Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Greg Morgan]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 12:52 PM, Martijn van Exel  wrote:

> I find this a really worthwhile conversation to have. IRC is still great
> for some but it’s hardly inclusive. I like Slack and started using it early
> on. We set up an OSM US Slack, initially just for the board to coordinate,
> but we extended it to be open for all soon. They even give us free stuff
> because we’re a not-for-profit organization. I am a lurker on the Maptime
> slack and member of ~10 Slack organizations total. I introduced Slack at my
> workplace and it has gained great popularity there since. I like how Slack
> could help support a more inclusive OSM community.
>
>
I would think that the US Board should add another board member to be a
communications manager.  I now understand why corporations have paid staff
that do nothing but manage all these communication options.  For example,
 I was surprised to find that the call for US SOTM 2016 was open.  I missed
it because I don't always catch the board blog.  Had there been a board
position to send an email here, then another part of the community would
have received the message.  In a recent email chain about the US relation
tool, Martijn mentioned that he was wrapped around the axle going ca-thump,
ca-thump. I asked for permission to fix the 2015 SOTMUS page and create the
2016 SOTMUS page. The backing email is attached.  Martijn sends out a
tweet.  I see that I missed posting about it here. Oh and I have to sign up
for talk-ca to complete that important announcement too.  However, I don't
want to step on the organizing committee's toes and role in process.
That's where if feels like another board position is required to make sure
all these communication channels are filled. (I need to push the 2015 video
page edits to the weekend. Plans fizzle but I will get it done.)

Frederik mentioned Git.  I remember watching Git unfold.  Linus was taking
heat for using the proprietary Bit Keeper software to manage the Linux
Kernel development.  I think there was a Bit Keeper license violation.  As
I recall proprietary a company/person taunted Linux developers that crowd
sourced software couldn't match a system like Bit Keeper. Roughly 18 months
later, Git was complete/stable.  The software was functional and useful
much earlier than 18 months.  It seems like all creatures great and small
use the github.com site without thinking about it.  Github is a well
crafted wrapper around Git.

On the one hand, I understand all the paywalls out there that provide
different communication features.  I am concerned about the future openness
of the web when it appears that all the foundational RFCs are taken behind
these paywalls.  It almost feels like Facebook is recreating the web as a
private web. New hotness X is all the some people use.  It is hard to reach
out to these people if you do not use new hotness X to do so.  On the other
hand, there may be missed potential systems like Git if we don't stick to
our "Open Source/Open Data" guns so to speak.

I have two more thoughts.  The first is related to SOTMUS. At one time last
year there was a hope of having regional conferences.  Then the SOTMUS 2016
call for locations went out.  I am curios.  Was there an interesting
discussion on, say, Slack? Did the board forget to explain why the regional
conferences were dropped? Did the board flat out forget to think about it?

My second thought is about the legal thing.  Let's say the board had an
interesting discussion regarding the pros and cons about bringing in the
Harvard people using slack. Let's say that the board thought other people
were watching on slack or whatever you do. tick tock tick tock.  Now that
time passed and the Harvard people are discovered, the board lost the
message because the postmortem conversation looked like the board was way
too private and secretive.

By all means, I am not out running the lynch mob after the board.  I am
using these examples to show how hard communication can be. In our current
age, I think that an already difficult communication process grows as each
of these slack like tools is adopted.

Just like Betty White, I am on the Twitter.  I just don't have enough
cycles to use it.  More importantly, I need to have time to contribute at
least one change set a day big or small.  That's that way I can set out to
rule the world each day just like Pinky and the Brain.  ;-)

Regards,
Greg




Greg -- this is great. Thank you so much for getting this organized. Let me
tweet out a link to the wiki so folks are aware of it. Feel free to post to
talk-us / talk-ca too of course.

On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 12:13 AM Greg Morgan wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 8:33 AM, Martijn van Exel wrote:
>
>> Thanks Greg! I took the liberty to remove the call for bids from the 2016
>> page as this part of the process is behind us. Please feel free to organize
>> the page based on previous’ years pages or add your own flavor.
>>
>> Martijn
>>
>>
> No problem. I now have a substantial skeleton 

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Serge Wroclawski]

Michal,

The client code is proprietary, and the browser is just a platform from
which to execute the code.

It's similar to running Skype's proprietary binary on Debian. Running a
proprietary application on a Free operating system does not change the
freedom of the application.

-Serge
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Serge Wroclawski]

Martijn,

I think your approach on this issue is spot on.

I personally think that when a project like OSM supports non-Free software,
especially ones run by external entities, it sends absolutely the wrong
message. Worse still is if we force users to use these gatekeepers to
interface with our community.

