Moving to Slack

[François Beaune]

Hello,

Since we created a Slack team in December 2016, all development-related conversations have moved there.

In light of this, we have decided to switch appleseed-dev to read-only since the lack of activity on the list sends the message that appleseed development has slowed down or stopped, while the opposite has happened:

appleseed's development has significantly sped up with the addition of many new awesome people to the team and Slack has helped foster a vibrant community around appleseed.

If you are interested in following appleseed's development, please join us on Slack!

To join Slack:

Method 1: Go to https://github.com/appleseedhq/appleseed and click on the pink badge:

Method 2: Send a short mail to he...@appleseedhq.net and ask for an invitation.

Method 3: Reach out to us on Twitter (we will need your email address to send you an invitation).

See you there!

Franz

[Alexey Dokuchaev]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2017 at 10:43:02PM +0100, Fran??ois Beaune wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Since we created a Slack team in December 2016, all development-related
> conversations have moved there.
>

> In light of this, *we have decided to switch appleseed-dev to read-only* since

> the lack of activity on the list sends the message that appleseed
> development has slowed down or stopped, while the opposite has happened:
>

> *appleseed's development has significantly sped up* with the addition of
> many new *awesome* people to the team and Slack has helped foster a vibrant
> community around appleseed.

That's sad; but I guess if that's what people need, so be it. Personally
I can't imagine anything more convenient than traditional mailing list.

./danfe

[François Beaune]

Hi Alexey,

Good to hear from you!

Sorry for that...

I'm not particularly happy to switch to a proprietary tool, especially since that puts us at the mercy of Slack's decisions regarding how they handle non-paying "customers" like us. In fact we've already hit limitations in terms of searchability (we have published 100K messages but only the latest 10K are searchable, unless we pay).

In addition, I also knew that "Unix graybeards" (lacking of a better term, I'm using this one with utmost respect...) wouldn't be thrilled either by the switch to a real time platform...

But the fact is, for a small community like ours, the switch to real time conversations has helped tremendously bring people together and make them feel like part of one team, allowing them to help each other and to discuss and solve problems together, quickly.

Finally, as I stated in my original mail, there's the question of outside perception. We know that we suck at marketing and communication, like a lot of open source projects, probably. But as I kept bumping into people at conferences and other places who thought appleseed was "dead", I realized something needed to be done. A mostly unused mailing list does not send the signal we want to send.

I'm very much open to ideas, and I'm happy to discuss the topic... On Slack :) Or here since the list is still active.

Franz

[François Beaune]

(Reposting, email is annoying in its own way...)

Hi Alexey,

Good to hear from you!

On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 5:10 PM, Alexey Dokuchaev <da...@nsu.ru> wrote:

> In light of this, *we have decided to switch appleseed-dev to read-only* since
> the lack of activity on the list sends the message that appleseed
> development has slowed down or stopped, while the opposite has happened:
>
> *appleseed's development has significantly sped up* with the addition of
> many new *awesome* people to the team and Slack has helped foster a vibrant
> community around appleseed.

That's sad; but I guess if that's what people need, so be it.  Personally
I can't imagine anything more convenient than traditional mailing list.

[Alexey Dokuchaev]

On Fri, Nov 03, 2017 at 05:49:46PM +0100, Fran??ois Beaune wrote:
> I'm not particularly happy to switch to a proprietary tool, especially
> since that puts us at the mercy of Slack's decisions regarding how they
> handle non-paying "customers" like us. In fact we've already hit
> limitations in terms of searchability (we have published 100K messages but
> only the latest 10K are searchable, unless we pay).
>
> In addition, I also knew that "Unix graybeards" (lacking of a better term,
> I'm using this one with utmost respect...)

:-) Very good wording, I'd save this for a future use.

> But the fact is, for a small community like ours, the switch to real time
> conversations has helped tremendously bring people together and make them
> feel like part of one team, allowing them to help each other and to discuss
> and solve problems together, quickly.
>
> Finally, as I stated in my original mail, there's the question of outside
> perception. We know that we suck at marketing and communication, like a lot
> of open source projects, probably. But as I kept bumping into people at
> conferences and other places who thought appleseed was "dead", I realized
> something needed to be done. A mostly unused mailing list does not send the
> signal we want to send.

Thank you for kind and wise words; fortunately, we still have GitHub, so
when I have more things to contribute, it won't depend on Slack. ;-)

./danfe

[Christopher Sean Morrison]

I'm not particularly happy to switch to a proprietary tool, especially since that puts us at the mercy of Slack's decisions regarding how they handle non-paying "customers" like us. In fact we've already hit limitations in terms of searchability (we have published 100K messages but only the latest 10K are searchable, unless we pay).

 Zulip may be worth considering at some point.  Similar features, (experimental) bridge to IRC for the greybeards, open source.

Cheers!

Sean

[François Beaune]

On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 4:47 AM, Christopher Sean Morrison <brl...@mac.com> wrote:

I'm not particularly happy to switch to a proprietary tool, especially since that puts us at the mercy of Slack's decisions regarding how they handle non-paying "customers" like us. In fact we've already hit limitations in terms of searchability (we have published 100K messages but only the latest 10K are searchable, unless we pay).

 Zulip may be worth considering at some point.  Similar features, (experimental) bridge to IRC for the greybeards, open source.

Excellent point!

Franz