XSF Discussion - 2020-09-06


  1. Ge0rG

    If you are an author and you care about your implementation being listed, making a yearly reminder is not a very large hurdle.

  2. Maranda

    Ge0rG: "shit happens" and yearly reminders are easy on failure

  3. Ge0rG

    Maranda: make a cronjob that will `echo "renew xmpp implementation list"` and there is your yearly reminder email

  4. Ge0rG

    Maranda: also we don't even know who the authors are

  5. Maranda

    That's a bullshit and you know it, the most, you don't have a mail contact field in the data

  6. Ge0rG

    Maranda: so do you have a better idea of proxy measuring whether the author is still interested in xmpp, that has the minimum of additional work burden on the XSF web team?

  7. Maranda

    Ge0rG no I measure, that courtesy is a good thing, and that the author like myself may simply forget he has to renew the entry every year while caring about the project. So sending a mail out when an entry is phased out is not a bad thing and makes the whole organization looks less like it is run by a bunch of assholes to be frank.

  8. Maranda

    That's my thought

  9. Ge0rG

    Maranda: this was also discussed before, and IMVHO, an author that hardly cares about the XSF would be likely to use such a reminder email to renew their listing, even if otherwise not doing anything to keep up with the progress of xmpp.

  10. Ge0rG

    So requiring the author to care a little bit on their own is not so much asked after all.

  11. Ge0rG

    Also this listing is not for your ego, it's for the users looking for viable implementations. That might better explain the process.

  12. mdosch

    But it seems to not work as intended as we recently saw that a lot of active projects were not listed anymore while projects like pidgin were.

  13. Maranda

    Ge0rG: again that's BS, who said anything about ego and what makes you presume I don't care? I even probably had a reminder somewhere, but, this year I just basically moved the whole infrastructure to new VMs/Hardware and Software and I won't mention the other burden starting with a "C". So you'll excuse me if _the reminder_ got lost in the various transitions.

  14. Maranda

    All to say *shit may happen* as Martin implies, and this is the kind of absurd, wrong elitarian attitudes that causes people to scorn on the XSF.

  15. Maranda

    All to say *shit may happen* as mdosch implies, and this is the kind of absurd, wrong elitarian attitudes that causes people to scorn on the XSF.

  16. jonas’

    Maranda, it’s not about you, it’s about pidgin et al. ;)

  17. jonas’

    but what mdosch says is indeed relevant

  18. Ge0rG

    Maranda: so your argument is, a reminder that you set yourself will get lost, whereas an email reminder from some random machine on the internet won't?

  19. Maranda

    No not at all, I think I spoke clearly. I said that if you phase out a software from the page you could at least pay the courtesy to inform the author. There could be many reasons as of why the entry wasn't renewed, mine did expire in July and while I follow the XSF activity, I found out just now

  20. Maranda

    It's maybe just me but I find that phasing out without even a word, is quite rude. And since you do send "reminders" in the case of quarterly membership renewals I don't see why you couldn't act similarly

  21. Holger

    FWIW I don't get the downside of email reminders either. Specifically when it's not about the software author's ego but about the XSF's interest in providing a sane list (i.e., we want something from software authors, not vice versa).

  22. Holger

    > a reminder that you set yourself will get lost, whereas an email reminder from some random machine on the internet won't? Maintainers might forget to set a reminder, or it might break for some other reason. The idea seems to be that we only want to list software where maintainers care enough to be listed. Whereas I would've thought the goal is to list software that's maintained.

  23. lovetox

    also we are always talking about maintainers, but everyone could do the update or not?

  24. lovetox

    for example im maintainer for some years now, but i dont remember doing an update ever

  25. lovetox

    so someone did that for me it seems

  26. Holger

    Yes that's how I understood it.

  27. Maranda

    So basically it goes on popularity? Even?

