Meetings/20140408

Time and date

Tuesday 8 April 2014, 7.30 PM UTC. #diaspora-meeting @ FreeNode.

Topics to discuss

Two conferences in Brazil

Anahuac de Paula Gil, podmin of DiasporaBR, wants to promote Diaspora at two forthcoming conferences. He has secured a booth for Diaspora FISL in May, and would like to know how he can best use this space to help the project. See a comment on https://joindiaspora.com/posts/3813341 and https://joindiaspora.com/posts/3849554 for more details.

He'll be at the meeting to discuss this.

FSSN

We have to talk about it.

Official list of pods

It would be nice to have an official list of pods, fusion of podutime and the stats hub of Jason, on diasporafoundation.org. Who wants to work on that? Do we want it directly inside the website or in a subdomain? Which technology do we want to use?

Release process

Suggestion to move into a mode of cutting a release candidate from develop (when agreed in a meeting), and then holding it in the RC branch until it can be merged to master. This would mean a release process where we don't have to freeze develop at all and can test the RC branch for as long as we want, cherry-picking individual fixes into it.

Changelog for the develop branch

It happened several times that a commit in the develop branch causes a regression, which is fixed in the develop branch before we release a new version. Should we add a changelog line about these kind of fix? People upgrading the stable branch don't need to know, it's only for people running the develop branch. Maybe a special section, which will be removed during the release process?

External communication

We don't have much external engagement at the moment. Jason is doing good work with the Twitter account, but that's about it. Should we be blogging and trying to engage press interest, etc, and if so, how should we go about this? Who would like to take part in this?

We still have the 'Planet' referred to in various places (for example, the wiki) but it has never been set up. Is this something that we still desire, and if so how should we go about setting it up?

Communication through Diaspora HQ

What kind of communication do we want through Diaspora HQ? Do we need more formal guidelines?

What did we decide?

Time and date

We want to reevaluate the meeting schedule. While we want to keep the interval, every second week of the month, we'll send a poll around to find a new day and/or time.

FISL

In Porto Alegre takes place the biggest FOSS conference of the American continent. Anahuac, the podmin of diasporabr.com.br, is going to set a booth there. Here are some tasks which could be done: collect questions and complete the FAQs in the wiki, show how to register and to set up a pod, explain the concepts behind diaspora (privacy, self-hosting), **tell that we need volunteer developers**

We will try to be available on IRC to answer questions. It would be nice to see the pt-BR translation done before this time, see webtranslateit

Next release

Clear the milestone: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues?milestone=9&state=open, then feature freeze for one to two weeks, then reevaluate and release if it's good. We especially want to monitor the new polls feature because it modifies the federation.

Release candidate

We don't think we're here yet to confidently deliver RCs, but agree that it's the preferable release process. We will reevaluate this at some later point. Feature freeze is enough at the moment.

Official list of pods

We agree that we'd like to see podupti.me and pods.jasonrobinson.me merged into one project. If the application is ready we agree to make it an official part of the project and as such grant it a repository under our github organization as well as a subdomain of diasporafoundation.org. We will call out for contributors once we agreed on the specific feature set.

Run a special changelog for the develop branch

We don't see the added effort justified. People running develop should be tech savy and watch GH, or at least follow commits@social.mrzyx.de.

FSSN

Schedule an own meeting once we got new developments to talk about.

Communication through Diaspora HQ

Postponed to next meeting.

External communication

Postponed to next meeting.

