The Bikeshed

Pandya

1:11 AM

@Mnementh Congratulation for achieving 2k (2000) reputation on opennsource.SE

Area 51 recommends 10 users with 2000+ for healthy beta, currently 1 user :- @Mnementh is.

overactor

6:23 AM

@Pandya That's for a public beta though

Meta Data

8:18 AM

1

Q: Where is [old arcane project] now maintained, maybe as a fork under another name?

Imagine a highly-specific open source library whose website has disappeared, or has been abandoned. Is it on-topic to ask whether the project still lives somewhere else, maybe as a fork under another name? It can be very difficult to find even with good Google skills. Example csharp-sqlite is t...

overactor

8:32 AM

Has everyone checked out:

9

Q: Are licensing posts going to dominate Open Source?

After looking in the "Tags" page on the main site... I've noticed that out of the top 5 tags, 3 of them are licensing tags (license, creative-commons, and licensing)... The top tag on the site being the license itself... Not only what's state above, but the license tag (with 55 questions at ...

discussion tags questions

?

(and casted their vote on it)

ArtOfCode

8:43 AM

Yep. I think we'll have a fair number of licensing questions, but there will be others.

Ooohhh dear. @curiousdannii is back on his editing spree :)

@curiousdannii I challenge you to get me to 20 edit reviews today

curiousdannii

9:04 AM

@ArtOfCode Not likely to happen now that only my tag edits need reviewing ;)

ArtOfCode

@curiousdannii I've already reviewed those...

curiousdannii

And there are few tags without descriptions now

You know, I don't really agree with the no definition tag wikis rule... sometimes terms could be misleading and it would be better to have the tag wiki than nothing.

ArtOfCode

If terms are misleading then do explain them, but just for simple things like 'licensing', defining what it is isn't as helpful as saying when it should be used.

ratchet freak

@curiousdannii the excerpt should be the how to use this tag while the wiki should be allowed to have a definition

Michael Schumacher

11:03 AM

I'm really surprised that the high number of licensing posts is surprising to some people :)

And one question about a different topic has just been closed as opinion-based ;)

0

Q: Which communication channel is favorable if I am making my project open source?

I am thinking of making one of my projects open source and I am thinking which communication channel to use. Mailing lists are great, but less on interactivity, IRC is high on interactivity, but generally intimidating to newbies and Gitter.im in non-intimidating, interactive and good looking, but...

irc communication

My answer becomes anecdotal quite fast, I admit that - but then, listing examples what works for the commiunity and what doesn't is probably the point

I don't see this as a "drop names of services I can use, tell me about methods and their advantages, disadvantages and experiences with them"

I would see "too broad" as a possible close reason, but overall, this seem to be the kind of community question that many are hoping for

this is where you want big floss projects chime and and describe their experience and benefits, or failures

+in

overactor

@MichaelSchumacher It was opinion based though, but I think it could be rewritten to be better

Michael Schumacher

11:18 AM

out of curiosity, could a answer to a "what is better?" question along the lines of "as the follwing two sociological studies show, there is indeed a "better" that does not depend on opinion..." prevent such questions from being closed?

I don't have that there, really just curious

overactor

@MichaelSchumacher Better is still too opinionated.

If someone asks "what is better?"

and then says, yeah but one is actually better, so the question is valid.

then why did they ask?

And if you want to self-answer a question like that, it's still better if it's not phrased that way

you can perfectly answer a question like "What are the advantages and disadvantages of X in relation to Y compared to Z?" with:

Here's a study that shows that X will literally kill babies if you do Y with it, use Z instead!

Michael Schumacher

1:08 PM

@overactor well, killing babies might be an intended outcome of an open-source weapons system

but... I'm not sure what that is supposed to tell me... bear with me, 38°C here....

ratchet freak

it's too warm in europe at the moment

overactor

@ratchetfreak is it ever

@MichaelSchumacher The point is that no matter what the answer is, a more neutral question will always be at least as good (and 99% of the time, better) than a subjective one

e.g: Which is better?

because the objective answer to "which is better" is almost always "depends"

Michael Schumacher

hm

overactor

1:25 PM

@MichaelSchumacher See my newest comment on the question

Martijn

1:47 PM

@MichaelSchumacher by the way, I've discovered what my "issue" is with the Free Software people thing. I might be reading this wrong, but what I seem to taste from a lot of you comments is that free software zealots will not use this site if we don't sufficiently cater to their POV

I'd argue that's a feature, not a bug.

this shouldn't be a place for zealotry

from any side

Michael Schumacher

1:58 PM

@Martijn are you prepared to declare this the Open Source Initiative Stack Exchange site?

this is how the easily available information that can be gathered makes it look like at the moment

mentioning the OSI and being approached makes it look like you want them to set the policy

overactor

@MichaelSchumacher fsf and CC have been contacted too now

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