  28. wurstsalat

    I did that for Gajim. but commit history reveals Ge0rG did it for lovetox as well :)

  29. Guus

    I don't have an issue with anyone submitting a renewal, but this was specifically rejected a couple of months ago. We require a verifiable maintainer of the project to request the renewal.

  30. Holger

    Ah.

  31. Guus

    Will need to dig into chat archives / meeting minutes to find the specifics.

  32. lovetox

    nice, it would totally work if Ge0rG does it for me though, i dont need a reminder then

  33. lovetox

    🤣️

  34. Guus

    I don't expect we will ever find a mechanism that will 100% satisfy everyone. I do believe that what we have now is an improvement over what we had before.

  35. Guus

    We can obviously tweak and adjust as we learn the effects of what we now have in place.

  36. Maranda

    As the reminder it could even go in the form of a message on (one of) the (mostly dead now) mailing lists thrice a year, I don't see that as much the "additional work burden" for the web team Ge0rG talked about imho

  37. Guus

    However, what we have now is the result of quite some work and a lot of discussion. Dismissing it offhand as "bullshit" is to easy.

  38. Holger

    Dismissing a possibly valid argument by reducing it to the b* word kinda sounds easy as well 😛️

  39. Holger

    And as far as I'm concerned I can always relate to something not being done due to missing manpower. I just didn't quite get the "it's the maintainer's responsibility to be listed; not our problem" stance.

  40. lovetox

    and in the past discussion it was decided that the goal was to actively *not* remember people about the update?

  41. lovetox

    like its intended to be a little challenge for maintainers?

  42. lovetox

    sounds weird, when i remember this correctly it was just so dead projects dont get listed anymore

  43. lovetox

    so a maintainer coming in and doing the work is ok and i think nobody challenges that

  44. Maranda

    Guus: the BS were the arguments used to counter my own and... actually *dismiss 'em* tbh. Beside I'm the one who pointed the issue..?

  45. lovetox

    its the "But we dont remember you about it" thats weird

  46. Guus

    I've not made my mind up either way. I do wonder if sending out reminders defeats the purpose of this mechanism, which is to purge the list of crappy entries.

  47. lovetox

    Guus, i dont think thats a stance the XSF can take

  48. lovetox

    whats crappy and whats not

  49. lovetox

    as the software site explicitly says, that the software is not tested on compliance or anything else

  50. Guus

    Hence the renewal mechanism lovetox

  51. lovetox

    so XSF intention is not to list "good" software whatever that means

  52. lovetox

    the intention is to list "active developed" software

  53. Guus

    It was assumed that by requiring maintainers to renew, we'd weed out the old, unmaintained, crappy listings

  54. lovetox

    yeah and i think thats still not wrong

  55. Maranda

    Guus again it's just 3 mails a year, nothing differs. Beside a better attitude torward the developers by the XSF

  56. Guus

    Remembering them to renew might defeat that purpose, unsure.

  57. Maranda

    That's all

  58. lovetox

    but i dont see how a once a year email to remember people to update would counter that?

  59. Guus

    I have no strong feelings either way.

  60. Daniel

    For me the incentives of being on that list aren't big enough to go through the troubles of renewing

  61. Daniel

    The xsf probably benefits more from listing Conversations than I benefit from the traffic

  62. Guus

    That's why I don't like the requirement of needing a maintainer of the project to do the listing

  63. Daniel

    (judging from the number of clicks that github tracks as coming from that site)

  64. Guus

    I think that you have a valid point Daniel .

  65. Guus

    I do hope that in your role as an XSF member there's more of an incentive for you to have Conversations listed, Daniel 😁

  66. Daniel

    Yes. Luckily someone did it for me this time.

  67. Guus

    I need to go, family commitments. If we want reminders, let's involve web team/iteam.

  68. Ge0rG

    Daniel: there are people who think that it's good to have pidgin listed there, and I'm very strongly convinced that listing it is harmful to the xsf

  69. Ge0rG

    Popularity is a horrible proxy.

