Meetings/20131219

Here is a summary of what we said during the 2013-12-19 meeting. The full IRC Log is available at the end of this page.
IRC Meetings

We first discussed how we want to use these meetings. We want to re-organize regular meetings on IRC to discuss the project. This was the first community-run meeting.
What

We felt that IRC meetings would be more useful than Loomio for some aspects of discussion and decision-making. We decided to use these meetings to discuss the development and the priorities of the project, but that every important decision would have to be voted on Loomio anyway.
When

Monthly. Every second Tuesday, around 19:30 UTC (give or take some 20-30 minutes).
Who should we invite?

The meetings should be open. Anybody interested can attend the meeting, but only regular contributors and other nominated people would be able to speak in the meeting. A public announcement will be published a week in advance with a brief list of subjects to be discussed. This way people will know whether or not they will want to take part in that month's meeting.
How should we organize?

Link to a wiki article with topics for current month will be published in the announcement. Minutes written live on the pad and copied on the wiki at the end of the meeting. /Meetings for an overview page /Meetings/YYYYMMDD for the individual meetings
About the diaspora* project

Who should we focus on?

diaspora* should be usable by anybody, including people without any technical knowledge. However, people with more technical knowledge should be encouraged to hack something back to d* (since we need to gather more resources).
What should we focus on?

In the next release (coming soon): hopping to Ruby 2.0.0. and upgrading sidekiq.
In the next few months:
Testing and integrating federation gem of raven24 (to move the federation out of main code).
Port all the views to Backbone and Bootstrap to drop Blueprint.
This would solve one of our biggest problems: the code is too tightly coupled.
But we also need to improve docs, and getting into development should be made easier (newbie guides?)
IRC log

<tubbo> what's going on now?
<jaywink> we should move the minutes to the wiki anyway, imho
<tubbo> :)
<flaburgan> hi tubbo 
<marekjm> tubbo: nothing yet, we just started
<jaywink> tubbo, irc meeting for cool people :D
<flaburgan> a small meeting to talk about how we see the future of diaspora
<DeadSuperHero> Yes, indeed.
<jaywink> flaburgan, will you lead the talk or how shall we progress?
<DeadSuperHero> We've been talking for a while now about all the different ways we can make Diaspora better. Better for us, better for developers, better for users.
<flaburgan> jaywink, we will see if we need a lead
<flaburgan> at the moment I propose we follow the 3 questions I put on the pad
<flaburgan> so first What do we want to do with these IRC meeting?
<tubbo> #coolkidsclub
<flaburgan> How do we see the future of diaspora*?
<flaburgan> and finally what we can do to improve experience of contributors / podmins / users
<flaburgan> so first question, I think that IRC meetings could be nice to discuss all together sometimes
<flaburgan> and complete loomio discussion
<flaburgan> chatting is sometimes better than forum / stuff like that
<jaywink> I think it would be great to have a developer/contributor meeting monthly - as said before already, voice only by request. Items to talk about could be gathered in a pad before the meeting and then notes posted on wiki
<DeadSuperHero> Yeah, I certainly wouldn't mind that.
<marekjm> jaywink: +1
<DeadSuperHero> I think the difficulty with Loomio is that, while it gives us plenty to talk about, it's not quite the same as chatting.
<DeadSuperHero> Having small meetings can be nice just for seeing where everyone is at.
<marekjm> We could just use Loomio if we have a losid idea and want the community to vote.
<marekjm> *solid
<DeadSuperHero> Yeah, I mean that's primarily its use case is decision-making and hammering out ideas.
<jaywink> it would be nice if the meeting was on some regular date and time - so no need to go through the hassle of trying to think about times. everybody doesn't have to be there always - decisions should be voted on loomio anyway if we make same
<DeadSuperHero> Agreed.
<DeadSuperHero> Another thing that might be worth looking into is some form of task delegation.
<jaywink> we don't want the community coming at us that we're moving decision making to a secret irc corner ;)
<flaburgan> is Thursday a good day?
