Re: Working with public-inbox.org

From: Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 28, 2016, 11:41 UTC
Message-ID: <d4c44d3c-7361-2a33-4ae5-03cc45f8a034@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1608281033340.129229@virtualbox>

Hello Johannes,

W dniu 28.08.2016 o 10:36, Johannes Schindelin pisze:

Show 20 quoted lines

> On Sun, 28 Aug 2016, Jakub Narębski wrote:
>> W dniu 25.08.2016 o 14:58, Johannes Schindelin pisze:
>>> On Mon, 22 Aug 2016, Eric Wong wrote:
>>>> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I just want developers who are already familiar with Git, and come up with
>>>>> an improvement to Git itself, to be able to contribute it without having
>>>>> to pull out their hair in despair.
>>>>
>>>> We want the same thing.  I just want to go farther and get
>>>> people familiar with (federated|decentralized) tools instead of
>>>> proprietary and centralized ones.
>>>
>>> Why require users to get familiar with (federated|decentralized) tools
>>> *unless* they make things provably more convenient? So far, I only see
>>> that this would add to the hurdle, not improve things.
>>
>> Arguably for some federated/decentralized tools are preferred
>> (for philosophical reasons), even if they do not achieve even feature
>> parity with centralized tools (c.f. FSF).

Philosophical and ideological reasons.

> This statement is false. If you had talked about *your* preference, it
> would be true. But to state that federated/decentralized tools are
> universally preferred is nonsense.

The key word is "some" (or, if you prefer, "a few").

Show 5 quoted lines

> You know as well as I do that most users/contributors go for convenience.
> 
> And if you require an inconvenient step (e.g. subscribing to a
> federated/decentralized philosophy), most potential contributors simply
> stop being potential contributors. End of story.

For some people registering on GitHub and using web interface (though I think there is also command line interface, don't know if it covers PRs) would be the inconvenient step. Just saying.

What I would like to see is bidirectional bridge between email and GitHub (and possibly other hosting sites), so that everybody could use their favorite interface, be it Git + email client, or Git + web browser (or desktop client for GitHub). Just like thanks to Gmane and Gmane-like public-inbox I can use either email client or news reader, and it is [nearly] transparent regarding to which one I use.

Even better if hosting site implementation (of pull requests, etc.) were based on federated systems (like email, or Usenet, or IRC, or XMPP), and not closed in walled gardens; with hosting site just being one particular implementation (like e.g. Ghost blog engine, and Ghost Pro hosting site).

I agree that lowering barriers to contribution for new class of users (like MS Windows users; setting up MTA on Linux etc. for git-send-email or git-imap-send is not very complicated), if it would be possible without inconveniencing existing reviewers... which are even more important, judging by the amount of "needs review" messages in "What's cooking...".

Best,

-- 
Jakub Narębski