On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 7:16 AM, Noah Slater <nsla...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hey folks, > > I'd like to bring two things to your attention: > > https://github.com/apache/couchdb/pull/43 ^ I opened that one (obviously(?)) > > https://github.com/cloudant-labs/couchdb/pull/18 > > These just happen to be two pull requests I looked at today, there are > more. > > On the one hand, this is great. Obviously. Any sort of constructive > activity happening around CouchDB is great. > thank you! > > But on the other hand, this discussion is core development discussion, and > should be happening on the dev list where everybody can see it. > I'm not sure where you get that PR#43 is core dev at all, plz clarify? > > (This is foundational stuff for an Apache project. Community building > should be focused around the mailing lists. (I've already made it known that I don't agree with this at all) > I get that Github is useful for > people, but we're not a Github project, so our activity should not be > happening there.) > > I don't know what to suggest. Obviously, I think pull requests are great. > And I think the forking model of Github is great, because it allows people > to contribute more easily, and in a manner that suits them. > PR#43, for anyone that may have skipped the description and comments thread there (or who may have commented and then deleted the comment in a rush of "OMG-i-made-a-PR-comment-instead-of-sending-to-the-ML" ASF policy loyalty silliness) is precisely about surfacing the Apache CouchDB contribution policy in a "github-official" manner that will make it far more obvious ***to githubbers*** in just the way githubbers have (or will) come to expect! IOW, it aims to greatly aid the very challenge that this email rant is about. > > But on the other hand, we shouldn't be having important development > discussions in pull requests. disagree, again. > The PR isn't even against the Apache CouchDB > mirror. It's against a Cloudant fork! (So even less likely that folks are > going to see it.) > > Perhaps one of the policies we could document is that discussion of pull > requests must be brought to the list. > Again, could be accomplished in the manner PR#43 describes(!) > > That is, if a PR comes in to the Apache Github mirror, then we make a > polite comment on the PR that points them to the mailing list thread and > asks them to participate in that forum, so the maximum amount of devs can > see and contribute. > > We could also say that if you have a fork of CouchDB, and you're planning > to contribute the work back to Apache CouchDB (as is the case with the > Cloudant fork) that you do the same with any PRs that are made to your > repos. > > A sample template comment could be as follows: > > == > > Thank you for the pull request! > > This is a mirror of the Apache CouchDB project, so many of the committers > do not monitor it for comments. Instead of discussing this pull request > here, I have started a thread on the [developer mailing list] and I invite > you to participate! > > [LINK TO MAILING LIST THREAD] > > == > > Additionally, the mailing list thread, or the first reply to it, should CC > the original author. > > One alternative to this (which is a bit of a mess, I know) is to write > an integration that copies Github comments to the mailing list thread, and > mailing list posts to the PR. Not sure that would work with forks of the > main mirror, however. > > Thoughts? Flames? > I'm speaking personally, and I know there are strong and varying opinions on the subject among participants here. I also know the CouchDB PMC leads have a strong desire to spur involvement in the project, and nothing dooms my personal desire to work towards contributing than some ill-explained ass-backwards 90's era bureaucratic mandate that EVERYTHING be facilitated over the ML. In fact it is due to that policy and general ASF-iness that keeps me closer to the sidelines. This is a hobby, at best, for me at this time, and I already have no chance of keeping up with the ML activity. I'd rather see the asf git become the archive mirror, quite frankly. How many resources could the ASF preserve (or apply more productively - development, conferences, promotion) by adopting github infra formally (for starters). And i'm not some 19-yro kid who grew up always thinking of email as irrelevant legacy tech, I've been doing this awhile myself. There's a lot to it. And, unsurprisingly, I don't care for essays in emails. It's about the bazaar model. It's about signal-to-noise (for each individual!). It's about being able to subscribe to the topics you care about and not have to wade through the noise of the topics you don't care about, just to find those topics you do care about (because at some point, the value prop just isn't worth it anymore). It's about *thinking like the web* and **observable work**[1]. (is the ML observable? sure, in a sense, but barely) It's about all of that and a whole lot more. > Thanks, > > -- > NS > feedback always welcome of course, and thx for listening -- matt [1] http://emjayess.net/think-like-jon-udell
