Jan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024

(Thread) In the olden days, a FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) project typically had:

- A source code repository
- A web page with the documentation, FAQ and links to downloads
- At least one mailing list called announce, typically also one for users and one for contributors, all with public archives
- (maybe) An IRC channel to chat with other users and maybe also the developers

Maybe it’s time to try that simple approach again? Everything open, everything accessible? 1/7

Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024
In those olden days, we also had some helpful rules. One was that only things that can be referenced in code or mail archives actually exist. So when there was a long discussion on IRC, someone wrote down the outcome (or coded the patch) and made it accessible to all. This was an important rule to avoid excluding those that didn’t have the time/willingness/connectivity to spend hours on IRC. 2/7
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024
When I now see slack, discord, github etc everywhere as a *requirement* for participation, I think that we are exchanging a bit of comfort for the IMHO very high price of excluding a lot of potential contributors and giving a lot of data to proprietary companies without a real need for that. 3/7
Show threadJuanlu
@jwildeboer How is requesting a GitHub account "very high price"? Or put another way: is your solution to go back to *exclusively* IRC and mailing lists, or to have *both* systems to give people choice (and place the burden on maintainers)?
Oct 3, 2024 at 12:55pmWeb
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024
@astrojuanlu When GitHub started using my code to feed it to their Copilot LLM with now way for me to opt-out, I decided the price was too high. But that's just me. I still have a GitHub account, but moved my code to Codeberg and my own Forgejo instance.
Show threadJuanluOct 3, 2024
@jwildeboer That's fair enough but didn't answer my second question, sorry