Hi Caleb and all,
On Nov 5, 2012, at 2:07 PM, Caleb James DeLisle <calebdelisle(a)lavabit.com> wrote:
Hello,
My opinion of github is not very bright, there's vender lockin because you can't
easily migrate
issues and other value addeds and they don't open source their platform so while git
allows you
to push somewhere else, you can't have the nice web interface with the features
without going through
them.
That said, it is hard to argue with 3 clicks and a `git push`.
While it would be easy to dismiss me as "lazy", I see this dismissal as a huge
problem for the free
software movement in general. Why should an ordinary person ask for permission to use
xwiki-contrib
then make sure their pom.xml parent ID is in order when they could just do 3 clicks and a
git push?
Because you get a lot more by being an xwiki-contrib project:
* CI
* Mailing list email notification
* Maven repository where to release versions
* JIRA, Wiki page (which you also get with github but that's about it)
* Sonar dashboard (coming up ;))
* Ability to collaborate with others through a mailing list and more generally collaborate
as equals with others rather than in a "creator/second level citizen" mode
* Quality stats on
xwiki.org on the hall of fame page (needs to be improved)
* More visibility since we reference xwiki contribs projects on
xwiki.org even more than
pure extensions. Note that we need to improve this part which is not fully true ATM but
which we could easily make true
* More generally ability to benefit from best of breed tools that
xwiki.org offers and
continue to update/improve in general
Granted XWiki is far better off than some projects,
when I see copyright release forms and patent
non-infringement statements which have to be signed, I find it mindboggling that anyone
would contribute
to these projects at all given all of the roadblocks which have been erected.
Actually we might have to do something about CLA in the future...
A good example of a social good also being more useful
is Linux. I love Linux, it is free software and
it is fast, even the giants such as Microsoft and Apple can't afford to outspend the
army of companies
who pour money into profiling, tweaking, optimizing, and refactoring Linux and the result
is a network
stack which blows the doors off of everyone else in the market. And it got that way being
free.
Now the question of how we should make xwiki-contrib more attractive than $THE_OTHER_GUY
is worth asking.
It is better for the contributor, they get continuous integration and issue tracking, but
none of it is
automated. Since we're all pretty busy and automating this process is probably not on
anybody's roadmap,
I think we're going to have to accept that it's easier to start off a small
project in one's own namespace
and then move when it grows and the contributor wants to take advantage of the services
in xwiki-contrib.
I don't really agree here. For a user asking to be on xwiki-contrib it's pretty
easy and all the work is done for them by xwiki committers. It would need to be automated
for xwiki committers' sake but not for the users asking ;)
If we don't at least understand this fundamental
issue then the githubs and facebooks of the world with
their 1 click walled gardens will win.
I think the list I've put above is pretty interesting for any project and it can only
grow as we improve our forge in the future. The biggest improvement would probably be to
offer a full wiki configured as a dev project flavor for contrib projects which would
contain (for ex):
- A dashboard with would have gadgets listing: latest jira issues, contributors of the
project, sonar quality gadgets, latest blog posts of the project, etc
- A Release application (similar to the one we have on
dev.xwiki.org)
- A FAQ application
- Git stats using our Github Application
- Mailing list/forum application (the one Jeremie is working on :))
- etc
Thanks
-Vincent
Thanks,
Caleb
On 11/05/2012 04:02 AM, Jerome Velociter wrote:
> On 10/23/2012 09:33 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:
>> On Oct 23, 2012, at 9:20 AM, Ludovic Dubost <ludovic(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
>>> This should have been for devs Envoyé de mon iPhone Début du message
transféré :
>>>> Expéditeur: Ludovic Dubost <ludovic(a)xwiki.com> Date: 23 octobre
2012 09:19:55 UTC+02:00 Destinataire: XWiki Users <users(a)xwiki.org> Objet: Github
tracker. was: Re: [xwiki-users] New Realtime collaborative editing extension. Just a
quick. You seem to introduce a practice to use the github tracker instead of
xwiki.org
jira's Not sure it's a good thing. I'm sure Vincent will agree
>> Well, what I would prefer personally is that contrib projects be in the
xwiki-contrib organization and use the XWiki tools (wiki, jira, etc). The reason is that
this allows: * to group together projects around XWiki (they're not scattered
everywhere on the web and harder to find) * make it a neutral location for people to
collaborate together on xwiki projects. That's a key element to contribution IMO * is
more long term. If you stop working on the project it's not going to be a dead
project
>> in someone's github repo and it'll have more chance of being
maintained/seen in the xwiki-contrib repo I know Jerome also puts his contributions in his
own github project and I had the same reservation about it. We can't force anyone of
course since this is a contribution but it's more collaborative to make them
xwiki-contrib project, following the rules defined at
http://contrib.xwiki.org I
understand you may want to beef up your github profile but for collaboration I feel the
xwiki-contrib
>> is better with the 2 arguments listed above. Jerome, Caleb let me know what you
think.
>
>
> Hi Vincent,
>
> This is a interesting topic and there are several aspects to it.
>
> For me the "discoverability" argument for having projects on
https://github.com/xwiki-contribdoes not make much sense. The centralized place for
projects around XWiki is
http://extensions.xwiki.org, not github. There's the
"view source" button that tells where the sources are. Github is a convenience
here, and it's always possible to "copy" (or fork) a project in
xwiki-contrib, for whatever reason (original project not active, etc.).
>
> That being said I understand why you think it's better to have as much projects
as possible under the xwiki-contrib umbrella : it makes it a one-stop shop with the same
tools, same workflow, same permissions, etc.
>
> Here are the arguments I see for why one contributor or contributing organization
would want to host its projects itself :
> - use of own tools and own workflow (github issues vs. JIRA for example).
> - it allows a contributor or contributing organization to have it's own place to
centralize its contribution(s) (the "beef up" argument as you say). I think this
can make sense in some circonstances, especially for contributing organizations (companies
for example).
>
> The bottom line comes down to : what rules do we want for using the
"org.xwiki.contrib" groupId and tools (maven repos, CI, etc.) ?
> If we want a rule saying that the project should be hosted on
github.com/xwiki-contrib/ then that's that, and I think it's fair. We just have to
decide on it (right now there is no such rule according to
http://contrib.xwiki.org/).
>
> Jerome
>
>
>> Thanks -Vincent
>>>> Ludovic Envoyé de mon iPhone Le 23 oct. 2012 à 04:17, Caleb James DeLisle
<calebdelisle(a)lavabit.com> a écrit :
>>>>> One other thing, please report the features which you want and what
you imagine as best on the github tracker, it's easier to close an issue as
"won't fix" than it is to remember an important issue which nobody wrote
down ;) Thanks Caleb On 10/22/2012 10:14 PM, Caleb James DeLisle wrote:
>>>>>> Hi, Thanks for the complement. I just updated it and fixed issue
#1. Thanks for reporting it. Somehow showing who else is editing, showing where they are
editing in the document and allowing the user to spawn a chat window with other editors on
the page are all interesting possibilities. Right now I think the thing to do is decide
where there is the most bang for your buck in terms of feature value and get an idea of
what's most natural for the user. Thanks, Caleb On 10/19/2012 07:59 AM,
>>>>>> Ryszard Łach wrote:
>>>>>>> Great work! It looks like good starting point to give xwiki
the main (at least for me) feature, that makes googledoc sometimes more suitable for
collaborative editing. It would be really great, if your editor would show somehow, where
the other editor (person) is now, where is his cursor. Maybe a highlight (the whole line)
showing the other's cursor placement? Do you plan to work on such improvements? R.
>> _______________________________________________