IRC Logs

jhass: Okay, I guess first thing is meeting time
svbergerem: Looks like we have some new attendees this time
jhass: I'd be open to moving it entirely
raven24: yes, 19:30 UTC is 21:30 CEST ... that's a little late
jhass: so I'd vote for a doodle or something we send around, to give our (regular) non-attendees a say
svbergerem: sounds good
jaywink: sounds good :)
raven24: doodle++ - we could set a week where we want the meeting to happen and doodle the rest
flaburgan: hi
jaywink: but still it would be nice to have the meeting always at the same time - or does someone disagree?
jhass: I think the general interval, ever second x of the month, is still fine, no need to change that
jhass: no, that suggestion was about finding a general new place
jhass: so every second x at y every month, where x y -> doodle
jhass: and we can do that again if the new place turns out to not work as well
jaywink: big +1 then :)
flaburgan: why do we need to change the second tuesday
flaburgan: did someone say it was not good anymore?
jhass: I can mostly attend but I need to get up early wednesdays and tuesdays too, so it's a long day with a long evening
jhass: then we never see people like Dennis because it conflicts with lots of other meetings he has
jhass: just place your vote on tuesdays if you want to keep it
raven24: we've had a bunch of meetings now, no harm in iterating on the time
jhass: okay, I think that's settled, while I write that to the wiki, who want's to take the first regular point?
anahuac: Can I bump up the FISL thing?
anahuac: I do have a family meeting in a 40 minutes... so my time is quite short today
raven24: I guess that's ok, tell us something about that
jhass: that's the first item
anahuac: nice...
anahuac: So I've been spreading the word about Diaspora since last year... here in Brazil
anahuac: here, in Porto Alegre take place the Biggest FOSS conference of the American continent...
anahuac: this is the 15th edition and this is a 5 day, 548 speeches, 10,000 attendees Conference. It is huge.
anahuac: I talk to the organization and ask them to support Diaspora giving us a booth..
flaburgan: that's cool
anahuac: and they did
anahuac: so we have a space on FISL
anahuac: So I was wondering how you think we can give it the best use this space to promote Diaspora?
anahuac: I already ordered 1500 handouts and 1500 stickers. What else can we do?
jaywink: wow, from your own pocket? :P
anahuac: yep
jhass: thank you
jaywink: damn, wish we could sponsor but currently there is no official money with the project
anahuac: this is not that expensive and I believe this is a very good opportinuty
raven24: so that's definitely something we want to pay for in the future
raven24: as a project
raven24: you shouldn't have to do that on your own
flaburgan: anahuac, did you order it on unixstickers?
jhass: so I think if you could find some members in your local community, having the website translation at 100% would be nice: https://webtranslateit.com/en/projects/7017-Website/locales/en..pt-BR/strings
anahuac: Look I'm not looking for sponsorship of course it woul be grate have more $$ incoming...
jhass: yeah, sadly we just can offer financial support at the moment
jhass: er, can't
jhass: as said long day
anahuac: I know
anahuac: it's ok
flaburgan: anahuac, I guess the message to say is pretty simple: privacy matter, set up your pod, invite your friends on it
jaywink: anahuac, are there many of you participating?
anahuac: not as much as I want... but we will be three people full time there
flaburgan: (the you is the person you are talking with at the booth, not you right now :p)
anahuac: remembering you that I'm teh podamin of diasporabr.com.br
raven24: so you have experience setting up a pod? maybe you could do a workshop where people can get help installing the software
anahuac:  do... in fact I wrote teh guide to Install Diaspora on openSUSE 13
anahuac: https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Installation/openSUSE/13
jhass: or just a simple user setup, hand holding the first few steps
svbergerem: Perhaps bring a laptop, set up a test account on your pod for the conference and let others try diaspora if they have never heard of that before
anahuac: Ok... workshop to teach people to install Diaspora is a good idea
raven24: yes, and explaining our model of following/sharing, since that's drastically different than FB for example
anahuac: I can make an schedule with to workshops per day
anahuac: raven24: sure!
anahuac: s/to/two/
raven24: also I guess there will be other Ruby/Rails people there, maybe socializing with them might get you a bigger audienc
raven24: *e
anahuac: I was wondering make some t-shirts and give it to the first people that get 20 new friends registser on the POD... what you think?
jaywink: anahuac, i guess the crowd will have lots of developers so talking about how awesome diaspora is because anyone can contribute to it is good too
anahuac: raven24: probably... my problem is that I do not know ruby... :-(
anahuac: jaywink: yes, sure, this is a 100% FOSS conference
jhass: we have lots of pure HTML/CSS/JS tasks too
flaburgan: anahuac, one thing which would help: note the question people have about the project and complete the FAQ on the wiki
