Toward a "modern" Emacs [LWN.net]

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 1:34 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
In reply to: Toward a "modern" Emacs by marcH
Parent article: Toward a "modern" Emacs

> and subscribe to some mailing-lists

That is not true, I wonder where you got that. Subscription has and never will be required. Just email your patches to emacs-devel@gnu.org, email bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. People will reply to you.

If you send email from an address the list has never seen before, it can take a few hours before a human looks at it and sends it to the list. That happens regardless of subscription status.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 2:09 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (5 responses)

> > and subscribe to some mailing-lists

> That is not true, I wonder where you got that.

That's great, thanks for correcting me but I'm still not interested in using email "the old way". I want to select myself which code reviews and which bugs send me email and I want all the discussion about one particular series to be easy to find in one place. It does not necessarily imply a web interface, it only implies a "modern" database. I haven't tried this myself but I heard some people use github from... Emacs most of the time! http://wikemacs.org/wiki/Github

PS: I "got that" because that is (used to be?) the most common expectation with email-based projects. I (genuinely) wonder where you got the correct information.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 2:20 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (2 responses)

I will admit that it is a problem that that many lists on the internet require subscription then people come to gnu lists expecting that. Perhaps CONTRIBUTE should mention this fact.

I can't remember exactly where I figured out that 99.5% of gnu.org and nongnu.org lists don't require subscription to post, probably after I became an administrator of them, which is not a good sign.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 2:36 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link]

Also, I think there's like 1 in 10 gnu/nongnu lists or so where you don't need to subscribe to post, but you won't get replies because the list is configured so replies only to the list. And you basically have to look at an example reply in the archive to figure it out. So, ya, we should fix that situation.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 17:21 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> I will admit that it is a problem that that many lists on the internet require subscription then people come to gnu lists expecting that. Perhaps CONTRIBUTE should mention this fact.

Yes please.

I suspect the most obvious and common rationale for requiring mailing-list subscription is mitigating spam, which code review databases keep under control by requiring a user account, which is admittedly their biggest road bump for "drive-by" contributors. Security versus usability: always the same trade-off.

The user account road-bump is largely mitigated thanks to federation: I mean for instance you can re-use your launchpad and many other accounts on a number of "foreign" sites.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 2:40 UTC (Sat) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree about the database. I'm hopeful that GNU will adopt something for that in the next year or so. Contributions are welcome.

Toward a "modern" Emacs

Posted Sep 26, 2020 17:44 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Is gitlab not free enough? Drifting away from the topic but genuine question. It seems increasingly popular with largely-but-not-totally-free projects right now.