<marekjm> And the discussion is be recorded in wiki, right? So absent people can just read the summary, yup?
<DeadSuperHero> Yup
<DeadSuperHero> Kind of what we used to do with Code Chats
<flaburgan> yeah about summary, it would be nice if everyone complete the pad during the discussion
<flaburgan> I think it could be nice to do meeting on tuesday or thursday
<marekjm> Thursday then.
<flaburgan> so something like "every second tuesday of the month"
<jaywink> is biweekly a bit too often?
<MrZYX> yes
<flaburgan> jaywink, it's monthly :p
<jaywink> oh yeah right :D
<DenSchub> not thursday.
<jaywink> tue or thu ok with me
<flaburgan> did I say it wrong?
<jaywink> flaburgan, no it was correct
<jaywink> DenSchub, tue better for you?
<DenSchub> yep
<flaburgan> marekjm, is tuesday a bad day for you?
<marekjm> It's not *that* bad.
<marekjm> tuesday is OK.
<flaburgan> well I mean, will you be able to join or do you have something planned at this time?
<flaburgan> okay fine :)
<flaburgan> raven24, what about you?
<marekjm> no no no (just school)
<jaywink> same time as this one, 8 pm UTC?
<flaburgan> maybe it's a little late no?
<LeBarjack> it seems allright to me
<flaburgan> 7:30 pm?
<marekjm> 7:30 pm is ok.
<flaburgan> Sorry I didn't introduce LeBarjack, he is a french podmin for those who didn't know him
<LeBarjack> Hi there :)
<marekjm> Hi :-)
<jaywink> give or take 30 mins :) we can always tune it :)
<flaburgan> yeah
<tubbo> sorry had to tab away. i'm down with tuesdays and i love the idea of bringing back irc meetings
<flaburgan> tubbo, cool :)
<tubbo> i'm actually not a big fan of loomio
<tubbo> i feel like it's a major example of how we bikeshed
<marekjm> what time do you guys finish work/school/uni/etc? we can just meet after this time, and start when there's some 10 minutes left for everybody to connect
<marekjm> and, as jaywink suggested, we can always tweak the exact time
<flaburgan> I think 7:30pm UTC is okay at the moment
<tubbo> as long as it's not happening between like 6:30 and 7 i can make it mostly...that's when i commute.
<tubbo> EST that is
<flaburgan> it's 8:30 pm in France
<tubbo> EST is +5 iirc
<tubbo> +5 GMT
<tubbo> so 5 hours ahead of GMT
<DenSchub> EST is utc-5
<tubbo> yeah -5 :D
<tubbo> i knew it was one of them :)
<DenSchub> 3pm in est
<tubbo> yeah, perfect.
<flaburgan> :p
<tubbo> i would prefer it to occur when i'm @ work since i'm guaranteed to be in front of IRC
<flaburgan> second tuesday of the month?
<DenSchub> i'm working in PST, that's why i'm in a second meeting right now :p
<jaywink> +1 for second tuesday every month 7.30 PM UTC
<marekjm> +1
<flaburgan> okay let's say that at the moment
<flaburgan> now, who do we want to invite?
<flaburgan> contributors + podmins?
<flaburgan> only persons really involved
<flaburgan> everybody but only specific person can talk?
<marekjm> I think that we should gather issues that appeared during the month and decide who we should invite.
<flaburgan> I have to say that, being able to read without being able to speak is something really frustrating
<jaywink> well we can't start hiding about the meetings - I'd say we just post information publicly and see who wants to join. voice should be requested
<tubbo> we can hide contributor meetings, which i think is somewhat necessary to filter the bullshit
<marekjm> +1 for voice requests
<tubbo> but i think we might need a separate "public address" thing so we can have discussions that involve podmins as well
<LeBarjack> as long there is some sort of moderation in place, I don't why they should not be public
<tubbo> that's a good point
<flaburgan> what we want to avoid is the famous "When will you add X feature?"
<tubbo> on IRC especially, if we reg this channel
<marekjm> yeah...