anahuac: jhass: good to know...
anahuac: flaburgan: I will try to do that
jhass: we're also open to people still learning the language
raven24: anahuac: you could make a wiki page for planned activities for the conference, so you can collect ideas there and we can contribute even after this meeting
anahuac: what about have some of you "main developers" ta make an appear.in video conference?
anahuac: s/ta/to/
raven24: I guess video appearance is not so easy with different timezones and stuff
flaburgan: anahuac, we surely need to be available on IRC to answer questions if you don't know
anahuac: so, we can have our own schedule of presentation on the booth... probably to small groups of interested people... ????
anahuac: flaburgan: this is good, but I was thinking about a video-conference
anahuac: another question: some of you want/can come donw here and participate of FISL?
flaburgan: anahuac, as said, we will probably not be available during the event because of timezone
mode (+v goobb) by jhass
flaburgan: hi goobb :p
raven24: most of us are in europe ;)
goobb: Hi, managed to connect finally!
jhass: \o/
flaburgan: brasil is far away
anahuac: I could get an offical FISL invitation to atend and maybe make a spech?
anahuac: flaburgan: where are you from?
svbergerem: telling people that we need a big variety of devs would be great.. we need RoR devs just like HTML/CSS/JS devs
flaburgan: anahuac, France
jhass: I won't find time in the coming months for that, even if I could accommodate the travel costs. Just too much personal stuff going on
anahuac: flaburgan: Brasil is 9 ours flight away... is not that far... next 22th I will be in Cracia to atend to openSUSE Conference...
anahuac: s/Cracia/Croacia/
flaburgan: anahuac, well, it's not "that far" but it requires time and money :p
anahuac: yes it does... I understand... just wondering....
jhass: so, I think we gathered some suggestions and can say as a community we're thankful for your efforts anahuac. If there's more we can do for you, reach out, likewise if other people got new ideas reach out to anahuac. Since it's already pretty late I'd suggest to move on
flaburgan: anahuac, yeah sure
jaywink: anahuac, I think it's awesome that you're doing all this even if there is no talk - it's a huge thing, thank you
flaburgan: can we summarize, for the wiki?
jhass: flaburgan: feel free to summarize from the backlogs
jaywink: I think we could make a diaspora hq post and some social media activity also regarding the event and anahuac efforts there - agreed?
jhass: yeah, agreed
svbergerem: sure
raven24: yes
flaburgan: collect person question and complete FAQ, show how to register and to set up a pod, explain the concept behind diaspora, tell that we need volunteer developers
anahuac: thanks for the opportunity to talk to you all... my pleasure to help Diaspora to grow
goobb: Thanks, anahuac, for all you're trying to do. We'll try to help in any way we can.
flaburgan: Am I right? Did I forget something?
anahuac: flaburgan: you right
jaywink: anahuac, btw, missed your answer about stickers - did you order them from unixstickers or some custom made?
jhass: so, since nobody put it onto agenda but we decided to talk about it in every meeting. Are we ready to release?
goobb: Yes, if you can enthuse developers at the conference about contributing to D*, that would be fabulous.
anahuac: jhass: I ordered here in Brazil... much cheaper
jhass: jaywink: ^ ;)
jaywink: anahuac, ok great :)
anahuac: so... move on
anahuac: :-)
flaburgan: maybe we could discuss with unixstickers when there is such a big quantity
flaburgan: anahuac, and we will try to be present on IRC
flaburgan: about the release
anahuac: good!
flaburgan: the polls feature was merged
raven24: about the release, I'd prefer to give the polls a bit more time to mature
flaburgan: it is on diaspora-fr.org if you want to test
flaburgan: already many bugs fixed
flaburgan: but yeah, not stable enough
jaywink: I also added release candidate idea to the agenda... maybe we could discuss that first? ;)
flaburgan: the new mobile menu should be okay after my last PR
raven24: I think polls could wait till after the easter holidays
jhass: okay, I'd suggest feature freeze once the milestone is cleared: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues?milestone=9&state=open then let things settle for a week or two
goobb: Release: we've got some good things ready to go, also some things (eg polls) which need more time for testing.
goobb: Can we produce release without polls code?
jhass: we could but it's extra effort and we'd release a basically untested version
flaburgan: the report feature has to be more tested too
flaburgan: jhass, approved
raven24: flaburgan: yes, although that
raven24: 's not affecting federation
jhass: actually I forgot the improved reporter feature on that milestone, meant to do that
svbergerem: jhass: +1
jhass: er, nvm. Too late, really
raven24: I think a feature that changed our protocol, even if it just adds data types, should get extensive testing before a release
flaburgan: raven24, yeah, I'm especially wondering how it reacts when you reshare a poll
