Received: from sog-mx-3.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com ([172.29.43.193] helo=mx.sourceforge.net) by sfs-ml-2.v29.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1VXdlt-0005vt-Nv for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Sat, 19 Oct 2013 21:09:17 +0000 Received-SPF: pass (sog-mx-3.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com: domain of gmail.com designates 209.85.216.45 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.216.45; envelope-from=mmitar@gmail.com; helo=mail-qa0-f45.google.com; Received: from mail-qa0-f45.google.com ([209.85.216.45]) by sog-mx-3.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) id 1VXdlr-0007fd-By for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Sat, 19 Oct 2013 21:09:17 +0000 Received: by mail-qa0-f45.google.com with SMTP id ii20so1612051qab.4 for ; Sat, 19 Oct 2013 14:09:09 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.49.2.68 with SMTP id 4mr12938961qes.64.1382216949814; Sat, 19 Oct 2013 14:09:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.49.2.202 with HTTP; Sat, 19 Oct 2013 14:09:09 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 14:09:09 -0700 Message-ID: From: Mitar To: Gregory Maxwell Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Spam-Score: -1.6 (-) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net. 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[URIs: bitcoin.org] -1.5 SPF_CHECK_PASS SPF reports sender host as permitted sender for sender-domain 0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail provider (mmitar[at]gmail.com) -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's domain 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature X-Headers-End: 1VXdlr-0007fd-By Cc: Bitcoin Development Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] A critique of bitcoin open source community X-BeenThere: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 21:09:17 -0000 Hi! Gregory, thank you for your time and answers. Just maybe to clarify where Nick is coming from, there are two previous articles: http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i290m-ocpp/site/article/nmerrill-assign= 1.html http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i290m-ocpp/site/article/nmerrill-assign= 2.html Mitar On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 1:40 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote= : > On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Mitar wrote: >> Hi! >> Interesting read: >> http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i290m-ocpp/site/article/nmerrill-ass= ign3.html > > Hopefully Nick will show up someplace and offer some specific pointers > to where we failed him. > > The only interaction I can find from him on IRC is in #bitcoin, rather > than #bitcoin-dev: > > --- Day changed Mon Sep 16 2013 > 11:45 < csmpls> Hi, I'm interested in contributing to the official > bitcoin project. Is there a mailing list I can join? > 11:46 < neo2> csmpls, contributing how? > 11:47 < csmpls> neo2 - probably start by approaching a low priority > issue like this one https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2545 > 11:48 < michagogo> csmpls: There *is* a mailing list > 11:48 < michagogo> ;;google bitcoin-dev mailing list > 11:48 <@gribble> SourceForge.net: Bitcoin: bitcoin-development: > ; > Bitcoin-development Info > 11:48 < csmpls> Great, thanks. > 11:48 < michagogo> I don't know how active it is, though > 11:49 < michagogo> There's also the #bitcoin-dev channel > > I got involved with Bitcoin without previously interacting with other > contributors (AFAIK) and maybe things have changed in ways invisibly > to me. But I don't think so. Michagogo, who was answering there, is a > newer participant and I don't think anyone knows him from anywhere. > Certainly if things have become less welcome to new participants that > would be bad. > > I can point out a number of other recent contributors who, as far as I > can tell, just showed up and stared contributing. But I don't think > that the existence of exceptions is sufficiently strong evidence that > there isn't a problem. > > The specific complaints I can extract from that article are: > > "I wasn't even allowed to edit the wiki" > > I'm confused about this, if he's referring to en.bitcoin.it. Editing > it is open to anyone who is willing to pay the 0.01 > (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinPayment) anti-spam fee. This isn't > a policy set by the bitcoin development community, though I'm not sure > that its a terrible one. I've both paid it on behalf of other users > and made edits on behalf of people who didn't want to go to it. At > least relative to some policy which requires actual approval the > payment antispam is at least open to anyone with Bitcoin. > > "My IRC questions about issues on the github page were never answered" > > Without a nick I'm unable to find more than the above, unfortunately. > So I don't yet know what we need to improve there. > > "#bitcoin-dev would rather talk about conspiracies, or about > destroying other cryptocurrencies" > > I've been pretty aggressive about punting out offtopic conversation > from #bitcoin-dev lately. Enough that I worried that my actions would > be the inspiration for this complaint. Much of the time discussion > like that is brought in and primarily continued by people who are not > active in the development community at all, but deflecting it to other > challenge without creating a hostile environment (or one that merely > feels hostile to new people) is hard. Nicks comments themselves may > be a useful thing for me to show to people in the future on that > point. > > "Bitcoiners are a bunch of paranoid, anti-authoritarian nutjobs" > > I actually don't think that this stereotype accurately reflects the > development community. (In fact, I personally enjoy the great sport of > being called a statist by some of these aformentioned jutjobs, but > none of them are developers). On his other article Nick also asserts > "Most contributors hide their identities", but this is factually > untrue as far as I can tell. (In that same article he writes, > "Bitcoin's core code is written in Typescript, which is compiled into > C++"=E2=80=A6) > > "I looked at the many items sitting in pull request purgatory" > > Many of the long standing pull requests are actually created by people > with direct commit access. We use a model which has a relatively long > pipeline, a fact which I think is justified by the safety > criticialness of the software and our current shortages of active > review. Hopefully long term motion towards increased codebase > modularity will allow faster merging of "safe" changes. > > But I suspect there will always be a backlog, at least of "unsafe" change= s. > > Which brings me to, > > "I didn't even know what I had to do" > > Above all, I think the most important takeaway from this is that we > need to have better introductory materials. > > One obvious place to put them would be > http://bitcoin.org/en/development but the IRC question makes me > believe that Nick hadn't actually found that page, it's a little > buried. --=20 http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m