I'm happy to find tools that let us work with people together, but that
should be done with F/LOSS wherever possible.

- Serge
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Rihards]

On 2016.03.30. 10:40, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:

On Wed, 2016-03-30 at 10:36 +0300, Rihards wrote:

this might be a bit of a clash of "why are we mapping" reasons.
for some people means are not important.
for others, osm is one bit in a more open, collaborating world.

osm using slack is like wikipedia using google maps. because they are
more shiny, you know. and probably work better on iphones.


Last I checked, Wikipedia is usually linking coordinates to Geohack
which in turn allows the user to select the mapping service of his/her
choice. One of which, not surprisingly, happens to be OSM.


yes, but the in-page map popup uses osm data - 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiMiniAtlas


(see the small globe with the downward arrow next to the coordinates in 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin )

--
 Rihards

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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Wed, 2016-03-30 at 10:36 +0300, Rihards wrote:
> this might be a bit of a clash of "why are we mapping" reasons.
> for some people means are not important.
> for others, osm is one bit in a more open, collaborating world.
> 
> osm using slack is like wikipedia using google maps. because they are 
> more shiny, you know. and probably work better on iphones.

Last I checked, Wikipedia is usually linking coordinates to Geohack
which in turn allows the user to select the mapping service of his/her
choice. One of which, not surprisingly, happens to be OSM.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn 


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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Rihards]

On 2016.03.30. 10:31, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:

On Sun, 2016-03-27 at 00:07 -0700, Steve Coast wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software)


And on this page:


License   Proprietary


Until and unless there is an alternative client that is free software
(ideally GPL licensed, but BSD/MIT licensed would also be okay), I would
prefer to stick with IRC or its successor.

I feel it is contrary to the mission of OSM to directly support
proprietary licensed software. (Why do you think I'm mapping on OSM and
not fixing problems on Google Maps?)


this might be a bit of a clash of "why are we mapping" reasons.
for some people means are not important.
for others, osm is one bit in a more open, collaborating world.

osm using slack is like wikipedia using google maps. because they are 
more shiny, you know. and probably work better on iphones.

--
 Rihards

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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Sun, 2016-03-27 at 00:07 -0700, Steve Coast wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software)

And on this page:

> License   Proprietary

Until and unless there is an alternative client that is free software
(ideally GPL licensed, but BSD/MIT licensed would also be okay), I would
prefer to stick with IRC or its successor.

I feel it is contrary to the mission of OSM to directly support
proprietary licensed software. (Why do you think I'm mapping on OSM and
not fixing problems on Google Maps?)

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn 


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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Richard Fairhurst]

Martijn van Exel wrote:
> The web site has always been about the map primarily, 
> not the people. I am curious if there are any ideas out 
> there to change that.

Groups!

cheers
Richard



--
View this message in context: 
http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Slack-tp5870718p5870933.html
Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 3:45 PM, Dave F  wrote:

>
> On 29/03/2016 21:20, Tom Hughes wrote:
>
>> On 29/03/16 20:52, Martijn van Exel wrote:
>>
>> I find this a really worthwhile conversation to have. IRC is still great
>>> for some but it’s hardly inclusive.
>>>
>>
>> In what way is it not inclusive?
>>
>
> Because IRC works in real time. Contributors have to be in the same time
> zone (or stay up really late/ get up really early). It's biased towards
> densely populated zones ie Northern Europe or East coast if North America.
>
> As it has no record facility it turns into the equivalent of little groups
> huddling away secretively in the corner of the room to have a whispered
> conversation; something that only teenage girls usually do.


Could we not get osmbot to archive this to the web?
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Bill Ricker]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 3:52 PM, Martijn van Exel  wrote:

> IRC is still great for some but it’s hardly inclusive.


​Some projects have a web-portal to make IRC inclusive of those who can't
even configure Pipsin for IRC.



-- 
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bill.n1...@gmail.com
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Martijn van Exel]

I find this a really worthwhile conversation to have. IRC is still great for 
some but it’s hardly inclusive. I like Slack and started using it early on. We 
set up an OSM US Slack, initially just for the board to coordinate, but we 
extended it to be open for all soon. They even give us free stuff because we’re 
a not-for-profit organization. I am a lurker on the Maptime slack and member of 
~10 Slack organizations total. I introduced Slack at my workplace and it has 
gained great popularity there since. I like how Slack could help support a more 
inclusive OSM community.

But also consider this:

* There are open source copycats that are in some aspects better than the 
‘original’. Mattermost and Rocket.chat come to mind. 
* Slack really sucks at some things: open invites, fine tuning notifications, 
broadcasting your status. It is known to become slow and even break down when 
teams get huge[1].
* Slack will do what it can to keep you within their walled garden. You can 
export data but is there a way to move an entire team or organization to an 
alternative solution? Don’t think so (but ready to be wrong.)