jhass: okay, I see consensus then. It'll be a few weeks until the milestone is cleared anyway so we can still delay then
raven24: agreed
flaburgan: fine
goobb: I'd like to get those bug fixes out soon if possible. But those features need some time, so OK.
flaburgan: goobb, well, we all would like to see them fixed :p
jaywink: yeah we really should aim to release soonish - so at least no more big features in before we cut at least a RC out (or release, if no RC is wanted)
jhass: Okay, Release candidate
jhass: I think we're still too small
flaburgan: jhass, what's too small?
jhass: we barely have enough pods running develop, I don't think we find enough to do sufficient testing for a RC
raven24: it might make sense, if we had more contributions, but I think the management overhead is too much for now
jhass: ^ + the management overhead
jaywink: so yeah, I know we already talked about freezing develop some meeting ago, for a week before releasing. But I really think we should do it the RC way instead. So when we decide to release, we instead cut out a RC, promote it to podmins and then merge it to master when no bugs are found for a few weeks
jaywink: but we are also growing, some big features like polls have landed. I
flaburgan: how complex is that from a podmin point of view?
jhass: I totally agree that it's the preferably process from a release engineering point of view 
svbergerem: this time the feature freeze might take some time...
jhass: I just don't think it's viable for our project right now
jhass: I'd like to reevaluate that at a later point 
flaburgan: I mean, is it easy for a podmin to change the branch he is on?
jaywink: flaburgan, "git checkout awesome-diaspora-rc-branch" :)
flaburgan: if he is in stable, switch to release candidate just for a week of testing, and then go back to stable, is it easy?
jaywink: no
flaburgan: if it's easy to switch branch, then he could switch to develop "feature freezed" just during one or two weeks
raven24: 'going back' can become complicated
flaburgan: raven24, well, the stable branch and the RC branch should be the same at this time
raven24: so yes, I totally agree with jhass, it is a good way to handle development/stabilization
goobb: This is a decision for those who manage the release process, so I'm abstaining.
raven24: but we're not there yet
jaywink: flaburgan, the podmin can go back to stable once the RC is merged in, not really in between :P
jaywink: but yeah I understand the points from jhass and raven24 too ... but we will need a feature freeze of more than a week for next release
jaywink: or just very careful merging :D
jhass: I think we can be liberal about that and just freeze until it seems ready
jaywink: ok
raven24: yes, we don't have any stakeholders who depend on a release date or when they can merge stuff "upstream"
goobb: I think the merge freeze is a good step to have added.
jaywink: so next item I guess :)
offSchub is now known as DenSchub
flaburgan: to be honest, the develop branch is almost more stable than the stable branch, looking at all the bug fixes merged.
flaburgan: the only regression for this release was the publisher bug
raven24: yes, let's postpone bringing up RCs to a later time
jaywink: flaburgan, yeah, we should try to release more often...
goobb: Hi DenSchub.
DenSchub: i'm not really here. but hi goob
raven24: :)
svbergerem: flaburgan, the publisher bug has been fixed
flaburgan: svbergerem, yeah yeah
flaburgan: svbergerem, but it was in the dev branch during ~2 weeks
raven24: that's why it's dev ... it was a regression from the jquery update
raven24: next item?
goobb: Next item, if everyone's agreed to keep with merge freeze?
flaburgan: raven24, I know, my point was this regression was the only problem in dev branch, when you see all these bugs not fixed in stable
flaburgan: but the release of the 0.3.0.2 was a nice idea imo
flaburgan: so maybe more small hotfix release like this one
flaburgan: but we're back to our recurrent problem: we don't have enough people skilled to review / merge / release
flaburgan: Jonne is almost the only one doing that
flaburgan: (does anybody have news from fabianrbz?)
goobb: Move on? I'm conscious it's 22.30 for many people…
jaywink: can we do "Official list of pods" next?
jaywink: need to sign off in like 10 mins max
goobb: Sure. My vote is, put it on the project site when it's in a 'finished' state.
goobb: With some features from poduptime if possible.
flaburgan: mix poduptime + jason stats page on the official website would be awesome
flaburgan: should we post with diaspora HQ saying we are looking for someone to do that
flaburgan: ?
raven24: well, our project site is a relatively simple ruby site, so ideally all the pages there are somehow compatible
jhass: I'd like to get davids opinion on this, what his future plans for podupti.me are, if he'd be willing to share the data / merge that to an offical project etc.
goobb: We could ask David if he'd like to do it.
DenSchub: david is fine with merging it into a central project site
DenSchub: talked with him about that a while ago
goobb: (Ah, ditto jhass.)
jaywink: basically, I'll be happy to host it etc etc and transfer even the github code to the project - but I can only participate on what has been done now, I lack experience with ruby. If we want a ruby page, then someone else has to do it :)
jhass: Thanks Dennis
goobb: Yes, I remember David saying he's fine about his code being used.
jhass: I don't think doing it in ruby is a requirement
jhass: but tbh. I'd not base it on podupti.me. The code is not pretty, even for PHP
flaburgan: jhass, wouldn't be better to keep uniformity for the project?
flaburgan: would be easier to host if it uses only one language too
jaywink: flaburgan, subdomains don't need to be hosted on the same server
raven24: I think this might be an entry level task - the code is already there, just not the "best" programming lanugage :P
jhass: flaburgan: the more technologies we use the more people can contribute. and this one is a pretty distinct application
jhass: we have full DNS control over diasporafoundation.org, so that's not an issue too
goobb: Shall we agree (not now) what we'd like to appear on this page, and then post from DHQ asking for people to work on it?
raven24: goobb: sounds good to me
jhass: goobb: +1
jaywink: goobb, yeah
flaburgan: okay, cool :)
jaywink: hey guys got to go now - thanks for the meeting, hopefully next will be earlier :)
goobb: See ya Jay.
jaywink: laterz :)
raven24: jaywink: bye
flaburgan: that was quick :p
raven24: ok, so next topic?
flaburgan: that's one is mine
flaburgan: Changelog for the develop branch
flaburgan: let me explain
flaburgan: it appears pretty often that a new feature introduce a bug
flaburgan: (like right now, the mobile menu is kinda broken in the dev branch)
flaburgan: then, we fix it before the release in stable (fortunately)
flaburgan: the podmins running the develop branch currently don't have a way to know that the bug is fixed
goobb: I think changelog has to be strictly changes between one release and the next.
flaburgan: as it didn't land in stable, we don't add a changelog entry to say "this bug is fixed", it would have no sense to say that to people using stable branch
goobb: So if a change is made and then 'unmade' by being fixed, only the end result of that should be in the changelog.
flaburgan: but podmins running develop branch could want to now
goobb: We need another way to inform podmins who run develop.
flaburgan: goobb, yeah, we agree here, that's why currently there is nothing added in the changelog
svbergerem: IMO podmins should only run the dev branch if they really know what they are doing
raven24: svbergerem: +1
goobb: How about informing in D* by a special tag? #develop-update or similar?
jhass: I don't agree to run a second changelog. It's just an increased burden to the reviewers and most people running develop watch GH anyway. My policy is to add an entry for bugfixes that are either present in the current release or had an considerable amount of effort associated
DenSchub: jhass++ ;)
goobb: But I think like svbergerem that podmins running develop need to keep themselves informed about changes.
jhass: You can also follow commits@social.mrzyx.de to get a feed of commits inside diaspora
raven24: we could add the RSS of commits on develop to the admin area :P ... maybe it gets more useful that way
anahuac: \q
goobb: 'followmailto:commits@social.mrzyx.de' : good point. That's probably all that's needed.
jhass: let's cast for a vote: +1 run a special changelog for develop -1 don't run one
jhass: -1
raven24: -1
goobb: -1
svbergerem: -1
jhass: 4/7, rejected
jhass: oh, hpetru joined
mode (+v hpetru) by jhass
DenSchub: -1!
DenSchub: (sorry. :D)
hpetru: ) Hi
goobb: HI hpetru.
jhass: so -5/8, still rejected
jhass: next item
raven24: who put FSSN on the agenda?
goobb: I think the two communication items could wait until next time. And FSSN probably needs a separate meeting...
raven24: so, doodle a date for FSSN? I think DenSchub and jhass should have their undivided attention on it for that one
DenSchub: i guess we'll do a seperate meeting as soon as we have something to talk about...
jhass: ^
raven24: ok great ;)
jhass: I'm not sure if there's more to say currently
raven24: still don't know who put it on the agenda :P
DenSchub: we did that after we postponed talking about the fssn after the last meeting
raven24: oh, right, that sounds familiar
goobb: Maybe Jason, who's just left?
svbergerem: looks like flaburgan added that
raven24: then it doesn't matter, since there's apparently nothing to takl about
goobb: Well, things to talk about re FSSN would be:
goobb: 1. How can we best manage our relationship with them?
goobb: 2. What are our alternatives to FSSN?
DenSchub: goobb: not relevant at the moment
DenSchub: also, remember what we told flaburgan in loomio. :)
goobb: But we don't need to discuss them right now.
flaburgan: svbergerem, I added the FSSN during last meeting iirc
jhass: okay, so consensus is to postpone the last two open items to the next meeting?
goobb: member:identifier:denschub, yeh don't worry. :)
goobb: (oops, formatting blunder)
DenSchub: :D
flaburgan: hi hpetru
DenSchub: postpone++
raven24: ok
flaburgan: postpone the diaspora HQ question too?
jhass: since jason has access too, yes
goobb: Yes.
raven24: yeah, we'd want everybody involved to be present for discussing that
flaburgan: okay

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