3 ms·

I can't speak for others, but I'm driven away from contributing to projects that use mailing lists because there's a high barrier to entry, and here's a source

I can't speak for others, but I'm driven away from contributing to projects that use mailing lists because there's a high barrier to entry, and here's a source of other people having the same issue[1] to corroborate my anecdote a little. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/

cat199 6y ago
as discussed in previous threads, the person promoting this claim within the linux foundation is also a microsoft employee, and microsoft owns github. so while it might represent some trend, it is also worthwhile to possibly consider editorial/selection bias as a factor for promoting the claim that this is significantly prohibitive
- iLemming 6y ago
  Yes, MSFT acquiring GitHub was like if the Pope, supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church has announced that they are taking control over CERN and promised it would remain an independent research organization. What choice would all the scientists have in that case? They can't just say: "I'm leaving physics until someone else builds another LHC". Until we have a better, more superior, free, open-source, public service that can do things better than GitHub, I'm afraid we'd have to play along. But the point is not about GitHub vs. something else. It is about that Pull-Requests are preferred over mailing lists for open-source projects.
  - tikej 6y ago
    We do. Gitlab or Gitea are FOSS (the first one partially, the other fully I think).
    - bzg 6y ago
      And https://sr.ht https://sr.ht.
  - Woodi 6y ago
    Hehe :) But you forget about Catholic Church dedication to Overall Truth that cannot contradict reality. Or you do not belive in it. I do. So, probably no point in discussing this, right ? ;) In contrast to corporations dedication to them selves... Which just only on surface looks like cysnism on our part, sadly. So, obviously MS takover over Github will end as soon as it will be convenient for MS. But realy we have bigger problem on our hands: common ppl greed or just reluctance to pay (quite not much) for hosting of their own projects. Or paying anything for their privacy. This also is why FB already replaced home pages. And Discord (almoust overnight) TS. We realy need to ad private git repos and own vpn's. For agents raiding servers locations should be enough.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cxr 6y ago
I'm no defender of mailing lists as a substitute for real bugtrackers (I'm fairly strongly against it, actually), but GitHub is also apt to drive people away more than its fans admit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378401 There's also the matter of its privacy controls being extremely lacking. It's another site that takes the position that you don't get a choice on everything being "social" now, so they'll index your activity on a central timeline whether you ask for it or not and broadcast it to anyone else who does ask for it, leaving you with no recourse except to opt-out entirely.
- whelming_wave 6y ago
  I agree that Github is not the solution the open source community is looking for, and feel the pain of the lacking privacy controls. Still, I feel that development on Github is much more accessible than that on a mailing list, and there's probably a solution which would be more accessible but still encourage people who aren't part of the mailing list culture to contribute. For example, mrsh has its development on sr.ht[1], but accepts pull requests on Github or the mailing list for the project[2]. This seems like (almost) the best of both worlds to me, where people who want to use a mailing list can, and people who want to use a GUI can, though there is overhead for the maintainers to fuse together the results at the end. An alternative like Gitea or GitLab might be better for your mentioned privacy concerns while still lowering the barrier to entry that a mailing list workflow presents. Design is not my passion, so I'm drastically underqualified to comment on whether any of these websites is an effective implementation of their ideas. [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh [2]: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh#contributing https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh#contributing

cat199 6y ago

as discussed in previous threads, the person promoting this claim within the linux foundation is also a microsoft employee, and microsoft owns github. so while it might represent some trend, it is also worthwhile to possibly consider editorial/selection bias as a factor for promoting the claim that this is significantly prohibitive

iLemming 6y ago
Yes, MSFT acquiring GitHub was like if the Pope, supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church has announced that they are taking control over CERN and promised it would remain an independent research organization. What choice would all the scientists have in that case? They can't just say: "I'm leaving physics until someone else builds another LHC". Until we have a better, more superior, free, open-source, public service that can do things better than GitHub, I'm afraid we'd have to play along. But the point is not about GitHub vs. something else. It is about that Pull-Requests are preferred over mailing lists for open-source projects.
- tikej 6y ago
  We do. Gitlab or Gitea are FOSS (the first one partially, the other fully I think).
  - bzg 6y ago
    And https://sr.ht https://sr.ht.
- Woodi 6y ago
  Hehe :) But you forget about Catholic Church dedication to Overall Truth that cannot contradict reality. Or you do not belive in it. I do. So, probably no point in discussing this, right ? ;) In contrast to corporations dedication to them selves... Which just only on surface looks like cysnism on our part, sadly. So, obviously MS takover over Github will end as soon as it will be convenient for MS. But realy we have bigger problem on our hands: common ppl greed or just reluctance to pay (quite not much) for hosting of their own projects. Or paying anything for their privacy. This also is why FB already replaced home pages. And Discord (almoust overnight) TS. We realy need to ad private git repos and own vpn's. For agents raiding servers locations should be enough.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cxr 6y ago

I'm no defender of mailing lists as a substitute for real bugtrackers (I'm fairly strongly against it, actually), but GitHub is also apt to drive people away more than its fans admit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378401 There's also the matter of its privacy controls being extremely lacking. It's another site that takes the position that you don't get a choice on everything being "social" now, so they'll index your activity on a central timeline whether you ask for it or not and broadcast it to anyone else who does ask for it, leaving you with no recourse except to opt-out entirely.

whelming_wave 6y ago
I agree that Github is not the solution the open source community is looking for, and feel the pain of the lacking privacy controls. Still, I feel that development on Github is much more accessible than that on a mailing list, and there's probably a solution which would be more accessible but still encourage people who aren't part of the mailing list culture to contribute. For example, mrsh has its development on sr.ht[1], but accepts pull requests on Github or the mailing list for the project[2]. This seems like (almost) the best of both worlds to me, where people who want to use a mailing list can, and people who want to use a GUI can, though there is overhead for the maintainers to fuse together the results at the end. An alternative like Gitea or GitLab might be better for your mentioned privacy concerns while still lowering the barrier to entry that a mailing list workflow presents. Design is not my passion, so I'm drastically underqualified to comment on whether any of these websites is an effective implementation of their ideas. [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh [2]: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh#contributing https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh#contributing