I think that part of why we are having this discussion in the first place is 
that osm.org  offers no great options for community members to 
be in touch. The web site has always been about the map primarily, not the 
people. I am curious if there are any ideas out there to change that. So we may 
perhaps think a little bit less about creating more channels for people to be 
in touch in the future.

[1] 
http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html
 


> On Mar 29, 2016, at 1:24 PM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 03/29/2016 07:33 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
>> +1 to this. OSM should be seeking to broaden the base of potential
>> mappers, and that means making sure that gateways to the community are
>> user-friendly - which these days includes good UX/onboarding experience
>> and mobile apps. Slack is a clear winner there.
> 
> As a side note, this is also something commonly debated by the OSMF
> board and the OSMF members - wheter or not, and in how far, non-free
> tools are valid to use for a project like OSM and a foundation like the
> OSMF.
> 
> Example of a recent discussion:
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2015-December/003639.html
> 
> The spectrum of available services for a specific task usually ranges
> from "Non-free software offered as a service" (with and without silo,
> with and without payment) over "free software offered as a serivce" to
> "free software you run yourselves".
> 
> The paid-for solutions will usually mean less work for the few admins at
> OSMF (who have enough work with keeping the essentials running), plus
> they're usually shinier. The self-hosted stuff is often less shiny but
> more in keeping with the free-and-open spirit.
> 
> Personally I'm often on the fence as well. I'd love there to be an
> "internal IT services working group" whom we could task with setting up
> email, bug trackers, wikis, mumble servers, and voting platforms as
> needed but there's no such group and not enough capacity in OWG to
> shoulder that too. I think that OSM owes its success partly to all those
> who were happy to use it when it was still much less usable than it is
> today; had everyone gone to Google because the had the slickest
> interface, then OSM wouldn't be where it is today. On the other hand,
> working groups or the board tend to have a mission and while some
> detours for using free-and-open are acceptable, there's a limit to just
> how much productivity loss you can accept for going with the less shiny.
> 
> Bye
> Frederik
> 
> -- 
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
> 
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 03/29/2016 07:33 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
> +1 to this. OSM should be seeking to broaden the base of potential
> mappers, and that means making sure that gateways to the community are
> user-friendly - which these days includes good UX/onboarding experience
> and mobile apps. Slack is a clear winner there.

As a side note, this is also something commonly debated by the OSMF
board and the OSMF members - wheter or not, and in how far, non-free
tools are valid to use for a project like OSM and a foundation like the
OSMF.

Example of a recent discussion:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2015-December/003639.html

The spectrum of available services for a specific task usually ranges
from "Non-free software offered as a service" (with and without silo,
with and without payment) over "free software offered as a serivce" to
"free software you run yourselves".

The paid-for solutions will usually mean less work for the few admins at
OSMF (who have enough work with keeping the essentials running), plus
they're usually shinier. The self-hosted stuff is often less shiny but
more in keeping with the free-and-open spirit.

Personally I'm often on the fence as well. I'd love there to be an
"internal IT services working group" whom we could task with setting up
email, bug trackers, wikis, mumble servers, and voting platforms as
needed but there's no such group and not enough capacity in OWG to
shoulder that too. I think that OSM owes its success partly to all those
who were happy to use it when it was still much less usable than it is
today; had everyone gone to Google because the had the slickest
interface, then OSM wouldn't be where it is today. On the other hand,
working groups or the board tend to have a mission and while some
detours for using free-and-open are acceptable, there's a limit to just
how much productivity loss you can accept for going with the less shiny.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 10:25 AM Bill Ricker  wrote:

>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Ian Dees  wrote:
>
>> Slack offers an irc gateway if you'd prefer to connect to slack from your
>> irc client. Just sign up for the slack team and look in the "integrations"
>> section for information about how to connect your irc client.
>>
> ​Our software consultancy is using Slack for communications both
> internally and with the client (who adopted it internally at our
> suggestion). In general it s very nice.
>
> 1) History evaporates quickly ... unless you have a paid account.​
>This may be good for Corps with (anti)retention policies, but could be
> a problem for a FLOSS/OpenData project.
>

My understanding is that open source projects can get a free corporate
account that retains history (details here
, I think?) That said,
as I pointed out earlier, history available only to logged-in/signed-up
members is an anti-pattern for open source communities. So some tradeoff is
inevitable there. (That said, most projects have pretty unsearchable IRC
logs as a practical matter anyway, so this may not be much of a loss.)


