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 threadJan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024
Maybe this short thread makes you think a little bit about that. That would mean a lot to me! Run your projects in every way you want, I am not telling you to make changes. I merely hope that you start to think a bit about what's best to grow your community in an inclusive and open way, is all :) 4/7
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024
I am throwing this out here not to come over as a grumpy old man, yelling at the clouds. But because I guess many enthusiastic, young people simply never experienced the olden ways. Maybe they want to explore them a bit and see for themselves if there could be something viable in it for them. Especially wrt async communication. Is all! 5/7
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Oct 3, 2024
Seeing how quite some commenters (want to?) take the wrong conclusions from my thread: I am all for the GitHub/gitlab/forgejo/codeberg based approach of managing issues, PRs, releases in "modern" ways. It made drive-by contributions so much easier! I am however not sure if discord et al are better for asynchronous communication and feel that mailing lists with public archives were a superior approach that we gave up on prematurely. HTH! 6/7
Show threadmhd

@jwildeboer I think the long-form and comprehensive discussions you usually find on mailing lists are quite different from the focused ones that should be in issues.

Granted, you can do minute back and forths about diffs and patches in email and try to dissect strategic concerns in github issues, but I think that separating the two alone is worth doing it via email, never mind that I think the different composition environment forces a bit of switch in mind set – text boxes in web browsers are rather casual and ephemeral.

D's NNTP-backed fora might be another good approach here, but alas, who has a good, dedicated Usenet client anymore, so this just ends up as yet another web forum.

I used to think that Wikis were the next level of common strategic discussions, multiple people authoring a proper design document. But it turns out that this isn't a good fit for both collaborative endeavors and the way a lot of people prefer to communicate, i.e. it gets tiresome for most rather wiki-wiki.

Oct 3, 2024 at 1:47pmWeb