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 threadQOct 3, 2024

@jwildeboer I've been contributing/following a few big projects that only use mailing list based contributions (Yocto, U-Boot bootloader, Linux kernel, libcamera, Buildroot). The last few years we've seen a lot of people voicing their discontent at that workflow and requesting we do everything with GitHub/GitLab "or else you will never get a contribution from me".

So I am not sure those young people are that interested in that old workflow.

Show threadQOct 3, 2024

@jwildeboer

I'm still in my early thirties but I think I was probably one of the last generations where GitHub was not in basic monopoly for anything-git. At university it was still a decision which to use and some were still using Dropbox :)
So I think it was less of an issue back then, because not EVERYTHING was on GitHub. Now it gets more difficult to get people to do a bit more effort to contribute, is my feeling.

Show threadEmpathicQubit
@0leil @jwildeboer I'm around the same age, and in university for my group's final project I literally created a user on my computer for Git and people SSHed into it
Oct 3, 2024 at 4:02pmWeb