[oi-dev] Developer meeting

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Thu, 2010-12-02 at 07:21 +0000, Chris Ridd wrote:
> On 2 Dec 2010, at 06:55, Joshua M. Clulow wrote:
> 
> > On 2 December 2010 17:19, Chris Ridd <chrisridd at mac.com> wrote:
> >> On 1 Dec 2010, at 17:01, Jesus Cea wrote:
> >>> I would rather prefer to use XMPP/Jabber. We don't need to use a
> >>> "centralized" infraestructure we don't own at all.
> >> I agree - there's no reason not to run an XMPP server on openindiana.org, just like it runs an MTA for mail. There are free XMPP servers (ejabberd is one I've heard most about, and would probably be fine for a small group like this) and commercial ones (my company sells the one used at jabber.org for example). We'd be able to keep chat transcripts centrally, that sort of thing.
> >> Using irc.freenode.net feels a bit like us choosing to email using Lotus Notes instead of SMTP :-)
> > 
> > Actually, IRC is a simple mostly-text protocol like SMTP.  XMPP is a
> > comparatively complicated suite of endless customisations that happens
> > to be Useful(tm) for various kinds of chat - it looks to me a lot more
> > like Lotus Notes than IRC does.
> 
> I was referring to the standardness of the two systems. XMPP is standard. IRC is not.

Huh?  IRC is described by RFC 1459.  Several follow up RFCS occurred:

http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/

For internet protocols, that usually about as "standard" as you get.  (A
small number of things actually become *standards*, but they tend to be
few and far between for application protocols.  Even SMTP itself is only
described by RFCs, at least the last time I looked.)

> 
> > IRC is simple and easy to understand and is already in widespread use
> > for this kind of collaboration, including within this project.  I'd
> > like to try and attend the meetings but if it requires signing up for
> > and maintaining yet another account on yet another collaboration
> > system then its probably going to be less of a burden to just read the
> > minutes.
> 
> IRC's exactly like that for me - a burden that I only got a client for because of OpenIndiana. I'd prefer not to use it.

The thing is that there is disjoint set of tools that work with XMPP and
IRC.  There are some tools, like Pidgin, that let you use either.

Generally, crufty UNIX guys will prefer IRC, because its been around a
*lot* longer, and there are nicer text-oriented clients for it.  Windows
and GUI folk will find some clients that are "rich" but only support
XMPP.

A bigger question: who are the attendees meant to be?  *Developers* for
OpenIndiana?  People with commit rights?

Note that *illumos* has no such meeting for registered developers, and
probably never will.   If you (OI) need a private meeting between the
*leaders* of the project, then you should just use whatever works for
those people, and ignore the rest of us in the peanut gallery.

	- Garrett