Hi James,
first thanks for your explanations.
Am 17.06.2011 11:14, schrieb James Strachan:
On 17 June 2011 09:19, Christian Schneider<ch...@die-schneider.net> wrote:
I know that I have proposed this before and then got the answer that this
was discussed already. Still I have the feeling that everybody dislikes the
current way we build our website.... so again a try :-)...
I'm not sure you realise how much dislike there is for wikis?
I did not realize but I am starting to see :-) I only saw the
Wikis don't help committers and don't help users (as you end up with
crap everywhere from different versions - or worse documentation for
stuff thats not even released yet); all just in case we hope one day
someone will turn up and dump a load of useful stuff in the wiki (that
never really happens).
That is true help from people outside the project is rare.
Incidentally I'm even finding the argument that a wiki is the easiest
way to get contributions to have less and less value these days since
github. Its actually easier for a total newbie to come along, fork an
apache project's git repo on github.com, edit some text files& do a
pull request than it is to pester folks for write access to the wiki
first before they can even begin to contribute anything. The wiki has
a much larger barrier to entry than github.
Github would be a great way to improve the documentation workflow for
karaf. You would not
need to open a jira issue to make a change and apply patch. Sadly we are
stuck with subversion.
Imagine for a second, you are a newbie - you've seen some issue or
have an idea for a little page; with github 2 clicks, 20 seconds later
you're editing the file in question or writing the new file then
firing off the pull request and getting on with your life doing
something else. With a wiki you try editing; doesn't work, so you
shoot off an email for access then wait. Then after a random time
period of hours to days you get more mails then at some point later,
you get the ability to login again to the wiki and hopefully you can
now edit the page. By the time you get access you've probably
forgotten what you were gonna do in the first place :)
The process of getting rights for the wiki is a problem of course. But
it is necesary as we need the icla to accept contributions.
That may also be a big problem with github. You send a pull request but
that opens a big problem with IP issues. I think a pull request
does not include that the user declares that he has the rights on the
code he submits and may donate them to apache. In fact it does not even
say he donates the code at all.
So for example offering dual licenses later is a problem. I think this
is a big issue with github. I am not sure how important this is for
documentation though.
Christian
--
--
Christian Schneider
http://www.liquid-reality.de
Open Source Architect
Talend Application Integration Division http://www.talend.com