  70. Maranda

    Indeed, beside if you let anyone do the update it may go against the will of the mantainer in the case he/she doesn't want to be on that list

  71. Maranda

    Indeed, beside if you let anyone do the update it may go against the will of the mantainer in the case he/she doesn't want his/her work to be on that list

  72. Ge0rG

    Everything will be much better once we have compliance badges

  73. eta

    Ge0rG: why not rank clients by how conformant to the compliance suites they are?

  74. Guus

    Let's not put an insane amount of effort into this. The list will never be 100% up to everyone's liking anyway. What we have now is a massive improvement over what we had. Let's just call that a win.

  75. pep.

    Maybe it's time.to.put on the table getting rid of these lists

  76. pep.

    Maybe it's time to put on the table getting rid of these lists

  77. Guus

    There's something to be said for that. It feels kind of awkward that the XSF apparently feels tie the need to publish lists like this. As a protocol with a very mature ecosystem, that perhaps isn't needed?

  78. Guus

    I really am off now though.

  79. Ge0rG

    eta: that's a great idea.,but how do we get the required data?

  80. wurstsalat

    Ge0rG, I guess we’d need infrastructure anyway if we plan to make use of DOAP processing (automatic client badges for the list, listing example implementations in xeps, rendering supported xep tables for clients, ..)

  81. Ge0rG

    wurstsalat: yes, that's important but also complex work that's looking for a volunteer.

  82. wurstsalat

    right

  83. Guus

    There will be questionable claims of features from projects if having those features listed gets them a better position.

  84. Ge0rG

    Guus: well, we can't prevent people from lying, and it will be a very interesting exercise in xsf neutrality once that happens and is contested. But given the developer interest for the xsf lists, I don't consider that attack vector as very likely

  85. wurstsalat

    Guus, sure, but I guess there is no technological solution to that

  86. Ge0rG

    I've already thought about how to sort such a list. CS year first, advanced / core second, category third?

  87. Ge0rG

    There really is no "right" sorting order for a three dimensional data set

  88. Ge0rG

    yaxim is 2020 Core IM, Advanced Mobile. What would dictate the sorting priority?

  89. Ge0rG

    Maybe just listing the supported badges is just enough?

  90. Ge0rG

    (this is also why I used the colors to indicate if the year is current or not on my badge prototype)

  91. wurstsalat

    Ge0rG, make the table sortable (like the xeps table)

  92. Ge0rG

    wurstsalat: sortable by what?

  93. wurstsalat

    Year and Core/Advanced + filter for mobile/IM ?

  94. Ge0rG

    So by all three dimensions? Separately?

  95. wurstsalat

    I think 'Year' would be the important one. if you’re looking for mobile clients, you probably want to filter by Mobile category and then have a list of 2020;Mobile (Basic/Advanced)

  96. Ge0rG

    So we need filters in addition to sorting?

  97. Ge0rG

    Maybe we are overdoing it now

  98. Ge0rG

    Or maybe we first need to fix the tooling to actually support fetching DOAP

  99. wurstsalat

    Ge0rG, sure, without the tooling we’re just bike-shedding :) but the xep list has filters as well, so we might have a look there

  100. Ge0rG

    wurstsalat: you just volunteered?

  101. wurstsalat

    I volunteered several times, but working on the website is a pain at the moment

  102. Guus

    I'd rather keep it all a lot simpler. What we have now, with some tweaks maybe, or complete removal of the listing. Most other options won't improve things dramatically, while take a lot of effort to create and maintain.

  103. Ge0rG

    Guus: I see the value in listing supporting (open source) implementations in the XEPs from DOAP data, and the additional win of compliance data in the listing would actually improve the overall situation.

  104. Ge0rG

    Also I'd be okay with listing pidgin, if it comes with a "Core IM Client 2006" badge

  105. wurstsalat

    Compliance Suites are dating back to 2006 ?

  106. Ge0rG

    https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0211.html is 2008