On Tue, Jun 12, 2018 at 5:10 PM Greg Troxel <g...@lexort.com> wrote: > Martijn van Exel <m...@rtijn.org> writes: > > > Hi Simon, > > > >> > * everyone is on it > >> That's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy after you've essentially > >> force migrated everybody there and then cut the ties with any other > >> competing media (in OSM) so that you can have your nice walled garden. > > > > I would argue that it is a good thing that people converge on one > > platform to talk about OSM. Whether Slack remains the right choice is > > something we can debate. It was really the only feasible choice that > > was available to us at the time we (OSM US) felt the need for a better > > platform for conversations. Slack has done its job as a for-profit > > non-open company well in the sense that we're somewhat locked in > > now. I dislike the fact that it is a walled garden, and becoming more > > so, as much as anyone who values free and open data and software. If > > there is a practical way to improve that situation, we should pursue > > it. > > > > Finally, please stop your unpleasant trolling, it has no place in OSM. > > Slack is a company with terms some don't like. People should not have > to enter into a contract with some random company to participate in OSM. > > I for one am not on the osmf-us slack, and am likely to continue not > being on it. So "everyone is on it" is demonstrably false. > > Another issue is that we are building open data, and open data and open > source go hand in hand philosophically. So it is not surprising that > members of the OSM community object to proprietary communications > systems. It is surprising that a non-trivial number of OSM people think > proprietary communication systems are ok. > > There is matrix; I haven't tried that, and I've heard positive reports > about self-hosted mattermost. > > Another possibility, which might fix the terms issue but not the > proprietary issue, would be for OSMF-US to enter into an agreement with > Slack, Inc. in such a way that OSM people do not have to enter into a > contract, much as if they were employees. >
As we've said multiple times in this thread, it's totally OK for there to be multiple avenues of communication in the OSM community. That has always been the case and will continue being the case. If a group of community members want to get together on a communications channel, they should do that. It's especially OK when the communication channels are so different (like Slack/IRC vs. mailing lists). OSM US doesn't require anyone to use any particular communication channel and a large swath of the US's most engaged mappers are on several (mailing lists, slack, IRC, forum, etc.). Also, I don't think it's surprising that a vast array of different kinds of people participate in OpenStreetMap. Some of those people are interested and passionate in OpenStreetMap because of its relation to the Open Source movement, and some people want to contribute to a community project. I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why people are part of this community – we should be welcoming to all of them, not just the ones that are passionate about Open Source.
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