[Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] community management/subsystem governance

[Laurent Pinchart]

On Monday, 17 September 2018 16:58:05 EEST Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> Em Mon, 17 Sep 2018 06:29:08 -0700 Christoph Hellwig escreveu:
> > On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 03:10:50PM +0200, Julia Lawall wrote:
> >>> Btw, on a quick look, it seems that github has/had an email
> >>> 
> >>> interface already:
> >>> 	https://blog.github.com/2011-03-10-reply-to-comments-from-email/
> >> 
> >> I only interact with issues posted to github via email (alpine
> >> specifically).  The only problem is that people tend to omit context,
> >> because they assume that you see the code or previous messages that they
> >> see in the web interface, which you do not.
> > 
> > The major problem with github is that as far as I can tell there is no
> > way to interact with it without creating an account.
> 
> Well, the same happens with moderated mailing lists. There are a
> lot of them:
> 	$ git grep moderated MAINTAINERS|wc -l
> 	221

I disagree, I think that's very different. A moderated mailing list requires 
you to subscribe, but then doesn't require you to authenticate for every 
interaction, while a web UI will require authentication.

> Except when it is something that I really want to be merged
> (e. g. something that affects my own machines or I have a demand
> from my employer), when a perfectly fine patch I sent is ignored
> by such lists, I just ignore whatever e-mail I receive from their
> mailman interface, and I assume that, if I don't receive any reply
> from a human, either the maintainers of such subsystem(s) accepted
> it or they just don't care enough. So, if it is patch affecting
> media, I just apply after a reasonable reviewing time.
> 
> In the case of github-like interfaces, I would do the same: I
> would copy the maintainer(s) and just ignore any "non-subscriber's
> warning" kind of e-mail.

There would be no such warning, as you wouldn't be able to post a message in 
the first place.

> That's actually one difference in this case: while on moderated
> ML you need to be added to each individual ML in order to send
> e-mails, on a web-based interface, just one subscription is
> enough for all projects hosted there, and there are a lot less
> git hosting servers than email mailing lists.

At the moment there is. If we start hosting gitlab instances for different 
subsystems, the situation will become very different.

> So, in the specific case of github, I wouldn't have any issues, as I had to
> create an account there due to other purposes. Yet, I don't have any
> need right now to have an account on gitlab or Pagure. I very
> likely wouldn't create an account there just to forward patches
> to a random kernel subsystem/driver eventually hosted there.

Exactly my point :-)

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart