IRC meetings (Fwd: Extensible Ajax Platform (XAP) Project Update)

[Cliff Schmidt <cl...@gmail.com>]

(If I haven't mentioned this before, it's definitely a good idea for
all committers to subscribe to general@incubator and do their best at
reading the relevant threads; however, in case, you missed anyone
missed this...)

I thought I'd forward an incubator thread here since it involves a
discussion about whether a regular IRC meeting is a good idea.  See
Noel's, Geir's, and my thoughts about it below.

The short version of my opinion is:
A regular IRC session as an open Q&A or focused tutorial on some
aspect of the current code base doesn't seem like a bad idea to me;
but a working meeting to discuss development direction or
architectural ideas is probably a bad idea.  While everyone agrees
that it is unacceptable for decisions to be made on IRC, Geir brings
up a good point that he's seen situations where decisions
unintentionally get made on IRC in the midst of such discussions.

Cliff

On 7/11/06, Cliff Schmidt <cl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/11/06, Geir Magnusson Jr <ge...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > This thread may be dead/resolved, in which case just ignore me.
>
> It was only "mostly-dead"...but you've raised some good points that I
> agree with.
>
> > Cliff Schmidt wrote:
> > > On 6/23/06, Noel J. Bergman <no...@devtech.com> wrote:
> > >> The use of e-mail as the primary means for communication is part of ASF
> > >> policy and philosophy, and we can certainly learn lessons from
> > >> projects that
> > >> have gone against it.  IRC tends to breed a more closed, albeit arguably
> > >> more integrated, community.
> > >>
> > >> That said, if IRC can be used as a learning tool to rapidly bring new
> > >> people
> > >> up to speed, and if the information gathered from those sessions is
> > >> preserved for others to follow up via web-site and e-mail, how do people
> > >> perceive that?
> > >
> > > I've never done that on a project, but I think it could be a
> > > reasonable thing for a project to try.  I believe the Synapse folks
> > > have been doing regular IRC meetings from early on.  I'd be interested
> > > in their perspective on the pros and cons, particularly as an
> > > incubating project.
> >
> > Someone did point out that dev traffic is falling off while commit
> > traffic is same or increasing.
>
> Yep -- and since asking about the Synapse perspective, I haven't seen
> a persuasive argument that IRC has been a particularly positive thing
> for them.  The key issue could be whether IRC is used as "a learning
> tool to rapidly bring new people up to speed" (as Noel asked, and I
> echoed, curiosity about) , or whether it is more for development
> discussions (which I think is a dangerous move, particularly for a new
> project).
>
> > > As a XAP mentor, I know that the committers already understand that no
> > > decisions will be made over IRC, that logs of each IRC will be
> > > immediately made available to the entire community, and that they need
> > > to be sensitive to any concerns from people wishing but unable to
> > > participate.  But, are there other thoughts from the Synapse folks or
> > > anyone else who has used regular IRC meetings?
> >
> > I think that people can have that understanding, but I think that it
> > doesn't matter - it's been my experience that while people are able to
> > quote the letter of the law as well as the explain the reason behind it,
> > people unintentionally make "informal decisions" on IRC and execute on
> > them, all with the best of intentions.  I know i've seen it with
> > Geronimo, and it can be very disruptive, even though it may be accidental.
> >
> > I think lots of decisions made on dev lists are the same - informal -
> > without the trappings of a vote or such, because many decisions are made
> > by "lazy consensus" - people discuss things or search for help, and then
> > continue down whatever modified path the group explicitly or implicitly
> > agreed to.
>
> +1
>
> > In the case of XAP, I'm guessing that many of the committers are
> > employees or contractors/consultants of Nexaweb.  Were I a mentor, I'd
> > want to be sure that pre-existing development process is being
> > sufficiently broken up to make it an Apache community development
> > project, and would worry that regular IRC meetings might be confused
> > with periodic development meetings...
>
> I'm not as concerned about this point.  Having a semi-monthly IRC
> session to help bring new people up to speed is unlikely to be the
> thing that holds back a closed development process from becoming an
> open and collaborative one.
>
> The short, sound-bite version of the advice I give companies that are
> trying to transition their development process to one like Apache's
> is, "commits should make sense with the context of the public dev-list
> archive alone, and the dev-list should make sense with the context of
> the code base alone." (there are exceptions such as bug/issue history,
> etc, but that doesn't fit in the sound-bite ;-)   The idea being to
> prevent potential hallway conversations or other communication from
> being part of the context of the work.
>
> The kind of IRC session that Noel was asking about is less likely to
> be the problem.  However, I agree with your concerns people
> unintentionally making informal decisions on development-oriented IRC
> meetings.
>
> Cliff
>