I don't think anything is stopping the community from posting to the
mailing list. They just have to start doing it more. That's why we are
having this discussion.
Part of the incubation process is to align the project with the ASF.
This comes with some limitation of freedom. If maximum freedom is
desired, the ASF is not the ideal place to be, although the ASF does
permit a fair amount of freedom in return for a great community,
infrastructure, and legislative support.
I'd be skeptical about any kind of compensation for posting to the
mailing list. However, I think it is important to keep track of merit
(which could be posts to the mailing list), such that we can add as many
new committers as possible.
-Max
On 11.01.21 13:43, Matt Casters wrote:
I'm just trying to get to the heart of the issue here Max. I don't
necessarily disagree as stated earlier.
Once we have a list of concerns and things that prevent folks from joining
and/or posting on dev we can do something about it.
As was mentioned earlier this is not something singularly affecting Hop so
I'm sure we can learn from other projects as well.
Before we go there, let's pile on a bit more since it seems to me that this
is treated as a major concern and I think the Hop devs see it as such.
My impression is that the ASF, and as a consequence dev mailing lists as
well, are seen as a Very Big Thing and that folks are in general quite
reluctant, even afraid, to post something.
I think this especially is painful and diametrically opposed to building
great software where insights come around in an iterative fashion.
So again, I'd be very interested in hearing from our mentors how we can
alleviate this so that we can have more lively discussions on dev.
I'm thinking along the lines of rewarding participation with swag and so
on. We're not Google but we're not completely poor sods either are we :-)
Thanks,
Matt
On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 12:36 PM Maximilian Michels <[email protected]> wrote:
The core problem is fragmentation. I would follow Hop development more
closely if I wouldn't have to monitor yet another chat client. Having
one source of truth, is what we should strive for. Again, this doesn't
mean getting rid of the chat but all design discussions should live on
the dev mailing list. Alternatively, a summary could be posted.
Mailing lists and chats are two mediums. Generally, I find that the
mailing lists are better suited for archival because more thinking goes
into the writing.
On the other hand I found it surprisingly hard to find anything in the
Apache mailing list archives.
@Matt I'm not sure which service you used to search the mailing list but
from my experience,
https://lists.apache.org/[email protected] works quite well.
-Max
On 11.01.21 11:08, Matt Casters wrote:
Again, nobody is disagreeing in principle. However, I personally don't
think this is as black and white is being stated by the mentors.
First off, Julian made it seem like we're using some sort of locked down
medium for the chat. Let me state here on the record that the Mattermost
server is open source and that we don't have any limits on the discussion
archive. It's as such quite different from free Slack functionality.
For all practical intents and purposes we are actually archiving
everything. It's easy to get on the system without limitations. It's
also
very easy to find something by using the search functions.
On the other hand I found it surprisingly hard to find anything in the
Apache mailing list archives. Perhaps these need a software update as
well?
I just think that the gap between both is too wide. Imagine having a
"discussion" on look & feel, images and so on on the dev mailing list? I
can tell you right away it's just not practical no matter who wants to
decide what on the topic.
Furthermore, now that you have me going on this tangent... the concerns
that are being raised by ASF surely cover major decisions and not
day-to-day small trivia? Who on Earth is going to argue about minor
details
of any project? We trust people to commit to the source code but we
somehow need to somehow see everything that was said and only via a
mailing
list?
Anyway, we'll do our best. I've reminded everyone to subscribe to this
mailing list.
The name of the chat server was changed to Apache Hop.
We're looking into creating an archive for all chat channels.
Matt
On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 10:12 PM Julian Hyde <[email protected]>
wrote:
Yes, chat is excellent for discussions. That’s actually the problem.
Discussions (and therefore decisions) will naturally happen on chat.
It’s
great for people who happen to be on chat, but people who are not on
chat
will be excluded.
So, we need to make a conscious effort to move discussions off of chat
and
onto dev@ if they look likely to result in a decision.
I’m not saying we should ban chat. Just be careful how chat is used.
By the way, a lot of Apache communities face this or similar problems.
For
example, I know of one or two projects that started in China and have a
strong temptation to use Chinese, which is efficient for them but makes
the
rest of us feel excluded. It’s difficult for those projects to grow
beyond
their original country.
The other suggestions in my email were to create a public, read-only
archive of chat so that people can see what has been happening, and to
more
strongly encourage people to join the dev list, not just chat. I think
it
is important that we do those.
Julian
On Jan 6, 2021, at 1:54 PM, Matt Casters <[email protected]
.INVALID>
wrote:
I don't disagree with Julian but for that specific example I indeed
mentioned this first on dev when I stated how I felt about how
important
these integration tests are ... to me.
I'm not sure it warrants a specific discussion since the devs seem to
be
on
the same wavelength on the subject.
Where I do disagree is that chat is excellent for discussions and
throwing
ideas against the wall to see if they stick.
The way we typically seem to do it is to just ping an idea back and
forth
and throw it in JIRA in some form.
These cases indeed are always visible and remembered more easily than
on
chats or mailing lists.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 10:24 PM Julian Hyde <[email protected]> wrote:
I am a bit concerned about Hop's use of Chat. To be clear, Apache
projects use chat rooms (e.g. Slack, IRC) and they are a good way to
get questions answered quickly and to build a sense of community.
First, I am concerned about the lack of a public archive. People who
want to read the chat have to first sign up. (Hopefully, I am
mistaken. If so, please post a link to the archive on the site.)
Second, let's fix the branding on Chat. Currently it is under the
project-hop.org domain, and the project is called 'hop'. No 'apache'
in sight.
Third, at Apache we have a rule 'if it doesn't happen on dev it didn't
happen', i.e. don't make decisions off the mailing list. The
conversation on chat is generally pretty benign, but I saw one
exception: this one from Matt Casters:
I would like to set a goal of having a substantial set of integration
tests
for 1.0. The bare minimum seems to be all the popular most often used
transforms and actions. I know that this far exceeds what P5o and
Kettle had but stability is really important.
That discussion should have been on the dev list.
Last, according to the latest incubator report [1], a lot more people
are signed up for chat than for the dev list (122 vs 22). I am
concerned that, with such a disparity in membership, Chat will become
the de facto place that people discuss important matters. I think the
solution is to increase the number of people on the dev list, and to
continue to drive significant discussions onto off of Chat and onto
dev@.
Julian
[1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/January2021
