Reynold, I can recall the "newer technologies" argument since the inception[1] of ASF, and not a single one of these "newer technologies" has stood the test of time, and it is likely that the current "newer technologies" will eventually fall out of favor too, because of newer "newer technologies".
Now, all of that said, I think that it is important to divide this discussion into 2 very distinct cases. The Gradle community has realized that and run the "user lists" as a web forum and the "dev list" as a traditional mailing list. Such choice is probably within reason at ASF too, although if you ask around a bit, you will probably find that experience community members will participate a lot less on web forums than on mailing lists, because it is more inconvenient (filtering, tagging is not as powerful). An arrangement like Google Groups, where both the web forum and the mailing list is merge into one is probably better, and if you feel strongly about this, then please help out PonyMail project, which drives http://lists.apache.org which is getting closer and closer to this hybrid. Cheers Niclas [1] Believe it or not, I was involved with Apache group way before Jeff was, and back then projects didn't even have in-house mailing lists, but utilized outside companies' "gracious help", but these companies have ceased to exist and some of the early mails are lost forever, as there were no archiving and not all lists could be salvaged in their entirety. This was a painful reminder to not depend on external services, that may disappear over night, even if they seem bigger and better than Swiss army knives. On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 5:57 AM, Reynold Xin <r...@apache.org> wrote: > "a better global way to A) communicate across a medium that everyone uses > daily B) archive to search and come back to" > > How would we even validate or decide that? For discussions like this it is > very easy to fall into confirmation bias. > > I use mailing lists all the time since it is the Apache Way, but I also > admit there are potentially better ways for other projects. People that are > used to mailing lists might think mailing lists are the best thing in the > world, but the reality is that majority of the developers in this world, > outside a few core open source projects, have never used mailing lists. If > we talk to the QQ/Wechat/web-based-forum generation in China and force them > to use mailing lists, they might comply because it is the Apache Way, but > they will also develop the sentiment that the ASF refuses to change and > adapt newer technologies. > > And to be honest, while I think mailing lists are great for simple voting > and information dissemination, there are obvious downsides of mailing lists > too. That's why a lot of projects also augment mailing lists via video > discussions, google docs for commenting, wiki, etc. > > In reality, there are also legal reasons why we use mailing lists, and > those are not as well known. We should document those and make them more > visible too. > > > > On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Jeff Genender <jgenen...@apache.org> > wrote: > > > > On Nov 13, 2016, at 11:33 AM, Gunnar Tapper <tapper.gun...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > As mentioned, the Apache Way is that "everything happens on the mailing > > lists." As a matter of fact, key parts of being an incubator is to learn > > how to operate per the Apache Way and to build communities. We even > include > > statistics about mailing list engagement as an indicator of community > > building. > > > > > > > Gunnar, I’m going to give you a big -1 to this. > > > > Unless you can come up with a better global way to A) communicate across > a > > medium that everyone uses daily B) archive to search and come back to, I > am > > in full disagreement. Since I have been with Apache (about 14 years), I > > have yet to find a better medium than the lists, and its always been a > > known fact that ultimately, any non-mail list discussions that result in > > some form of a decision are brought to the mail lists for global > discussion. > > > > Our mail lists are indexed by Google and others. Its easy to find what > > one looks for. > > > > Jeff > > > -- Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer http://zest.apache.org - New Energy for Java
