The Bikeshed

Hello, future visitors...

Hello!

Moo?

Release the hounds!

woah!

5:35 PM

Now we get to see who rushes to farm rep off other people's example questions.

Wondred if this would ever get off the ground. Now, who moves the 'candidate questions' from area 51?

@kdopen I prefer to let the users who proposed the example questions turn them into real questions, if they're going to, but it's not uncommon for people to grab them and post them to the site.

It's important that they be fleshed out as specific, practical questions, though. A lot of example questions are nothing more than poorly-defined titles.

3

Huzzah!

room topic changed to The MIT License: General discussion for opensource.stackexchange.com (no tags)

@QPaysTaxes Ew, GPL

MIT FTW

Ah, 5 minutes in beta and the GPL vs. MIT debate has already begun

9

Is the meta feed automatic for new rooms?

ProgramFOX

5:46 PM

No, it has to be added by a mod.

Andy has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

@ProgramFOX I added the Meta feed

We seriously should come up with a better room topic. Between "free", "license", "open", there has got to be a good one there...

LOL am I the only one who just saw a question title with "10 down vote" pasted in?

Somebody's copy-and-pasting

@derobert The Free Open License?

5:53 PM

@QPaysTaxes It vanished in a hurry and I refreshed the page so I'm not sure which one it was

I hit all of the key words :)

piping words to shuf does not a topic make :-P

ProgramFOX

@Air No, I saw it too and edited that out.

@Air Yes, me ;-) I copied it from my example question ... It's also a question I'd like to get an answer to because I've been wondering this for years

@ProgramFOX Did you give the user their requested 10 down votes? ;)

5:54 PM

Is this site going to take legal questions? Things like opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/13/… seem like a general legal question, not really open source.

Q: Is open source limited to software?

3

In open source, are we talking only about software, or also about other things? There is free documentation (GFDL, Creative Commons), open data (already has its own Stack Exchange site), open recipes... Does this site want to be broad in scope, or narrow in scope?

0

Q: Will "software" be an implicit tag for every question not categorized in another way?

Prior to the beta launch, there was discussion of whether this site would be limited in scope to open source software. The strong consensus was behind an answer that argues: If the scope does not include significant areas of interest to just the open-source world (licensing, hardware, DIY p...

discussion scope tags

I'm assuming it was actually copying [+10 net score] [downvote button tooltip]

@derobert Well, it''s both ... It's a good topic for a meta question

Same with that patent question. I guess I'll ask on meta

Yup. Meta ALL THE THINGS!

5:57 PM

@Air Yep, just did one of mine

@Air NO. META IS EVIL. (channeling several years ago Jeff)

@derobert MURDER*

@Air Not going to work. You need exorcise instead. Maybe disenchant if you've run out of exorcisms.

@QPaysTaxes No good question will only ever be asked by one person, or SE wouldn't work to begin with.

Hey Open Source!

5:59 PM

Hey Open Pixel Eye!

ugh, the adrenaline rise when I see the "+95" rep change

Hot damn, we closing already. Where's that folding chair gif...

@QPaysTaxes tags for each license are probably good. e.g, gpl-v2 for a GPL v2 question.

Definitely can be experts on a specific license.

I have no idea what to ask

hosting ?

6:05 PM

I had no idea what question you're asking... (sorry, half paying attention while writing that meta post)

contributers or contributing?

Vote! Vote like there's no tomorrow!

Don't worry too much about the tags right now, patterns will appear in a few days, and we can retag questions with "bad" tags then

@Carpetsmoker or contribution

It's a bit ambiguous, as you can mean contributing to a project (like, "How can I make sure my patches get accepted"), or dealing with contributers to your projects (like, "How do I deal with bad patches people send me")

6:08 PM

if you have a question then just post it

it's what this is there for

Nobody knows what tags to use yet. Just make sure you use some, and avoid meta tags.

General guideline for tags: say “my question is about”. A good tag name is a good word or noun phrase to add after that.

