Say you want to contribute to a project and find out the only way to do so is by discussing the issue on IRC or the mailing list, then submitting the patch per email.
I like IRC and still use it daily to keep up with other hobbyists. Then again, vintage computers are my main hobby horse and of course those circles are gonna lean towards platforms that remain usable on a VIC-20.
deleted by creator
Do you find mailing lists easier to use than pull requests / merge requests? And how do you find following a discussion in a mailing list?
Yes and it depends to both questions.
I participate in projects being developed on Github that have 5k+ open pull requests and the same amount of issues. At that volume of communication, the Github workflow of “clicking through stuff” is way inferior to an efficient email workflow. Essentially, your workflow turns into email anyways because its the only sane way to consume based on push, and yes, I know, you can reply to Github using email, but its not nearly as good as something made for email.
So, in my opinion, email is simpler to use that pull request. It is not easiser because it is not close to what people are used to.
At that volume of communication, the Github workflow of “clicking through stuff” is way inferior to an efficient email workflow. Essentially, your workflow turns into email anyways because its the only sane way to consume based on push (…)
I don’t agree. Any conversation on pull requests happens through issues/tickets, which already aggregate all related events and are trivially referenced through their permanent links, including through the Git repo’s history.
For newer/inexperienced users mailing lists are definitely easier. Everyone can send an email.
deleted by creator
Projects like that make me want to create a uucp network and so I can email a bang path address to get my patch.
It would have to be a pretty niche project with an involved and dedicated community to get away with that these days.
Yeah super niche projects like the Linux Kernel and Git
deleted by creator
I think they meant new projects starting today, not currently existing ones.
Indeed. I wonder if LinuxNet / #linux is still around, actually. That was interesting back in the day, and later meeting many of the characters at conferences and meetups. IRC was great. Patches by email, otoh… Good that it is possible, but PRs/MRs are nicer.
To be fair, at least the kernel is super niche in terms of development.
Personally I am comfortable with that as long as there is a public git repo. An issue tracker is the one thing I’d miss the most. I think how well this goes down will greatly depend on the project’s target audience.
notmuch is a project that I follow closely and very occasionally contribute to that works this way.I’m too
oldyoung to deal with this. Probably wouldn’t contributeSame. Presented with those options, I just don’t contribute 🤷
I spent a lot of time and energy doing that years ago and don’t want to do it anymore. Mailing lists suck because you’re subscribed to a billion things you don’t want to hear about. IRC…honestly…the world has just moved past it.
This is my sentiment too and I asked the question because I was surprised that some new projects were actually being started with exactly these 2 dinosaurs. It felt offputting - as if they were trying to keep people away.
Lemmy doesn’t support questionnaires, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of those who like those 2 technologies were 40+, maybe even 50+.
it wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of those who like those 2 technologies were 40+, maybe even 50+.
I don’t think it should surprise anyone if people with more experience and skills are more comfortable with simple tools than the rest of us. They’ve had more time to find good workflows for those tools, after all.
It might be more interesting to ask why people prefer any one comms method over another. For example, do they like irc/email because they’re old dogs who can’t learn new tricks, or because those are open systems that can’t be taken over by some greedy corporation?
more comfortable with simple tools than the rest of us
That really depends on your definition of “simple”. Swimming across a river is simple, but hard. All you need is your body. Using a boat is easy, but complicated (you need to know how to drive a boat). So yeah, it’s “simple” but it’s not easy, IMO.
I’m sad the world moved past IRC. It was always chock full of tech geniuses and underground nerd shit. The normies can have discord
I’m still amazed that people consider proprietary app Discord the successor to IRC
I’m surprised discord is so commonly used with such a horribly unintuitive UX. I can’t recall all my problems with it, but I remember absolutely hating using it at first, as a person with early adopter tendencies.
That’s fine. They’re both open protocols that let a project owner control all of their communication channels. That’s a good thing.
I wouldn’t want a new project to be run that way, but contributing to older existing projects really isn’t that bad.
IRC is fine for almost synchronous communication - but dealing with things that work on the timescale of days or weeks, IRC becomes difficult to maintain a discussion about a fix or feature over that timeframe that includes all the interested participants.
