Would it be beneficial to merge the derby-user and derby-dev mailing lists?

[Bryan Pendleton <bp...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

It is not 100% clear to me why we have separate 'derby-user' and 'derby-dev'
mailing lists. On our web site, http://db.apache.org/derby/derby_mail.html,
we describe the two lists as follows:

	derby-user: For discussions about how to use Derby.

	derby-dev: For discussions about development tasks, such as bug fixes, proposed code changes, etc.

This is a clear distinction, but I'm not sure it is very beneficial
to have such a distinction.

In particular, I worry that it divides the Derby community into
"users" and "developers", and I think it might be more in the spirit
of Open Source to try to eliminate such distinctions, and encourage
everyone to think of themselves as simply a member of the Derby community.

I'd also like to encourage more people to actively contribute to
Derby development. There are not as many active Derby developers as
there once were, but I'm hopeful we can find more people who are
interested in contributing ideas, techniques, documentation, test
cases, and code to Derby.

What is your reaction? Do you find it beneficial to maintain
the two separate mailing lists? Or do you think it would be
an improvement to have only a single mailing list?

thanks,

bryan

Re: Would it be beneficial to merge the derby-user and derby-dev mailing lists?

[Rick Hillegas <ri...@gmail.com>]

On 6/18/16 9:11 AM, Bryan Pendleton wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> It is not 100% clear to me why we have separate 'derby-user' and 
> 'derby-dev'
> mailing lists. On our web site, 
> http://db.apache.org/derby/derby_mail.html,
> we describe the two lists as follows:
>
>     derby-user: For discussions about how to use Derby.
>
>     derby-dev: For discussions about development tasks, such as bug 
> fixes, proposed code changes, etc.
>
> This is a clear distinction, but I'm not sure it is very beneficial
> to have such a distinction.
>
> In particular, I worry that it divides the Derby community into
> "users" and "developers", and I think it might be more in the spirit
> of Open Source to try to eliminate such distinctions, and encourage
> everyone to think of themselves as simply a member of the Derby 
> community.
>
> I'd also like to encourage more people to actively contribute to
> Derby development. There are not as many active Derby developers as
> there once were, but I'm hopeful we can find more people who are
> interested in contributing ideas, techniques, documentation, test
> cases, and code to Derby.
>
> What is your reaction? Do you find it beneficial to maintain
> the two separate mailing lists? Or do you think it would be
> an improvement to have only a single mailing list?
>
> thanks,
>
> bryan
>
Hi Bryan,

I find the distinction between the two lists to be useful. It is a 
pattern repeated across the Apache projects, all of which consider 
themselves to be operating in the spirit of Open Source. I would be 
interested to know whether users feel that they could contribute more 
under the stimulation of a larger volume of developer email.

Thanks,
-Rick