Hi Rob, On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 8:59 AM, Rob Allen <[email protected]> wrote: > ...The really nice thing about a good asynchronous mode is that you end up > with a searchable > history for each conversation, ideally where the start of each conversation > can be easily found > and contributed to....
Yes, that's the spirit of the Apache "if it didn't happen on the dev list, it didn't happen" mantra. However that doesn't mean every discussion needs to fully happen on the mailing list. As you mention, mailing lists are an old an clunky tool, I think they can work very well for complex discussions but that requires a lot of discipline (in quoting, threading etc) which more modern tools don't require. What's required however is that someone can follow the action by *just* subscribing to this dev list: be aware of what's going on, be informed of where details are discussed if not here, and review and understand technical decisions in asynchronous mode, without having to watch hours of recording or read volumes of chat logs. > ...Mainly I'm letting everyone know that I'm not very active here as I find > it hard to be. I > appreciate that the email list is long-term stable, but it is intimidating > and can be a barrier > for people who are used to web-based asynchronous systems such as issue > trackers, > PRs or forums... IMO the key is in finding the right way to combine those tools to create the "asynchronous collaboration bus" that enables Apache-style projects. Having a complex discussion in a pull request or tracker ticket is fine, but if it's non-trivial it needs to be reflected here, even if that's just "hey we are having a discussion about FOO in ticket OW-1234, plaese join if you're interested" so that someone who's just paying attention to the dev list doesn't miss anything. So like Felix I'm worried about (a lot of) OpenWhisk technical discussions not being reflected here, and I think this needs to change as the project moves towards graduation. Tools are evolving and that's great, but the principles remain. -Bertrand
