Within the ASF, the use of the development mailing list is *the* method of development discussion. That's the reason for it.
Wikis are good for "after the fact" documentation.
IRC is good when a small subset of developers need to get together quickly to talk about some aspects of development, but it should quickly and completely migrate to email after the "pressing" matters have been dealt with. Same with thinks like "meetings over beer" and stuff like that. The reason, of course, should be obvious: it excludes by its very nature other developers. And you can't have collaborative development when that happens.
Also, in-the-open development via Email makes it easy to prevent such claims as "back door" activity. How can it be back door when it's openly discussed in the primary development scheme?
In general, however, such things as "we discussed this on IRC and we decided to do this and we'll post a summary on Email when we can" is never a good idea, and can result in kindly words that "development is always done on the mailing list" to fiery words that "people are trying to have their cake and eat it too by riding on the ASF name without adhering to its standard practices."
This is an issue that every ASF project has had to deal with in one way or another.
I think you are missing the true issue here.
The off-list discussion between Aaron and myself came about because it was pretty darn clear that we were not effectively communicating our thoughts in email and that the thread was disintegrating into dispute. Rather than indulge in a flame fest we took action to help reach consensus in the community. The intent and outcome of the off-list discussion was a plan on how to get back to a reasonable discussion *on the list* - no technical decisions were made.
The bitter and personal attack that came as a response to this achieves the exact opposite of what you desire as it encourages people to keep quiet about such discussions; for, like it or not, such discussions will happen (ApacheCon anyone?).
But it is more than that. Speculative allegations seed FUD about the project and are, in my opinion, deleterious to the project and community. We should not encourage or condone such behaviour.
You had two individuals here trying to resolve a technical difference by discussing between themselves how to coherently present the issue to the community so all could be involved. This is a good thing.
You had two individuals flame them for doing so with accusations of a hidden agenda. This is a bad thing. Talk of cake and coat-tails simply promulgates that meme.
-- Jeremy