Often asking yourself "is there an expert in this (or could there be one)?" helps determine if something is a good tag

Q: I can't create a tag with spaces

0

I create a question but I can't use a tag with spaces. There is a way to create a tag with spaces such as development model?

support tagging

2

Q: Are getting started questions relevant here?

Now that we have this network, I'm sure there'll be newbies coming in asking questions like, How do I get started with Mozilla/KDE/etc? or How do I start contributing to project xyz? I guess these questions would be very organisation specific, and would spam the network. Would these q...

discussion

It's good to see we get a lot of activity going at the start.

6:18 PM

Most sites do. It's a marathon, though, not a sprint. :)

Hmmm. Good news. I'm still human. Meta just checked for me. :-/

@Air I'm a CR regular, talk about marathons...

> I wrote a beta site and it's working, but it's taking a really long time to graduate. How can I optimize this site to speed things up?

@Air Download more RAM

Everyone in this room should reach the 40 vote limit today

No excuses!

6:23 PM

@MadaraUchiha Well, having good questions helps. I've seen mainly licensing questions so far (I'm partially at fault there).

I would be careful not to vote for the sake of voting on an answer that you don't know to be accurate, even if it looks good.

But vote on all the questions, definitely.

2

Just received my Open Beta invitation for OpenSource

Hah! Beat the system to it!

@Mast Closed beta, for Open Source. OH THE IRONY

@MadaraUchiha If this would be really Open Source, the code would be available as well.

6:25 PM

If you are closing as off-topic, please use the custom reason to explain. We don't have close reasons yet

But since getting the licensing right will take as long as graduating...

@MadaraUchiha I will if you arrange to have 40 posts that are either good or terrible. I'm seeing a lot of meh so far.

@Gilles Stack Exchange needs a Meh vote

@MadaraUchiha what would it do?

@Gilles Absolutely nothing.

6:27 PM

@MadaraUchiha meh

@Gilles Exactly!

It could negatively impact the "recommended" view

But I do like how meta this is getting

StackApps, anyone?

@MadaraUchiha Wouldn't not voting constitute a 'Meh' vote?

In danger of stating the obvious

Thanks for TLDRlegal, @MadaraUchiha :D

Q: How far into legal questions do we stray?

1

Questions like Do I really need the long "shouting" warranty disclaimer in all-caps that some licenses, such as MIT, have? Or can I trim/lowercase it? and Do software patents for common formats (gif, mp3, h264) apply globally? are legal questions that impact open source software. To what extent ...

discussion

-1

Q: Free Software in the description, please?

See this post on area51. To some people, there is an important distinction between Free Software and Open Source Software, at a philosophical level. I'm not really interested in having that fight myself, but it's actually particularly for that reason that I think we should choose a name that ...

Q: Are questions on hosting platforms on-topic?

0

I found this: Codehaus gone. Google Code shutting down. What to do to recover content? It seems to be asking about how to recover information from a hosting service that has fallen. It asks whether the lost content is recoverable. So here's my overall question? Should questions about recovering ...

6:36 PM

Hiya everyone :)

Suggested room-name change to: The Off-License

or the The Question Tracker

How should we name our chatroom? Open Source Meta

Now who's going to clean up the duplicates tomorrow?

@rolfl debate the room name on meta please

6:46 PM

teling me twice?

until there's a consensus this room should keep its default name

;-)

@rolfl On meta please.

thrice.

@Gilles Who decided on the default name? Is there a protocol for such things?

It's just the site name

6:47 PM

@Mast the default name is the name of the site

In that case, it's already messed up.

And the protocol to change it is to have widespread agreement on meta

or, failing a clear winner, moderators pick among the top options

I HAVE SPOKEN

Not really, if anyone is bothered by the current name and feels strongly about moving back to the original until we have a winner on meta, please speak up

If we start a discussion about the chat room name, then "The bikeshed" is probably a good name ;-)

@Carpetsmoker +1, I like it

6:50 PM

5 mins ago, by Madara Uchiha

How should we name our chatroom? Open Source Meta

@Carpetsmoker You associate Open Source with bikesheds?

