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this is a perfect example of a project that will go nowhere. The app would need not just coders but testers, designers, documentation writers, bloggers, at lea

by there 17y ago

this is a perfect example of a project that will go nowhere. The app would need not just coders but testers, designers, documentation writers, bloggers, at least one project manager, and so on. It would need a bug tracker. Repository. Wiki. Website. It will need a name. (I started a Twitter account, which I’ll turn over to whoever leads this once we know who that person is.) oh my. surely a twitter account is needed for a successful open source project, right? no, it needs none of those. write some code, put it up on github, let people hack on it, /then/ setup that stuff if you still need it. trying to create a new piece of software (especially something as large as an e-mail client) by committee is a terrible idea. everyone will have opinions, they'll throw them into the hat, nobody will agree on anything, nobody will write any code, and the project will go nowhere. but hey it has a logo and a wiki and a "project manager" so that's useful, right? a better idea would be to take an existing client like thunderbird, mutt, etc. and figure out what you don't like about it. i'd wager anything you don't like can be easily changed in the source code or even coded up as an add-on for thunderbird. i have a hard time believing the entire thing has to be redone from scratch.

samdk 17y ago
The biggest problem, I think, is that there's no vision. He says we need a better email client, but we don't know what he thinks better means. We don't even know what he doesn't like about existing clients. Even if this project does manage get started, it will almost certainly turn out to be something completely different than what he's imagining.
- there 17y ago
  The biggest problem, I think, is that there's no vision. from experience, open source developers don't like writing code to someone else's vision; it feels like work. they write code to solve their own problems, according to their own vision. if their vision correlates with an existing project's, then all the better, and they can just work on that project. if not, they start their own. nobody's going to sign up for a mailing list and crank out code just because someone else is asking for it.

by there 17y ago

samdk 17y ago

The biggest problem, I think, is that there's no vision. He says we need a better email client, but we don't know what he thinks better means. We don't even know what he doesn't like about existing clients. Even if this project does manage get started, it will almost certainly turn out to be something completely different than what he's imagining.

there 17y ago
The biggest problem, I think, is that there's no vision. from experience, open source developers don't like writing code to someone else's vision; it feels like work. they write code to solve their own problems, according to their own vision. if their vision correlates with an existing project's, then all the better, and they can just work on that project. if not, they start their own. nobody's going to sign up for a mailing list and crank out code just because someone else is asking for it.