Open Stack

Stefano Maffulli wrote:
>> And so far, no real indication of why IRC is worse than a private
>> phone call or a water-cooler conversation on a regular basis. 
> 
> Multiple people have explained why already and you're choosing to ignore
> their words: permanent private IRC channels are a bad habit that
> reinforces a bad, anti-social behavior. When people develop the habit of
> hanging out separately from the rest, aristocracies start to emerge.
> That's bad for an open and democratic meritocracy like OpenStack.

Right. The danger of a permanent private channel is that, when one is
readily available, participants will end up having most of their
discussions there. And when they do, it fragments your community between
those with access and those without. We don't have elite committers in
OpenStack, everyone produces code and everyone reviews code. That's a
critical part of how we do development.

The pain of setting up a private channel when necessary to solve
exceptional issues ensures that it stays exceptional. The fact that it's
not permanent makes sure you don't fall into the trap of discussing
something there that should just be discussed on a public channel instead.

Because as I said elsewhere in this thread, it's only human nature, when
you have the choice between a channel where only your friends are, and a
channel where anyone could listen, you'll naturally prefer starting
discussions in the restricted channel. It takes a significant amount of
effort on all participants to just use this convenient and permanent
channel for the exceptional topics that may benefit from extra privacy.
And that effort is getting bigger as long as the channel survives.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)