Good luck

@Mast See bikeshed.com

@Carpetsmoker Ah, that explains everything!

Propose it.

Q: How should we name our chatroom?

6

The default was Open Source, I, on a whim, changed it to The MIT License. Let's let the community decide, how should we name our chatroom?

discussion chat

6:52 PM

@MadaraUchiha I do. Naming the room after a license is not a good idea. This site risks license wars (they're already starting, in fact).

@Gilles Please change it back then.

At least my suggestion is almost as poorly received as yours, @MadaraUchiha

I have to go for a bit.

:p

@Gilles makes a good point. We need to be agnostic about things that could cause disputes.

6:53 PM

room topic changed to Open Source: General discussion for opensource.stackexchange.com (no tags)

@Unihedron At least I specified why I voted against yours :P

@ArtOfCode It's the internet. Some disputes will still arise.

@Mast Correct, but we want to minimize them. If we can avoid dispute, in most cases we should.

I do like “the off-license” (I was going to suggest it)

Of-course.

6:54 PM

@Carpetsmoker True story, the bikeshed problem is not what you think it is ;-)

@Gilles I... genuinely don't get it.

Room description: General discussion for opensource.stackexchange.com. Discussions about licenses strictly prohibited.

A: How should we name our chatroom?

2

The bikeshed In the open source community, a "bikeshed" is a meaningless discussion about something of very little or no importance... It was coined by phk on a FreeBSD mailing list post (which you can read here).

@rolfl hm? What do you mean?

Parkinson's law of triviality

The bikeshed problem is that, as a committee, it is often easier to make huge decisions easily, bit simple decisions, like what color to paint the bikeshed, can bog down th committee and create problems.

Parkinson's law of triviality, also known as bikeshedding, bike-shed effect, or the bicycle-shed example, is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson observed and illustrated that a committee whose job was to approve plans for a nuclear power plant spent the majority of its time with pointless discussions on relatively trivial and unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike-shed, while neglecting the less-trivial proposed design of the nuclear power plant itself, which is far more...

6:56 PM

@rolfl I think he knows what the bikeshed is

That seems like a different way of rephrasing it, any 2 people working together (ie. 2 contributers to an open source project) are effectively an "informal committee" for the purpose of the "bikeshed problem".

The bikeshed problem is basically that, with simple subjects, everyone will have something to say to sound smarter.

With hard subjects, everyone silently agree with "the expert"

I never read Parkinson's original book, though, as I wasn't able to find a copy :-/

Q: How do I structure my project in an inviting way?

In fact, this whole question is a one huge bikeshed.

See how many responses it gathered instantly?

3

When I work on new libraries and tools I potentially would like them to get contributors and activity. However, I'm not sure what I could to in order to encourage more participation. As a project owner, how can I make my open source project more accessible to new participants?

project-management contributor collaboration

I don't think this is too broad.

It can be answered succinctly.

If anything, this is too broad

6

Q: How do I attract new programmers?

I am working on a project, currently by myself. It's a side project, I'm not expecting to make money on it. It's posted on GitHub, and I'm going to be building a project page for it. Once it's built, how do I get other programmers to want to contribute? I am checking in code constantly, but no o...

collaboration github

Both aren't good fits IMHO.

7:02 PM

@Mast Why?

@MadaraUchiha Thanks for bringing it up, I saw it had 4 CV and meant to keep an eye out but the tab vanished into the ether.

@MadaraUchiha I agree with your assessment of the 2nd and I think the first is too broad and opinionated.

@Mast Then vote to close on the second

I have a area51 question about "How can I ensure other contributors can join the effort easily?" with the 10 upvotes but I'm wondering how to properly pose that question

I REACHED 200 REP!!!