<jaywink> I don't see how we can have secret meetings :) moderation is key
<tubbo> flaburgan: or "Y feature is TOTALLY IMPERATIVE AND ESSENTIAL for Diaspora to take over Facebook"
<tubbo> :D
<flaburgan> :D
<marekjm> :D
<flaburgan> okay so we can communicate about it, but voice has to be requestd
<tubbo> so i think we should invite anyone but basically make it like a shareholder's meeting. only voices get to talk.
<tubbo> yeah, a human has to admit it
<marekjm> I think public announcement would be good, with a list of subjects that are going to be discussed.
<DeadSuperHero> Maybe we can pick a subject for the next meeting at the end of every meeting?
<tubbo> yeah marekjm, if we use the "open attendance, but closed speaking" concept...
<MrZYX> And I think we should collect that stuff in the wiki, a pad is nice for protocolling but the persistent stuff should be in the wiki
<tubbo> that would work fine
<DeadSuperHero> That way we can post it publicly, and people can plan out what aspects of the discussion they want to contribute to?
<marekjm> Like, a week before so the people who are interested have time to request voice in advance (to avoid the mess with verification, who is who etc.).
<marekjm> DSH: exactly
<tubbo> implement a chatroom for diaspora*, then we can dogfood the meeting ;)
<tubbo> (though if we do get groups working eventually that would be SWEET to be able to just do all of our work on diaspora except realtime group chat)
<jaywink> MrZYX, +1 for everything in the wiki, meeting minutes can be written live on the pad
<MrZYX> so I also propose /Meetings for an overview page and /Meetings/YYYYMMDD for the individual meetings, where the date may be in the future
<tubbo> sounds good to me
<marekjm> MrZYX: +1
<flaburgan> MrZYX, +!
<flaburgan> 1
<jaywink> +1
<LeBarjack> +1
<jaywink> so drafting items in the wiki - we can create the page after each meeting and put there items we already know, then add between meetings
<MrZYX> yeah
<marekjm> pages: "Before the meeting" - what will be discussed, "After the meeting" - what is the current state of things?
<flaburgan> someone has news of Goob?
<jaywink> hey fabianrbz 
<fabianrbz> hi guys!
<marekjm> hi!
<LeBarjack> hi
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, what you missed: we will have meeting every second tuesday of the month at 19h30 UTC
<fabianrbz> sorry I'm late, is kind of early over here, just got back from work
<marekjm> here's pad: https://flaburgan.framapad.org/4
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: cool
<flaburgan> everyone will have read access, but write access has to be requested
<flaburgan> to avoid the "I want feature X!!!"
<fabianrbz> I see
<fabianrbz> cool
<flaburgan> about the why, we all agree that it will complete loomio
<marekjm> what do you guys think about public announcements published a week (every first tuesday) in advance with a list of subjects that will be discussed?
<flaburgan> marekjm, yeah that's nice
<fabianrbz> +1
<jaywink> marekjm, or just publish a note that a meeting for *developers and contributors* is happening - please find notes here -> link to wiki :)
<marekjm> jaywink: thanks, good idea
<jaywink> of course a note that anyone is welcome to join and request voice bla bla, some short instructions on the wiki meetings page
<flaburgan> I'll do that, I have access to the diasporaHQ account
<flaburgan> Goob will help me with the language :p
<flaburgan> anything else to add about the meetings?
<flaburgan> once
<flaburgan> second 
<flaburgan> third
<flaburgan> done :p
<marekjm> ??
<jaywink> hammer came down :)
<flaburgan> hm, maybe add is not correct in english :p
<flaburgan> the question was, was everything said?
<flaburgan> (argh, english)
<marekjm> aaaah, now I got it
<flaburgan> sorry ^^
<fabianrbz> I think it's find, for a first iteration, let's see how it goes ;)
<flaburgan> okay :)
<flaburgan> so now the big question
<flaburgan> for one year, diaspora is progressing that way:
<flaburgan> someone finds something not good in diaspora
<flaburgan> he thinks he can improve
<flaburgan> he fixes and the fix is merged
<flaburgan> that's it
<flaburgan> it's really cool to see the nice work done, but clearly when we are speaking to people (like journalists...)
