Open Stack

Flavio Percoco wrote:
> On 11/02/15 17:19 +0000, Amrith Kumar wrote:
>> Personally, I think the focus on password protected IRC channels is a
>> distraction from the real issue that we need to ensure that the
>> rapidly growing community is one where public discussion and decision
>> making are still "the norm". Let's be adult about it and realize that
>> people will have private conversations. What we need to focus on is
>> ensuring that the community rejects "private decision making".
> 
> I personally don't care if you have private discussions with other
> folks regardless of what their ATC status and impact on the community
> is. You're free to do so, I don't plan to critizice that and that's
> entirely your problem. However, I do care when those discussions
> happen in a private IRC channel because I don't beleive that's neither
> good for our community nor necessary.
> 
> It's not good for our community because it *excludes* people that are
> not in such channels and it creates the wrong message around what core
> means, just like it happened with "integrated" projects and like it
> happens with PTLs. In addition to that, it isolates discussions which
> is something we've been encouraging people not to do because not
> everyone sees it the same way.

Right. You can't prevent occasional private discussions and pings, and
you shouldn't. It's when you encourage and officialize them (by for
example creating a channel for them) that things start to go bad.

I've been using IRC for more than 20 years, and with various FOSS
communities. I've been in a number of private channels, and they
*always* are a slippery slope to a private club, which quickly turns
into a clique. Those are cozy and convenient: only your friends are
listening, nobody objects with you. It really takes a non-trivial amount
of effort on all participants to continue having public discussions
where they belong, because it's easier and more natural to talk to a
controlled group. When I was working at Canonical, we continually
struggled to have the Ubuntu Server discussions in the Freenode
#ubuntu-server channel instead of on the Canonical IRC #server channel.
That's only human nature.

We can't avoid companies setting up private IRC channels. But we can
avoid OpenStack project teams from setting those up. And I really think
we should. Private discussions should be exceptional rather than the
norm, and avoiding setting up IRC channels for them is a great way to
ensure they stay exceptional.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)

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