The core mantra of the ASF is "community over code" it is not purely about the code.
One of the key functions of the mailing list IMO is to bring the community together in one venue and not require participants to have to go to multiple venues in order to understand what is going on with a project and participate. Mailing lists are where you find and discover new contributors, often people will start off as users asking questions, move on to submitting bug reports/patches etc and eventually become committers/PMC members over time. There are plenty of discussions you can have without any code needing to be present or even remotely relevant (long term roadmap, tooling, events, legal, marketing, trademarks, personnel etc). I for one do not want to have to file an issue just to discuss a project roadmap, plan an event, announce a release etc. As others have already noted earlier in this thread mailing lists are the most technologically neutral and accessible platform for everyone to be able to participate in discussions. Rob On 19/01/2015 07:37, "Benedikt Ritter" <brit...@apache.org> wrote: >Hello, > >Guys, don't get me wrong, but you're sounding like a bunch of old man >talking about the good old days, where you did everything on the command >line. ;-) >I'm 29 and before Apache, I hadn't heard about mailing lists. It always >felt clumsy to me. I know github and twitter. That's just the stuff my >generation uses. I understand the requirements Phil brought up. But I >don't >think that mailing lists are the golden way to fulfill those requirements. >And when people stop contributing because they don't like the tools we >use, >then we have a problem. No matter how fancy one can configure thunderbird >rules... (BTW I'm using gmail for Apache Mails and it works pretty well. >It's the only way I can have the same filters on all of my devices...) > >I like Benson's idea of improving the searching facilities. But IMHO this >is addressing only part of the story. As I said before, what I love about >github is, that everything is integrated with the code. ASF is about the >code. If there where no code, there wouldn't be any discussions. I don't >think it would be to hard for infra to host a gitlab instance [1] or even >get a github enterprise plan [2]. Everything would run on ASF infra, code >would be integrated. I would be happy. We could set it up so that it sends >an email to a mailing list for every code change/comment/ticket. Win Win >situation ;-) > >Best regards, >Benedikt > >[1] https://about.gitlab.com/ >[2] https://enterprise.github.com/ > >2015-01-19 6:41 GMT+01:00 Ross Gardler (MS OPEN TECH) < >ross.gard...@microsoft.com>: > >> I'll certainly admit that I'm a "traditionalist". But I hope that I can >>be >> credited with trying other things when they come along. >> >> Unfortunately, there is no other format of communications that is >> standards based and thus has all the necessary tools for being >>productive. >> If there were I'd be happy to use it. >> >> My car has a cassette player, but I haven't owned a cassette for >>something >> like 25 years. >> >> I do think that something better than email will emerge one day, but it >> isn't around today. >> >> Ross >> >> Sent from my Windows Phone >> ________________________________ >> From: Dennis E. Hamilton<mailto:dennis.hamil...@acm.org> >> Sent: 1/18/2015 9:20 AM >> To: dev@community.apache.org<mailto:dev@community.apache.org> >> Subject: RE: Mailinglists - a tool from the 90s? >> >> I think Ross's consideration also applies to the many folks who cling to >> technology of the 70s (i.e., the Internet versions of News Readers) to >> access and contribute to ASF mailing lists. >> >> - Dennis >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Ross Gardler (MS OPEN TECH) [mailto:ross.gard...@microsoft.com] >> Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2015 07:29 >> To: dev@community.apache.org >> Subject: RE: Mailinglists - a tool from the 90s? >> >> For me any alternative would still have to push everything into my inbox >> where I can use a my preferred tools, each developed and matured over >>many >> years, to help me process the volume of communications I need (filters, >> archives, calendars etc.) >> >> Ross >> >> Sent from my Windows Phone >> ________________________________ >> From: Benedikt Ritter<mailto:brit...@apache.org> >> Sent: 1/18/2015 4:35 AM >> To: dev@community.apache.org<mailto:dev@community.apache.org> >> Subject: Mailinglists - a tool from the 90s? >> >> Hi all, >> >> over at the Apache Commons Project, we have a long discussion about our >> mailing lists. Are they to noisy? Should they be splitted up into >>sublists? >> Should individual components go TLP? >> IMHO Ben McCann summed up the core problem pretty well [1]. Mailing >>lists >> are simply a outdated tool from the 90s. They can not compete with tools >> like github/gitlab that integrate the code with the possibility to do >>code >> reviews, disucssions and bugtracking. >> >> Now I'm curious: Does anybody here really like the use of mailing >>lists? Or >> do we all simply go through the struggle of setting up filters etc. just >> because this is the way it has always been? >> >> Regards, >> Benedikt >> >> [1] http://markmail.org/message/iizay3mmf2msvaf2 >> >> -- >> http://people.apache.org/~britter/ >> http://www.systemoutprintln.de/ >> http://twitter.com/BenediktRitter >> http://github.com/britter >> >> > > >-- >http://people.apache.org/~britter/ >http://www.systemoutprintln.de/ >http://twitter.com/BenediktRitter >http://github.com/britter