<flaburgan> we need plans
<flaburgan> so the question now is
<flaburgan> what do we want to do with diaspora*?
<marekjm> that's the hardest question...
<flaburgan> yeah
<marekjm> for now, I don't think we have to stay "ahead of" the competition
<jaywink> I doubt we can answer it :) ideas of course welcome..
<flaburgan> and that's why I didn't want this really first meeting completely public
<marekjm> more like improve what we have now:
<marekjm> 1.  make docs better,
<marekjm> 2. as suggested: make setting up a pod easier,
<flaburgan> marekjm, that's what we can do, not where we want to go
<flaburgan> for the choices are things like that:
<marekjm> but before we go somewhere we must have solid foundations
<flaburgan> make something for everyone (this includes my grandma) like facebook, so easy to use first
<flaburgan> or make something for hacktivists, for people who needs to communicate in hard place (censured internet, etc..), so privacy / security first
<jaywink> well I don't see why we can't have best of both
<flaburgan> or make something to experience and discover distributed social application, something which will help others to build more robust application for the future
<flaburgan> jaywink, sure
<flaburgan> but we have limited resources
<flaburgan> so what do we want to do? a markdown editor (useful for Mr average, not for geeks) or encrypt the data in the database (useful for geeks, not mister average)
<marekjm> if we want to increase our resource base we should focus on hactivists as they tend to be more tech savvy and would be able to, well, *hack* something for D* themselves
<flaburgan> marekjm, that's a good point
<flaburgan> I would love to hear opinion about others here :D
<jaywink> but currently what gets done is what contributors are interested in :)
<flaburgan> yeah :p
<jaywink> so until we have money to spend it's a moot question
<LeBarjack> well, theres is two different things here, infrastructure and UI
<marekjm> to paraphrase what Linus have said: given enough developers - all issues are interesting
<marekjm> I think this is the way to go for now
<flaburgan> LeBarjack, that were examples, what I wanted to say is we cannot work on everything, so we need to define priorities
<fabianrbz> I was out for a while
<LeBarjack> I think there will always be occasionnal coder ready to hack the UI, it's easy, it's quick to do, and you get a result immediately
<LeBarjack> so I think it's better if the developper's team focus on infra
<marekjm> LeBarjack: I second you on this
<fabianrbz> One of the things that should be pretty easy is to have a release cycle, I don't know like every 6 months or so, we should have a release, that way people know that there is work being done  
<flaburgan> at the moment, there is only raven24 MrZYX and fabianrbz hacking on the infra
<fabianrbz> and we should prioritize what we need before hacking more features
<flaburgan> tubbo, I don't know on what you were working
<jaywink> fabianrbz, +1 for releases more often. maybe even every 3 months would be nice
<flaburgan> jaywink, fabianrbz every 3 months is already the release cycle we have
<flaburgan> it's not official
<flaburgan> but it looks like that
<fabianrbz> every 3 months sounds really hard to accomplish
<flaburgan> see https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Roadmap
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: didn't know about that :p
<fabianrbz> I think every 6 months should be fine for a start
* MrZYX is tempted to put a {{Speculative}} in there :P
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, well, it's just like that, we didn't decide, but when you look at the roadmap
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: hehe
<flaburgan> you can see that the releases were like that
<MrZYX> hm, that page is lacking categories btw
<MrZYX> I'm getting offtopic
<jaywink> didn't know we had a roadmap :D
<fabianrbz> once we decide that, we can try to define the things we want to have in each release
<flaburgan> jaywink, I just created this page for the release of the v2 i think
<MrZYX> looks more like a release history anyway
<MrZYX> which github gives us for free nowadays anyways https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/releases
<jaywink> MrZYX, flaburgan but good we have a page to put things into
<fabianrbz> and that way people will know what comes next, and also could decide what they want to hav
<jaywink> do we really have anyone who can say "I will finish this by so and so"? currently it's more like stuff gets done when it's done - which is fine since we all do this as a hobby?