> 2) The Xmpp / Jabber gateway works with Pidgin etc, but is buggy and
> inconsistent in handling of advanced/new  features (re-edited messages
> don't re-send; multi-user private chat invites don't, emoji as
> :smiley-cat:, display literal as data text with `markdown` only,  ...)
> mapping down to traditional and back. I expect the IRC gateway will be
> similar. The gateway should not re seen as a a panacea; try it before you
> jump hard there!
>
> ​I do concur with sentiment of preferring to base open development on open
> infrastructure.
> ​But if the freemium product provides sufficiently better capability, it
> is not wrong to use it to enable the project.
>

+1 to this. OSM should be seeking to broaden the base of potential mappers,
and that means making sure that gateways to the community are user-friendly
- which these days includes good UX/onboarding experience and mobile apps.
Slack is a clear winner there.

Luis
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Bill Ricker]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Ian Dees  wrote:

> Slack offers an irc gateway if you'd prefer to connect to slack from your
> irc client. Just sign up for the slack team and look in the "integrations"
> section for information about how to connect your irc client.
>
​Our software consultancy is using Slack for communications both internally
and with the client (who adopted it internally at our suggestion). In
general it s very nice.

1) History evaporates quickly ... unless you have a paid account.​
   This may be good for Corps with (anti)retention policies, but could be a
problem for a FLOSS/OpenData project.

2) The Xmpp / Jabber gateway works with Pidgin etc, but is buggy and
inconsistent in handling of advanced/new  features (re-edited messages
don't re-send; multi-user private chat invites don't, emoji as
:smiley-cat:, display literal as data text with `markdown` only,  ...)
mapping down to traditional and back. I expect the IRC gateway will be
similar. The gateway should not re seen as a a panacea; try it before you
jump hard there!

​I do concur with sentiment of preferring to base open development on open
infrastructure.
​But if the freemium product provides sufficiently better capability, it is
not wrong to use it to enable the project.

-- 
Bill Ricker
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Ian Dees]

Slack offers an irc gateway if you'd prefer to connect to slack from your
irc client. Just sign up for the slack team and look in the "integrations"
section for information about how to connect your irc client.
On Mar 29, 2016 11:33 AM, "Toby Murray"  wrote:

> I have set up a Slack bot using some software[1] that relays messages
> between a slack channel and an IRC channel. It is listening in #osm on
> OFTC and the #irc slack channel in Steve's team.
>
> I love my irssi+screen IRC setup however it kind of breaks down when
> it comes to a phone-friendly interface. So I may use this slack
> channel to hop on IRC from my phone sometimes.
>
> We'll see how it goes. It hasn't seen too much traffic yet.
>
> Toby
>
>
> [1] https://github.com/ekmartin/slack-irc
>
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 2:07 AM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software)
> >
> > On Mar 27, 2016, at 12:02 AM, Maarten Deen  wrote:
> >
> > On 2016-03-26 20:59, Steve Coast wrote:
> >
> > Ok so look, Slack took over the world. And it turns out it’s pretty
> > good and useful. Let’s have an official OSM slack.
> >
> >
> > Maybe I'm living under a rock, but I only know Slack as a short for
> > Slackware, a Linux distribution.
> >
> > What is this and why do I need this? Maybe a little explanation?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Maarten
> >
> >
> >
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Toby Murray]

I have set up a Slack bot using some software[1] that relays messages
between a slack channel and an IRC channel. It is listening in #osm on
OFTC and the #irc slack channel in Steve's team.

I love my irssi+screen IRC setup however it kind of breaks down when
it comes to a phone-friendly interface. So I may use this slack
channel to hop on IRC from my phone sometimes.

We'll see how it goes. It hasn't seen too much traffic yet.

Toby


[1] https://github.com/ekmartin/slack-irc

On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 2:07 AM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software)
>
> On Mar 27, 2016, at 12:02 AM, Maarten Deen  wrote:
>
> On 2016-03-26 20:59, Steve Coast wrote:
>
> Ok so look, Slack took over the world. And it turns out it’s pretty
> good and useful. Let’s have an official OSM slack.
>
>
> Maybe I'm living under a rock, but I only know Slack as a short for
> Slackware, a Linux distribution.
>
> What is this and why do I need this? Maybe a little explanation?
>
> Regards,
> Maarten
>
>
>
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Steve Coast]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software) 


> On Mar 27, 2016, at 12:02 AM, Maarten Deen  wrote:
> 
> On 2016-03-26 20:59, Steve Coast wrote:
>> Ok so look, Slack took over the world. And it turns out it’s pretty
>> good and useful. Let’s have an official OSM slack.
> 
> Maybe I'm living under a rock, but I only know Slack as a short for 
> Slackware, a Linux distribution.
> 
> What is this and why do I need this? Maybe a little explanation?
> 
> Regards,
> Maarten

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