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>> ...coordinated using mainly nothing but email and IRC for communication. I wonder what other projects (on a scale larger than your typical side hustle proje

>> ...coordinated using mainly nothing but email and IRC for communication. I wonder what other projects (on a scale larger than your typical side hustle projects) are coordinated via IM chat or email? On the surface, the Linux kernel coordination seems to be coordinated like this, but I am not 100% sure.

arboghast 7y ago
When I was at Canonical back in 2007-2008, we were mostly communicating using email and IRC. I had to adapt but ended up finding it very productive.
throwaway2048 7y ago
Basically every open source project that isnt "Group of devs at the same company" works like this. Open source projects are likely the largest user of mailing lists.
- ownagefool 7y ago
  I'd argue it works for devs at the same company quite well, but having asynchronous communication is counter to your average business persons desire to lock you in a room for an hour and make you make a decision.
dewey 7y ago
Every open source project that’s reasonable enough not to hide all their communications in proprietary silos like Slack and Discord.
- jayflux 7y ago
  Ok I’ll bite.. Seeing that both slack and discord save logs from the beginning (which irc doesn’t), isn’t communication less hidden if anything? It’s far easier for someone new to play catch up. There’s a reason large open source projects moved to these (React, Rust, etc).
  - dewey 7y ago
    As jononor already said they are usually logged to a public location. And even if they are not they are logged in plain text on each client usually. In Slack the logs are also not searchable if you above a certain threshold (10k lines or something) if you don’t pay. Slack is prohibitively expensive if you have a lot of users and not really made for such a non-company use case.
  - dkersten 7y ago
    Open source projects typically cannot afford to pay for slack, which makes all but the most recent logs unsearchable. I've found this in quite a few open source groups and it means the same questions get asked over and over again and its incredibly wasteful and irritating IMHO.
    - jimws 7y ago
      These open source groups could surely use a chatbot to log the chats to some place for archival and make the archive searchable, can't they? By the way, I find IRC/Slack good for real-time support. By nature of being real-time support, some questions get repeated over and over again. The repeition is typically mitigated by adding trivia bots to the channel that can provide answers to frequently asked questions. The best solution I have seen for archived solutions and to avoid repetition are Stack Overflow (encourage users to post questions on SO with relevant tag) and mailing list with a mailing list archive.
      - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        Are there any Slack chatbots that do that kind of logging and archiving? When I searched a couple years ago, I found several projects... and none of them worked except one (SlackArchive.io, I think), which worked for another couple months after I found it then died with, IIRC, communication from its operators that suggested Slack was cracking down on bots that were being used for this purpose. (Which is not unexpected.)
  - zmzrr 7y ago
    Slack and Discord may have logs but you have to download a massive blob of proprietary software, register and agree to some ToS to access them. Those logs are everything but public.
- jononor 7y ago
  Jayflux, most open source IRC channels are logged on webservers. Those logs are usually also searchable on Google, and you don't need to sign in to view them. Unlike Slack etc
mattip 7y ago
PyPy works primarily on #pypy, with yearly sprints and additional coordination on the PyPy-dev mailing list
st3fan 7y ago
Many components of Firefox are.
cjbprime 7y ago
The kernel doesn't actually use IRC for coordination. There's a channel but technical discussion is rare.
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788357.

arboghast 7y ago

When I was at Canonical back in 2007-2008, we were mostly communicating using email and IRC. I had to adapt but ended up finding it very productive.

throwaway2048 7y ago

Basically every open source project that isnt "Group of devs at the same company" works like this. Open source projects are likely the largest user of mailing lists.

ownagefool 7y ago
I'd argue it works for devs at the same company quite well, but having asynchronous communication is counter to your average business persons desire to lock you in a room for an hour and make you make a decision.

dewey 7y ago

Every open source project that’s reasonable enough not to hide all their communications in proprietary silos like Slack and Discord.

jayflux 7y ago
Ok I’ll bite.. Seeing that both slack and discord save logs from the beginning (which irc doesn’t), isn’t communication less hidden if anything? It’s far easier for someone new to play catch up. There’s a reason large open source projects moved to these (React, Rust, etc).
- dewey 7y ago
  As jononor already said they are usually logged to a public location. And even if they are not they are logged in plain text on each client usually. In Slack the logs are also not searchable if you above a certain threshold (10k lines or something) if you don’t pay. Slack is prohibitively expensive if you have a lot of users and not really made for such a non-company use case.
- dkersten 7y ago
  Open source projects typically cannot afford to pay for slack, which makes all but the most recent logs unsearchable. I've found this in quite a few open source groups and it means the same questions get asked over and over again and its incredibly wasteful and irritating IMHO.
  - jimws 7y ago
    These open source groups could surely use a chatbot to log the chats to some place for archival and make the archive searchable, can't they? By the way, I find IRC/Slack good for real-time support. By nature of being real-time support, some questions get repeated over and over again. The repeition is typically mitigated by adding trivia bots to the channel that can provide answers to frequently asked questions. The best solution I have seen for archived solutions and to avoid repetition are Stack Overflow (encourage users to post questions on SO with relevant tag) and mailing list with a mailing list archive.
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      Are there any Slack chatbots that do that kind of logging and archiving? When I searched a couple years ago, I found several projects... and none of them worked except one (SlackArchive.io, I think), which worked for another couple months after I found it then died with, IIRC, communication from its operators that suggested Slack was cracking down on bots that were being used for this purpose. (Which is not unexpected.)
- zmzrr 7y ago
  Slack and Discord may have logs but you have to download a massive blob of proprietary software, register and agree to some ToS to access them. Those logs are everything but public.
jononor 7y ago
Jayflux, most open source IRC channels are logged on webservers. Those logs are usually also searchable on Google, and you don't need to sign in to view them. Unlike Slack etc

mattip 7y ago

PyPy works primarily on #pypy, with yearly sprints and additional coordination on the PyPy-dev mailing list

st3fan 7y ago

Many components of Firefox are.

cjbprime 7y ago

The kernel doesn't actually use IRC for coordination. There's a channel but technical discussion is rare.

dang 7y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21788357.