<flaburgan> MrZYX, I find the changelog absolutely not clear for users
<jaywink> we shouldn't stop pushing small releases out because something big is on the works
<flaburgan> that one of the reasons why I created this page
<flaburgan> jaywink, that's a good point
<tubbo> flaburgan: nothing, i've taken a bit of a step back to focus on my record label and my job.
<fabianrbz> jaywink: that's true, and  wouldn't hold a release for one feature, if we decide to release anyway we can do it
<tubbo> though me and DenSchub had been talking about possible XMPP implementations...but frankly i just haven't had the time to do anything with it
<tubbo> mostly just been merging in PRs, but even that i've been lazy on recently
<tubbo> flaburgan: on the markdown thing...i feel as though markdown is a *really* easy syntax to get for most newbies, and geeks alike. 
<tubbo> and the big problem is a UX one, that is, users can't see what their post will look like as they're typing it like they can with a WYSIWYG. a simple solution is to compile markdown in live previews as they are typing.
<flaburgan> tubbo, we already have a preview button for posts, it's enough
<tubbo> *shrug* that's what i feel.
<flaburgan> but we could add it for comment
<tubbo> yeah, that's what we need to do then
<jaywink> well if someone wanted to make a nice markdown wysiwyg and implemented in the UI as optional - I wouldn't block it ;)
<tubbo> showdown.js ftw! :)
<flaburgan> to come back on the big question, we now have the FSSN
<jaywink> the who?
<jaywink> ;)
<tubbo> FSSN?
<flaburgan> do we want to use it, do we want money and why?
<flaburgan> I would love to have the opinion of everybody here
<marekjm> Free Software Something?
<jaywink> to be honest, it seems they will not benefit the project much - since support seems to be nil
<LeBarjack> what is this fssn thingie?
<fabianrbz> honestly, I don't know
<flaburgan> ><
<jaywink> it's an organization under some other free software organization that legally owns diaspora and could take our donations
<LeBarjack> oh, I see
<fabianrbz> before doing something, I think it's better to see what happens if we organize a bit
<flaburgan> https://discourse.diasporafoundation.org/t/make-diaspora-a-member-of-the-free-software-support-network/242
<jaywink> we need a legal roof but it would be great if that was a bit more flexible legal roof ;)
<flaburgan> raven24, MrZYX DenSchub DeadSuperHero I didn't hear you, you guys are the heart of diaspora
<DenSchub> "the heart of diaspora" aww
<fabianrbz> I think fssn is a huge topic, I'm not sure if it's the best thing to discuss in the first meeting
<DenSchub> as I said, i'm busy doing work stuff :p
<DenSchub> and all my opionions are in https://discourse.diasporafoundation.org/t/make-diaspora-a-member-of-the-free-software-support-network/242 and related threads
<jaywink> imho, community rules would be the most important thing before talking about legal things
<MrZYX> <insert DenSchubs answer here>
<flaburgan> DenSchub, well, it was not really about FSSN
<jaywink> all communities have some sort of structure / rules - we have nada :)
<flaburgan> more about how do you see the future of diaspora*
<fabianrbz> maybe we should focus on when to do the next release, what should be included, etc
<DenSchub> you know how I see about the future
<DenSchub> it's fancy how everyone is talking about fancy new ideas without seeing the real problems people pointed out years ago
<MrZYX> I didn't had time to keep up with the dependencies maintenance, so that needs to be done before the next release: https://gemnasium.com/diaspora/diaspora
<DenSchub> e.g. a well-documentated and well-working federation core
<flaburgan> yeah, that's one of the point I wanted to discuss tonight
<flaburgan> raven24, what's the status of your gem?
<flaburgan> isn't that the core priority?
<DenSchub> in fact, that should be the ONLY point to talk about
<raven24> the gem is practically finished, 
<raven24> it "just" needs to be integrated
<DenSchub> because everything else is just causing more code based on old codebases
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: do we want anything else?
<MrZYX> and actually same holds true for the frontend part, re bootstrap and backbone
<marekjm> DenSchub: this, this and once again this
<flaburgan> raven24, did carolina and julia test it enough?