I can rest in peace

it's 3 am

7:04 PM

@MadaraUchiha I was more commenting on this (C.C. @Carpetsmoker): It was coined by phk on a FreeBSD mailing list post (which you can read here).

@MadaraUchiha Done.

It was coined in 1957 .... 40+ years before that

Okay we have way too many licensing questions

6

This will easily be a problem even before we leave private beta

We need to set some basic restrictions

they're invading

open source is bikeshedding over licenses

7:05 PM

@rolfl Right, it was popularized by phk is better, yeah

The non-specific ones should burn IMHO. Make it a meta.

@MadaraUchiha Let's wait for at least three days. If it is a popular topic then we might turn it into a gold mine.

@ratchetfreak It's bike shedding over bikesheds.

Q: Should we allow questions about hosting platforms?

1

This is a follow up of my previous meta post, Are questions on hosting platforms on-topic?. We need to decide what to allow in terms of questions regarding content on hosting services. The question that sparked this debate is here: Codehaus gone. Google Code shutting down. What to do to recover ...

@Mast Hey, no recursing!

7:06 PM

OpenSource.SE is a bike shedding factory.

Martijn

Congratulations on launch everybody!

So, @Carpetsmoker - did you notice that each time you open bikeshed.com it opens in a different colour? ;-)

@rolfl I noticed it because of the horrible flicker.

@rolfl Yeah ;-) You can also add ?color=yellow IIRC

The random color thing should have been done server-side.

NEEDS MOAR CODE REVIEW

7:07 PM

possible duplicate of How to relicense a project — Unihedron 14 secs ago

^ I think this is a bad VTC but the questions are oddly similar, what should I do?

oh, they bailed out

@Unihedron There are many duplicates popping up. So, yea.

@MadaraUchiha yes, especially as licensing questions are one of the only two topics that ever managed to cause strife on Unix & Linux, which is a pretty calm place most of the time

@MadaraUchiha CodeReview.SE

heh OTQ status achieved :)

@Mast Well, I did say it because @rolfl is a Code Review moderator :P

7:09 PM

@Gilles unless you mix up unix and linux

@Gilles Wasn't there a Legal proposal that got shot down?

@ratchetfreak yes, that's the other one, people debating over whether Linux should be called Linux

@MadaraUchiha There's law.SE

@MadaraUchiha dunno what you're refering to. There's an SE site about laws

> Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?

It sucks to not be a mod in this site too.... ^^^^

7:11 PM

@rolfl so get 1000 rep before public beta

@rolfl That only applies to suggested edits iirc

@rolfl Here you're just a lowly peon like the rest of us.

@Unihedron Don't.

A: Can I restrict who can utilize my software?

4

From the Open Source Definition: The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. and The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or fr...

7:11 PM

:(

All I wanted to do was change the code to >

it should be block quote, not code quote.

@rolfl expand “OSS” to “open source software”

@rolfl review it opensource.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/66

bast.... oh... meh ;-)

you can add a > on each line ;)

7:14 PM

sooo

@Gilles Chatroom would turn into like a bOSS

A: How should we name our chatroom?

1

I suggest: Free As In Speech

I likey

@MadaraUchiha hmmm possibly. I still like the off-license more :)

Whew. Not even 20 minutes here and I've hit 200.

Me too, welcome to the 200+ club!

I wonder how many of us are listed on here by tomorrow.

Q: Should we allow "What's the difference between <license A> and <license B>" types of questions?

1

Do we find them on topic? There are sites out there dedicated to do this comparison and are able to visually display it a lot better than we ever can. Perhaps a single canonical explaining how to compare licenses, and link everything to that?

discussion on-topic

7:23 PM

@Unihedron liking all our 0's :)

Shooting for suffrage badge :)

@Unihedron The site hasn't been on-line for 12 hours yet and you're already targeting badges?

don't judge me

Continuity is more important in this stage.

BADGES ARE EVERYTHING MUST GET ALL BADGES

7:27 PM

who are we?
USERS!
are we targeting badges?
GET ALL THE BADGES!

