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Some of the largest and most important software is developed over email, e.g. Linux, QEMU, Firefox, etc... Don't make the mistake thinking that email doesn't sc

Some of the largest and most important software is developed over email, e.g. Linux, QEMU, Firefox, etc... Don't make the mistake thinking that email doesn't scale. In fact, for most teams, the opposite is true.

bitcharmer 3y ago
This is like saying that pyramids were constructed without modern cranes and bulldozers so obviously it's the right way to build stuff today. It's clearly not true but there are many power-wielding individuals in these projects who prefer to browse the web with lynx or develop in emacs and will impose this on anyone that would like to participate. This is wrong.
- r053bud 3y ago
  No one is forcing you to contribute to, or even use, software that uses an email-based workflow. I’d also put money on the fact that the majority of contributors to Linux, an extremely successful free software project, prefer the email-based workflow.
  - bitcharmer 3y ago
    > No one is forcing you to contribute This is exactly the problematic attitude. I'm an OpenJDK author but not linux kernel contributor for mainly this reason. There are many people like me. > majority of contributors to Linux, an extremely successful free software project, prefer the email-based workflow This reminds me the many absurd conversations I had from my time in Goldman Sachs, few years ago. People with 15+ year tenures claiming Slang is the best answer to any- and everything. They just didn't know any better and stubbornly stuck to tooling and mindset straight out of 1995.
    - necrotic_comp 3y ago
      Not to derail the conversation, but Slang is incredible. Its interface is old and archaic, sure, but it's the best and most expressive coding experience I've ever had. It took some getting used to (especially case-insensitive variables with spaces ?! and the UFOs) but I really enjoyed working in it. All of the other workflow tools, like Procmon, were icing on the cake. The internal cloud was just getting up to speed when I left, and that was more modern and also a joy to use. There's a lot to dislike about working there, but in my experience, the firmwide tooling was excellent.
sneak 3y ago
All of the largest software is collaborated on over webapps, without exception. Windows and Office and AWS and GCP dwarf these foss projects. There is a reason that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple don’t use email to collaborate on software.

bitcharmer 3y ago

This is like saying that pyramids were constructed without modern cranes and bulldozers so obviously it's the right way to build stuff today. It's clearly not true but there are many power-wielding individuals in these projects who prefer to browse the web with lynx or develop in emacs and will impose this on anyone that would like to participate. This is wrong.

r053bud 3y ago
No one is forcing you to contribute to, or even use, software that uses an email-based workflow. I’d also put money on the fact that the majority of contributors to Linux, an extremely successful free software project, prefer the email-based workflow.
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  > No one is forcing you to contribute This is exactly the problematic attitude. I'm an OpenJDK author but not linux kernel contributor for mainly this reason. There are many people like me. > majority of contributors to Linux, an extremely successful free software project, prefer the email-based workflow This reminds me the many absurd conversations I had from my time in Goldman Sachs, few years ago. People with 15+ year tenures claiming Slang is the best answer to any- and everything. They just didn't know any better and stubbornly stuck to tooling and mindset straight out of 1995.
  - necrotic_comp 3y ago
    Not to derail the conversation, but Slang is incredible. Its interface is old and archaic, sure, but it's the best and most expressive coding experience I've ever had. It took some getting used to (especially case-insensitive variables with spaces ?! and the UFOs) but I really enjoyed working in it. All of the other workflow tools, like Procmon, were icing on the cake. The internal cloud was just getting up to speed when I left, and that was more modern and also a joy to use. There's a lot to dislike about working there, but in my experience, the firmwide tooling was excellent.

sneak 3y ago

All of the largest software is collaborated on over webapps, without exception. Windows and Office and AWS and GCP dwarf these foss projects. There is a reason that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple don’t use email to collaborate on software.