Mailing lists often come with an archive and a sufficiently large project will have multiple lists for different aspects of the project. Consider gcc ( https://gcc.gnu.org/lists.html )and you’ll see that bugs and patches are their own lists. Going into there you can also see the archives for the project… and if the mailing list software has support for it, viable by thread https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-bugs/
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/11/25/519 is another fun read (that entire thread).
git has support for (and was originally used via) email.
git send-email(docs) andgit am(docs) are part of its original functionality and that workflow can make use if it.I’m personally most comfortable with GitHub or GitLab, followed by email. An IRC or discord project lacks the ability to properly research the “why was this done that way back in 2016”… unless the project doesn’t aspire to be a long lived open source project.
Managing email is something that should be considered as part of this. Setting up a separate email address for that project, or using the + addressing as part of the email to make it so that your email filters can operate on them better (Exchange, gmail). This may require deeper familiarity with email clients than is common today - smart mailboxes in Mac Mail, client side rules in Exchange, or old school procmail with a shell account.
I totally agree longterm projects are better off using github or email.
Here is the crux for lively discussions using discord/IRC comes more natural. But whilst it facilitates easier flowing communication it fails to preserve it.
s/IRC/XMPP/or maybe mattermost instead of a mailing list?One issue with IRC is that there’s no archiving by default. That means discussions and context for decisions are lost. This can be fixed, though. But the default setup for social chat isn’t optimal for project planning.
That’s where any sort of forum would work much better, in my opinion. Also, unlike mails with 8+ replies, it’s much easier to follow and organize
I don’t necessarily think this has anything to do with mails per se but with the way people use them, which nowadays is just top post all the things
This is not a problem inherent to mail though. If you look at some thread on Lemmy or reddit, you essentially see the same problem. A user posts a long text or comment and makes four, five points that would warrant addressing further. Ideally, you would craft four, five answers and post them as four, five replies, thus giving the discussion a nice structure. What happens instead is that people craft one long reply and keep the mud balling rolling.
Good communication is almost never a question of technology I’d argue.
I think it’s super based. All these clowns talking about open source while using Discord and GitHub (yes, that’s me included). You want to submit a bug report to Git itself? Well, you gotta send a bug report to the mailing list. Then some guy will be like “oh shit can you fix it also?” and I’m like “haha no” so the dude submits a fix himselg within 4 hours, and obtains the raging hard boner of internet developer clout
Great system, pgp keys are actually useful. And everyone knows you have to be at least an 8/10 in handsomeness to be running an IRC server. Also, Matrix is trash, I’m serious, modern IRC is cool
What do you dislike about Matrix?
Oh it’s just an over complicated pile of low quality stuff. Still substantially behind XMPP, which was a fine solution. Somehow still behind IRCv3 in terms of raw usability and apps too. IRCv3 is a new spec that made a lot of improvements
I investigated all three in depth and decided IRCv3 is what I want to use for my server / apps. I even run a public web client that acts like Discord. IRC has the bigger communities still
If you really care about encryption, maybe there’s a reason you’d do something different, but I just want private chat servers with good UX
I never really got used to IRC myself, but it’s usually fine when connecting to IRC via Matrix.
BTW, what other communication channels would you have expected?
Primarily an issue tracker on codeberg, gitlab, github, or something with support for pull requests / merge requests for contributions. Direct communication is secondary for most projects, IMO unless it’s big/used enough that users require direct support - in which case: Matrix.
Mailing lists intimidate me but I haven’t ever tried to communicate by one. IRC is probably fine.
I’ll be honest though, I’m not going to submit a patch to a mailing list unless there are pretty clear and easy instructions. Forking a project and opening a pull request on whatever forge (like GitHub, GitLab, and others) is easy. I probably do it once every three months or so when I find a bug I know I can fix. Mailing lists are just enough trouble (with my current level of understanding) that I’m probably not going to do it.
I’ll give an example. I found a bug in the JDK that was fixed in 17 but not in 11 and I was trying to figure out how to report it or backport it myself. It was crazy the amount of hoops I needed to jump through and I gave up. I’m not saying the project should be different so it fits my needs or anything, I’m just using this as an example of hurdles discouraging me from contributing. I think the vast majority of devs are probably at the same place and don’t want to fool with mailing lists. (I’m not saying projects should stop using them.)