Vox Populi next.

OF COURSE WE'RE TARGETING BADGES

Badges are love. Badges are life.

@ArtOfCode That line has been abused way too many times.

@Mast Yes it has, and it will continue to be abused.

until badges are abolished

but then a revolt will rise

oops, I tried to vote on my own answer

7:31 PM

1 hour ago, by Madara Uchiha

Vote! Vote like there's no tomorrow!

You have 4 votes left today... You have 3 votes left today... blindly casts the rest done

Now I gotta flag something

(Watch out for Uni! He's running wild with a flag)

@Unihedron I think a lot of those hit me... I just got a fair dose of rep.

I've now managed to reach 300 rep. And a Mortarboard badge. In the first hour.

Remind me, what's Mortarboard?

200 rep in one day

@Unihedron hit the rep cap

7:36 PM

ohhh

@michaelpri 300 in p. beta?

@Unihedron Well, 200 by upvotes. You got 100 by association

@Unihedron no, 200, but the association bonus doesn't count

facedesk

That puts me in 2nd place overall so far.

thanks :)

7:37 PM

Does anyone think "Can you use different licenses in different parts of a project?" would be on topic

@michaelpri sounds on-topic to me

I think it is, and the answer is yes

(spoiler alert: yes)

@michaelpri I guess it would be. Of course you'd need to be specific as to what the parts are and what the licenses are

@ArtOfCode Alright, I wasn't sure if it was too legal

7:38 PM

@michaelpri Nah sounds OK to me. Be aware of @Gilles' points though

@michaelpri It would be a 'too easy' question, which should be avoided.

Unless you make it more specific, which you probably should.

Why was this reopend? It's super broad... opensource.stackexchange.com/q/54/40

@MadaraUchiha I don't know. I can't close it down again.

@MadaraUchiha Meta it with [specific-question]

@Unihedron That ^^

If the on-topicness is so debatable, it should be meta'd to set a precedent.

7:42 PM

:)

@MadaraUchiha Not a clue. I can still CV on it, so I just have.

i'll let you people do the honors

i'm busy watching my rep go up and yelling like a tween

@Unihedron I would be, had I not already bust the cap.

muahahaha

you can only wish

@Unihedron I'll be back in 4 hours' time, trying to bust it again :)

7:46 PM

Yeah, you can be the greatest, you can be the best :P

Q: Isn't this question too broad?

1

The following question: How do I attract new programmers? has been closed as Too Broad and then reopened. I argue that it is far broader than How do I structure my project in an inviting way? which has been closed as too broad.

discussion specific-question too-broad

@TheMetaTracker Isn't your title too generic?

@Mast What would you suggest?

Prevent repeated closing and re-opening of dubiously scoped questions

But well, more titleized.

too wordy

7:50 PM

Hence the note.

So I hit that cap fast enough that Meta still shows 101 rep... Now that's not something I've managed before.

i'm jealous

Oof, I failed to make the first 100 users. Man, doctor's appointments can really hurt you. . . It's great we're in beta, though!

I'm 5th

does a little dance in celebration

Holy crap, 39 first posts? Someone better hit 350 rep fast, or the CMs will have a tough job on their hand.

7:59 PM

@HDE226868 I'm on the way. Hehe.

@QPaysTaxes Not uh, I'm 10th

Q: How can I find usage statistics for an open source project?

1

Put simply, is there any way to find out how widely used a given open source project is? Say, for example, I am looking for a JSON library (no recommendations please). I can imagine various metrics to help choose among the many available, but a major one would be "How widely used is this?". Wi...

development

Oh

@QPaysTaxes You aren't even on the first page I'm afraid...

In chronological, yes.

Thought, you meant ranked 10th

8:01 PM

@HDE226868 Whew I just made the first 100. 98.

