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List:       mutt-dev
Subject:    Re: The future of mutt... - intermediate aggregation
From:       Oswald Buddenhagen <ossi () kde ! org>
Date:       2013-11-08 10:08:35
Message-ID: 20131108100835.GA31561 () ugly ! local
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On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 11:20:36AM +0100, jpacner@redhat.com wrote:
> > from my experience, people without maintainership ambitions simply adapt
> > to lower standards.
> 
> Such people are fast to discover => you can ban them (it may/should have
> also a social face, not only sudden change of commit rights or alike) at
> the very beginning => solved :).
> 
and who makes *that* call? where do you draw the line? it doesn't appear
magically, somebody with the competence and guts (=> authority) has to
do it.

> > they could already do that, by reviewing each other's work and otherwise
> > building an active community. they are not.
> 
> And they did - in the first years when the project was vital.
> 
yes, they were "assistants" (aka minions). they didn't have enough drive
to become maintainers (and those who did have mostly left meanwhile). the
community simply didn't have a continuity of high-profile contributors.
this break certainly contributes to the old maintainers' reluctance to
"give up the baton", but the simple fact is that there is nobody here
who wants the job and is up to it, and no degree of trying to be "more
welcoming" will change that.

what might work is surveying the various forks out there, and if one
with a competent and reasonably active+cooperative maintainer is found,
offer him the job with no further strings attached. the first part can
(and probably must) be done by the wider community, the second by the
maintainers.

> > then maybe you should explain what you meant? thinking it through
> > properly?
> 
> I tried, but didn't notice anyone from "those who are still around" to
> not care. Therefore I was a bit surprised by your view/feeling.
> 
this makes no sense. maybe you again forgot what you said yourself?

> > as that's about the time i joined the oss community, i can confirm that
> > esr's essay is still pretty much spot-on. in fact, it would be kinda
> > weird if hackers suddenly changed in the last 15 years.
> 
> They definitely did (of course not suddenly, but slowly throughout those
> 15 years) [...] they are more willing/open and implicitly
> expect changes and new features even if they in themselves don't want to.
> 
that a higher percentage of foss communities now has a stronger focus on
non-developing users does in no way affect the premises of esr's essay
(one could argue that it further weakens the libertarian ideology that
shines through at several places, but i don't take that aspect of the
essay seriously anyway).

further, this here is a community which is 20 years old and cleary
didn't have significant "modern influences". so what exactly is your
point?

> In mutts trac there are plenty of patches from people who tried the
> "more agile" variant [...]
>
uh, what?
i see no evidence of a shift in unpaid foss contribution patterns.
also, the whole "agile" buzz seems utterly inapplicable to loosely knit
online communities. or approached differently, they *already were* agile
before the corporate world made it a fad.

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