[FINOS Community] Where to document/discuss online: Mailing Lists vs. Github Issues (please comment and reply w/ your thoughts)

[Rob Underwood]

All,

I wanted to follow-up on the discussion had today on the Context Data and Intents Working group call about where to document/discussion online between standing meetings, specifically our mailing lists powered by google groups (e.g,. email likes this) or via github issues.

As Leslie said, we do encourage generally, foundation wide, more use of online collaboration forums such as mailing lists and github issues vs. (an over-) reliance on just the bi-weekly or monthly meetings at which to do the majority of the collaboration. (And, I should add, we're keenly aware that google groups presents some obstacles for some of our participants, especially at several of our member investment banks, and are looking at alternatives). 

This in mind, we do not have an official "do it this way or else" stance about mailing lists vs. github issues, both of which provide threaded discussions (and email notifications -- Github can be configured to send you email on a thread you follow; check out https://guides.github.com/features/issues/), for where that collaboration and direction should occur. That really needs to be a consensus choice of the working group. 

This disclaimer made, personally, if I had to choose, I'd suggest Github issues for deliberating topics like Leslie suggested (the merits of adding a field or two to an object as I recall) for a few reasons.

First, as I've shared with more than a few of you, I think it's probably wise for the foundation community to seek to standardize as much as possible on Github's (or Gitlab's) infrastructure (come to our ODP working group meetings if talking about, and weighing in on, stuff like this interests you). This is less because these companies are a member, and more because Github (and Gitlab) are the de facto platforms for open source collaboration and communities. To do open source is to use Github or Gitlab.

Second, if we as a community are maximizing the use case surface area of Github, then we can focus first and foremost on getting developers and other contributors at banks and other institutions up and going on Github, instead of addressing access problems, compliance issues, firewall settings, etc. and other open source readiness and tooling access issues across Github, Google, Atlassian, etc. 

Finally, Github is "closer to the metal" in the sense that it's built to more naturally reference code fragments, existing pull requests, other issues, etc. from within a thread.

This all said, if groups prefer to use the google groups mailing lists for technical discussions, that's fine too. But really this is less of a foundation call and more up to the consensus and norms of each working group and wider program community. 

I'd love to hear what others think. I've cc-ed Community@ to get this discussion going a bit. 

Rob

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Rob Underwood | Director of Programs | FINOS

 +1 (917) 754-3900 |  rob.un...@finos.org | @brooklynrob | Github: @brooklynrob

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