of gismu, but also made possible the assignment of unique rafsi 
that enabled lujvo to be uniquely decomposed - one of the most 
fundamental and successful of the Lojban design features inherited from 
JCB's version of Loglan.  That change caused the language community to 
die for several years, and planted the seeds of schism that eventually 
and indirectly resulted in creating Lojban.

xorlo, which most newer people (apparently excepting gleki) consider a 
major improvement has been a significant demotivator in my using the 
language.  Probably I wouldn't be using the language much anyway, (I 
have found that using a language even semi-fluently is extremely 
difficult for me, even if I know the rules and the words well) but I had 
translations that I really wanted to do, and I remain unconvinced that 
anyone will be able to read them because I cannot use xorlo properly.

And again, this isn't just me.  The advantage and disadvantage of being 
language-engineer-in-chief, is that everyone for a couple of decades 
told me their gripes as they arrived and as they gave up/left.  People 
gave up on Loglan because it kept changing.  They came back to Lojban 
because we committed not to keep changing, and to completing a set of 
language documentation.  They then left because we did not complete the 
documents, many of them saying that they would return when "the language 
is done".

It is the same mindset that has tens of millions still using Microsoft 
Windows XP, even though it is 10 years out of date and no longer 
supported by Microsoft.  Upgrading to a new version of Windows (or to 
some other operating system) would take more of a relearning curve than 
they would want to bother with, and possibly make some of their old 
stuff unusable.  "Clear improvements" simply aren't what they want.

lojbab

lojbab

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