| Re: [orion-dev] Irc? |
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On 23/04/2015 10:17 AM, Anton
McConville wrote:
It surprises me a little that we're so quick to say that it's not a useful open source tool. Is there data to back that up? I'm sure there's data to suggest IRC works ( however not for us ) Is that enough for us to just discount a new evolving social technology that creative people are flocking to? I think that's what's bothering me most of all about this thread, and disheartening me :( I don't know much about Slack, and I didn't mean to imply a veto. If you can demonstrate that it can be used in an open and transparent manner, then maybe it's okay. The fact that it is a commercial tool rather than a completely open platform is worrisome. In cases where we have used commercial platforms such as GitHub, the principle that we apply is "freedom of action". Which basically means that if the project used Slack for years and then it suddenly went away, is the project harmed? Does it lose history? There is no shortage of cool new commercial tools for developers to use. But those tools are there to make money for their owners. The old school open platform tools (everything from Bugzilla to IRC) may not be cool, but they do have the advantage of being completely free and open, and easily available to all. Finally, every cool new tool adopted by individual Eclipse projects come at a cost to our users and adopters. The Eclipse project has been using IRC for many years. Now Orion users are going to have to register and learn to use Slack to interact with the team. Each of these project-specific tools add to what our community must master in order to work with us. These shiny new toys all come with a cost. John Arthorne can tell you how many conversations we've had at the Board in recent years about these sorts of topics. |