Re:Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source commu...
by brodock on Monday April 29, 2019 @03:32PM
(#19781805)
You would be surprised by how big the entry barrier is when you have to use a mailing list to do anything.
Just as an example, when inkscape project migrated to GitLab [1] , I've noticed something that was not optimal in their CI definition and contributed a change right away. In a "mailing list" based development, that CI script would not be visible. Most projects even hide their internal tooling.
Also, unless you were born in a certain age and had access to internet since X, there is a good chance you never have been exposed to Mailman or how the mailing list flow works.
Yeah. We've had this topic come up a number of times in the Wine project. We still use a mailing list and git-am patches for our contributions. We have a few hard-liner FOSS types who would strongly reject a GitHub solution (including myself), but a self-hosted Gitlab solution may be accepted. But in the end there just isn't much evidence that the change would be beneficial for the project. If you can't be bothered to figure out how to send an email or attach a patch to the bug tracker, are you really going to usefully contribute to Wine? It's an active topic of debate, but just being "easier to contribute" isn't clearly a good thing.