A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development discussions on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless nature helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.
But Cassandra was a lot smaller then, and as we've grown it has become necessary to separate out the signal (discussions of new features and major changes) from the noise of routine bug reports. I propose that we take advantage of the dev list to perform that separation. Major new features and architectural improvements should be discussed first here, then when consensus on design is achieved, moved to Jira for implementation and review. I think this will also help with the problem when the initial idea proves to be unworkable and gets revised substantially later after much discussion. It can be difficult to figure out what the conclusion was, as review comments start to pile up afterwards. Having that discussion on the list, and summarizing on Jira, would mitigate this. -- Jonathan Ellis Project Chair, Apache Cassandra co-founder, http://www.datastax.com @spyced
