FWIW, I've tried to use stack twice and came back to cabal-install. There's also that I enable split-objects in ~/.cabal/config (not available in Stack) and often use GHC on platforms where there's no Stack-provided GHC available. That said, avoiding the compatibility problem of dependencies via curated package sets (Stackage) is a nice idea. However, Duncan's nix-local-build work makes the problems void from what I can tell, and Ed's Backpack work will improve the situation even more. Though, curated sets are still a nice idea regardless.

I'm not a Haskell greybeard, just a light user, but despite the improvements via FPComplete's output, at least some of it feels NIH and unnecessarily polarizes the community. For instance, reusing Shake in Cabal(-install) and getting nix-local-build and Backpack production ready look like improvements that will be beneficial for a longer time, rather than splitting the community with a different build/package structure (stack).

I mean, dividing the already small Haskell community doesn't make sense to me. If Gershom doesn't play fair with the management of www.haskell.org, this should be raised officially and fixed, because haskell.org is not a one man project and there's a team around it.