> FWIW, the amount of bureaucracy that goes into JIRA is a major contributing > factor for the reduction of my time commitment to this project by 80%+.
This seems a bit overly dramatic to me =) Let's dig more into what are the actual problems. I admit that adding people to the Contributor role in Jira can be a nuisance, but surely this is something we can automate? (note: I think I have spent way more time doing Arrow Jira gardening than anyone else affiliated in this project) The core problem as I see it is one of communication. Do we expect contributors to this project to communicate about what work they are doing, plan to do, or want others to do? I think the answer is yes across the board. Having a lot of people simply opening pull requests with little discussion or planning to indicate intent or other development direction is neither scalable nor sustainable. How are other developers supposed to know what other people are working on or planning? At the point where significant / non-trivial work has been completed and is now in code review, there has already been a failure of communication. What issue tracker we use to me is secondary to this point. If we have contributors who don't wish to communicate with the community about what they are doing, we need to solve that problem first and make clear our expectations. That is part of the Openness tenet of the Apache Way. If people are not being open and simply throwing code over the wall, that behavior is not consistent with this principle. We must hold ourselves to some kind of standards. I've seen open source projects with more than 10,000 GitHub issues, and it is... not pretty. Having thousands or tens of thousands of issues in Jira feels manageable to me in a way that GitHub is not. But I'm someone who loves to make lists and organize things — linking issues together, creating subissues, that sort of thing. Thanks Wes On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 7:12 AM Rok Mihevc <rok.mih...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Have we ever considered GitHub issues to Jira sync? > This way users could choose to use GitHub but Jira would still be the > single source of truth. > > Rok > > On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 1:15 PM Adam Lippai <a...@rigo.sk> wrote: > > > Antoine, > > > > you are right I'm directly challenging the statement that any issue > > tracker, forum or chat is as good as GitHub. > > I'm not speaking about tools and efficiency. In those terms you are > > absolutely right and most of the solutions are clearly superior to GitHub. > > > > I was talking about reach, community size and ease of onboarding. > > I don't think I need to bring examples of how GitHub is a magnitude ahead > > of others, being The Ecosystem for OSS development. > > I don't like this trend, I'd be happy to see the ecosystem to be more > > distributed on GitLab and Bitbucket, but that's not the current status and > > not a trend today. > > > > The new people have to learn to interact with the Arrow community now. I > > don't doubt their ability to learn it, but the thing is that they have to > > learn and get involved in Arrow specific tools. > > Most of the people are less focused on Arrow, they use dozens or hundreds > > of projects, so we are asking them to move from their usual workflow > > (GitHub) to a specialized one. > > They are users first, active members and developers second and they always > > will be in majority. We might want or not want to please that future group. > > > > Let me know what you think, whether you agree that people are more familiar > > with GitHub than other tools without putting in extra effort. > > I was trying to give attention to the people/social/community aspect, not > > the ease of use or the right level of automation. > > I don't think the current setup is any harder than others, but it's > > different and an outlier. > > > > As this is one (minor) aspect of the question only, I don't think I need to > > convince you this is important or I am right. > > I was feeling that we are a little bit in an echo chamber, that's why I > > brought up this controversial dimension. > > I didn't want to exaggerate and I don't think I did when I used the words > > "huge difference", "magnitude". > > From a users perspective discussions sometimes happen on GitHub, but never > > on GitLab, BitBucket or Jira. > > I might live in my own bubble, but I didn't see a popular Jira tracker > > where discussions are live and diverse yet. > > > > Likely choosing GitHub would shift the focus (towards users and ecosystem > > from development) and temporarily (measured in months or years) put more > > work on the existing core members. > > > > P.S. I have a positive experience here with you and the Arrow community, > > I'm grateful for all the answers and help I got. The mails above are not a > > criticism, not a little bit. > > > > Best regards, > > Adam Lippai > > > > On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 12:35 PM Antoine Pitrou <anto...@python.org> wrote: > > > > > On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 11:10:23 +0100 > > > Adam Lippai <a...@rigo.sk> wrote: > > > > > > > > All the (multiple) mailing lists, stack overflow and JIRA are > > definitely > > > > barriers for new contributors. > > > > > > I'm not sure what Stack Overflow has to do with this? Interaction with > > > Stack Overflow isn't required to contribute to Arrow. > > > > > > (also, I don't really understand the concern with SO, at least where > > > user-friendliness is concerned) > > > > > > > They require familiarity (people born after 2000 are not familiar with > > > > mailing lists or JIRA, but they are with GitHub) and setup (filters, > > > > notifications). > > > > > > Well, I'm not very impressed by this argument. "People born after 2000" > > > aren't cognitively different, and they should be able to adapt to the > > > same tools as other people. Everyone was unfamiliar with mailing-lists > > > and issue trackers at some point, and very diverse people learned to be > > > familiar with them. > > > > > > I'm also concerned by the laziness that seems implied by the "Github or > > > nothing" mentality. Experienced developers need to master a variety of > > > tools over their career. Learning a second issue tracker is a very > > > mild effort to require of them. > > > > > > > Keeping everything (discussions, issues, PRs) in one place has huge > > added > > > > value, but not for the core members and people working in this > > > environment > > > > for years. > > > > > > It does have added value, but I disagree that it's "huge". There are > > > integrations in place between Github and the Apache JIRA that are > > > perhaps not to the level of the integrations within Github itself, but > > > still convenient. > > > > > > We can discuss opening more communication spaces. But they will need > > > core developer attention (since mailing-lists are not going to vanish), > > > which will increase the required effort to keep up. > > > > > > > I understand if we stick with JIRA, but I'm 100% sure there are people > > > not > > > > asking questions, not raising issues, not giving feedback and not > > > > contributing because of the mailing lists and JIRA already. > > > > They wouldn't have the best ROI, but we can acknowledge there is a room > > > for > > > > improvement. > > > > > > Sure. But I doubt that framing the topic as "it's Github that we need" > > > is going to lead to productive discussion. > > > > > > Regards > > > > > > Antoine. > > > > > > > > > > >
