Re: gnustep.org domain

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

David Chisnall wrote:
> I believe this attitude is a great way of convincing potential users and 
> developers that GNUstep is a dead project.  I am usually in the Étoilé IRC 
> channel and a number of FreeBSD channels on efnet.  When people log in and ask 
> a question, they may not get an immediate response, but they do get a fairly 
> timely one and, more importantly, they get an impression that developers are 
> active participants in the wider community.
That is, indeed, the precious part in it. Sometimes, with luck, you may 
solve a problem within a short time.
> IRC is not a telephone call.  It doesn't need an immediate response - its major 
> benefit is that it is a low-latency, lossy, asynchronous communication medium.  
> If you want someone's attention, then saying their name will give them a 
> notification, but (unlike a telephone call or in-person meeting) etiquette does 
> not demand an immediate response from them.  All of the participants can decide 
> how much or how little attention they pay.  I typically poll IRC periodically 
> while code is compiling or while I'm thinking about a problem (a little 
> distraction is good for letting the hindbrain work) and ignore it when I am 
> focussed.  When my IRC client tells me someone said my name, I note the fact 
> but typically don't interrupt my work - I just make a mental note to find out 
> what they said when I next take a short break.
>
> For FreeBSD, LLVM, and Étoilé, I would have no hesitation about recommending 
> that new people connect to the IRC channels.  They'll find developers and users 
> (well, not so many users with Étoilé...) and get the impression that the 
> project has some kind of community surrounding it.  I would not make the same 
> recommendation about GNUstep.  I stopped connecting to the IRC channel some 
> time ago, because it has a toxic atmosphere: few (if any) active developers, 
> and a lot of people who seem overtly hostile towards the project.  It either 
> needs moderating or for us to stop recommending it and start recommending 
> something else (which can just be another IRC channel).
Sadly, I can't connect to IRC as often as I used to - I do it only 
during evenings and it is mostly silent.
One must also add that  compared to a couple of years ago, work 
environments are very closed, blocking connections of most chat 
protocols, like IRC. Often skype is open.

However, I remember too how "toxic" it has been. It was populated by a 
group of person, also quite vociferous, essentially an "IRC" camp. Of 
course there were also just the normal developers, but few of them.

I may add, in retrospective, that some core people were absent and the 
"IRC camp" based regularly certain people emphasizing errors and bad 
choices to the point that I got prejudices against certain persons. 
Discussions were possibly heated!

The good think is I was able to meet most of these persons personally 
and all anger waned and actually discovered talented developers. If 
there were errors or problems, they could be analyzed and solved! And 
some of them became friends.

Also, I may add, many of these persons were very actively speaking, but 
did very little in concrete bug reports, patches or even less real coding.
> A successful open source project needs more than good code, it needs good 
> communication and a good community.  GNUstep has a great community, but does a 
> very good job at hiding this from the world.  I don't think this necessarily 
> requires using XMPP (I probably won't join an XMPP chat room until Alex 
> finishes implementing multi-user chat in XMPPKit, as I have failed to find time 
> to do it in the last few years).
Yes, we are not easy to catch, but we do not hide. But we need also to 
acknowledge we are quite spread over the world, have busy jobs (student 
times are long gone) and different time zones. Greg will ofr example 
know how the combination of these two things made it difficult to 
productively catch lately.

Riccardo