Cayetano SantosMailing lists vs Github
https://begriffs.com/posts/2018-06-05-mailing-list-vs-github.html
> Pros and Cons of Two Styles of OSS
Simon Tournier@csantosb Interesting reading!
Another example that also illustrated the paradox*: Guix translation.
Before, the Guix project used only the Translation Project and its Robot. Free to use whatever local editor and then send to the Robot using the mail server of your choice. And the Robot is very stringent on what it accepts. Therefore, many (me included! 😀) were complaining… Well, contributing was considered “difficult”.
Now, Guix uses a Weblate instance. For contributing, you need a recent web-browser and to create an account. Well, I’m not convinced it promotes user autonomy. And the interface is as stringent as the Robot. People are happier (me included! 😀) and it’s considered “easy” to contribute.
Collective behaviour appears to me very interesting, no?
The speech: yeah we value freedom and user-autonomy, “simple” over “easy”, etc. Then, the concrete practise: please make it “easy” although we loose some “user autonomy”.
Please do not take me wrong: Weblate is a good thing fot the Guix project. I’m just pointing an example for the complexity of the topic and a kind of paradox. 😀
*The paradox is: most of the time, community advocates about freedom, user autonomy, etc. and in the same time, community asks for tools that locks them (via web-broswer GUI, central server, etc.).
futurile> The paradox is: most of the time, community advocates about freedom, user autonomy, etc. and in the same time, community asks for tools that locks them (via web-broswer GUI, central server, etc.).
Yeah, first thing I ever learnt doing 'user research' was users are a bag of contradictions! :-))))
@zimoun Interesting general debate: to what extent protecting whatever the values you try to promote, against more convenient alternatives, is worth it or not over the long term.
That remains a more general question well beyond this discussion. Further on, is it feasible to reach such a degree of convenience in agreement with these values ?
Joost van Baal-Ilić@csantosb wow this is really a great article, thanks a lot!
tyilTwo Styles of OSSSeeing as how Github is not open source, it's incorrect to imply it is a "style" of open source. Github's marketing has been very effective at making you (and sadly, many others) believe using it is good for open source and free software.
Its also a pretty old article, too bad "Let this lesson be broader than Github though" did not resonate with the unwashed masses. Proprietary platform usage for free software projects is only getting worse.
Its also a pretty old article, too bad "Let this lesson be broader than Github though" did not resonate with the unwashed masses. Proprietary platform usage for free software projects is only getting worse.