This is about to be closed, and fine by me if the community thinks that's right. But I was trying to be a little pre-emptive. You know we're going to get asked these questions. Having one available to pop up n the searches may (I say may) reduce the number of dupes. And OS consumers are likely to want an answer to it

blast too late. Can someone think of an edit that would make it worth re-opening?

Make it on-topic.

And on-topic to a degree that someone reading it will vote to reopen it.

@MadaraUchiha You got it!

@HDE226868 not enough originality

@Unihedron Well, the post is open sourced, in a way. . .

8:15 PM

Ugh, I keep seeing my rep go up to 290, then I refresh and it's back to where it was.

I had a question! Hooray!

I'm helping!

@Unihedron That's me upvoting and unpovting your post

make... up... your... mind... :)

3

Q: Vote Early, Vote Often!

Note: This post is identical to this one on Vi & Vim stack exchange I would like to echo a post that Scott Morrison made on Meta.Tex.SE: I'm a moderator from MathOverflow, and this "question" is actually unsolicited advice, based on our experience from the initial launch of MathOverflow. ...

discussion voting

Hey, I got an upvote on a post on main!

About something I knew nothing about half an hour ago.

8:28 PM

@HDE226868 Congratulations? Which one?

@ArtOfCode The one I upvoted.

@ArtOfCode

@HDE226868 Oh, well you can have another then :)

I'm seeing a lot of questions that are either too broad or opinion-based, many of the form, "How do I . . . ?" I'm not saying that all of those are bad, but there does seem to be an abundance of them.

@HDE226868 Not having been in many private betas, I can't comment on the abundance. I think it'll probably die down when we get scoped though.

8:38 PM

@ArtOfCode abundance of questions is typical on day 1 of the private beta

abundance of good questions is a good sign

abundance of bad questions is a bad sign

abundance of meh questions is also a bad sign

@Gilles I'm kinda concerned that out of 37 questions, 15 are tagged license

@MadaraUchiha so am I

+2 which are tagged law

a bias towards programmers' pet topics is to be expected

but being licenses.se would suck

Exactly.

8:41 PM

@Gilles @MadaraUchiha So let's solve that early. What else is within scope that would be good to discuss in Q&A?

@ArtOfCode I think it's still too early to come up with trends

@ArtOfCode honestly, I don't know what this site can do that Programmers can't do

except for non-programming-related topics, but I expect them to remain a minority

@Gilles that's a very good point. If anything it's just a narrower-scope sideset

@Gilles Yeah well, that's not new though

WordPress Development, Drupal Answers vs Stack Overflow

Ask Ubuntu vs Unix & Linux

@MadaraUchiha those are sites around a specific product which is only partially covered by SO

AU vs U&L is a better example, and there the difference is the audience and the nature of the answers

8:44 PM

@Gilles Anime & Manga and Movies & TV

Ok well let's do something like this: if we do end up with a majority of licensing questions over the private beta, someone should put up a meta post encouraging other types of questions too.

yes, and also post questions on other topics

for some private betas I prepared questions in advance, I wasn't paying attention this one and I don't have any question now

I'll try to think of some

@Gilles I expect the same, but I think it's unfortunate - the boundary of open source spreading to other fields is exactly the kind of frontier that a site like this would be great for

Q: Are historical questions on topic?

3

Should questions about the history of the open source idea or open source projects be on topic? The closest I've seen to one is Why wasn't CC0 approved as an open source software license?, which seems like a good one. A historical answer isn't necessarily necessary for it, but an answer would hav...

Do I need to change the title of my CC0 question to fit the problem statement better? I'm not really happy with it, and the intial responses seem to be focusing on the title superficially rather than on the actual question in the body - but the actual question is not very brief or search-friendly.

Suggestions welcome.

8:51 PM

Three hours [and a bit more] till next SE day... Gotta work harder if I want to hit the rep cap :(

@Mast 12 downvotes already? You are the hero we need, not the hero we deserve.

@Air Thank you, I think.

@Mast It is decidedly a compliment to be compared to Batman.