<fabianrbz> I think that, solving the dependencies issues, and a couple of issues that are kind of important should be enough
<MrZYX> fabianrbz: I'd want sidekiq and maybe ruby 2.0 though I didn't look into how our testsuite reacts to that yet
<LeBarjack> yeah, DenSchub, that's what I was meaning when mentionning infra
<raven24> flaburgan: they tested it pretty well, 
<DenSchub> LeBarjack: tl;dr ;)
<raven24> and to be honest, we don't have a federation test-system
<raven24> so, integrating the gem would mean we need something like that
<flaburgan> so first, write test on the gem
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: I can bump ruby and see how the suite behaves
<flaburgan> then integrate it?
<raven24> at least to test interoperability between the old code and the gem code
<raven24> the gem has over 400 tests if I remember correctly, most of them checking the generated output and input
<fabianrbz> and regarding sidekiq, from what I've seen on the PR, everything looks good for the pods that are running it...
<raven24> so that's working from my point of view
<MrZYX> fabianrbz: what gives me a headache is that we would want to enable travis for 1.9.3 and 2.0.0, which would almost double our build time
<DenSchub> i could provde some small VMs if needed - but with ipv6 only.
* DenSchub is out of free v4 adresses
<MrZYX> fabianrbz: yeah I didn't notice an increase on average failure rate
<jaywink> please release what we have now before integrating anything risky ;)
<raven24> I really want to test near-real conditions, but with the existing federation code and the new from the gem once it's integrated
<MrZYX> fabianrbz: though we didn't have a high load test yet
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: we should stick with 2.0, thinking about rails upgrade and the future....
<fabianrbz> why should we support both of them?
<MrZYX> jaywink: it's not risky for the average pod, I'm running on ruby 2.0 and updated sidekiq for about 3 months now
<jaywink> jaywink, ok
<flaburgan> I'm running Ruby 2.0 since June too
<flaburgan> diaspora-fr.org always used 2.0
<MrZYX> fabianrbz: because I still consider RVM a recommendation, not a requirement and given history I don't see 2.0 in the packages of the most used distributions in the next 1-2 years
<fabianrbz> so, let's decide what we wan't for the next release
<DeadSuperHero> RVM is probably the more sane choice anyway.
<MrZYX> DeadSuperHero: for server setups chruby is actually better but lets not get into that
<fabianrbz> what about chruby?
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: slow typer here :p
<flaburgan> I'd like to discuss about point where we need to take decisions
<LeBarjack> fabianrbz: :)
<raven24> ... I really like the efforts we've seen regarding chef/puppet scripts
<flaburgan> we all agree that we want to upgrade ruby, rails, sidekiq, etc
<raven24> that should help with version issues like this :)
<tubbo> MrZYX: i believe we should enforce ruby 2.0
<fabianrbz> the question is if we want that for the next release, I think the rails upgrade could be left out 
<tubbo> just because not only have i not found a single issue in the 1.9->2.0 upgrade, but also because i've not heard of ANYONE having such problems
<tubbo> so i think we're safe and the whole thing runs faster anyway
<fabianrbz> tubbo: +1
<MrZYX> then lets vote: drop support for 1.9.3 when upgrading to ruby 2.0.0? Upgrade to Ruby 2.0.0 before the next release?
<MrZYX> -1 +1
<flaburgan> same than MrZYX 
<raven24> loomio?
<LeBarjack> As a podmin, I am confident in jumping to 2.0.0
<DenSchub> -
<tubbo> +1
<flaburgan> sidekiq would be great too
<fabianrbz> +1 +1
<tubbo> why sidekiq over resque?
<raven24> -1 I'd say give it a little more time
<flaburgan> tubbo, we switched ~9 months ago
<tubbo> i mean, the 1.9->2.0 change will most likely be trivial so i don't think it's a big deal
<tubbo> flaburgan: oh. :D
<MrZYX> tubbo: faster, while higher base footprint, on larger pods it actually decreases our footprint
<tubbo> why the hell are we talking about it then?
<flaburgan> tubbo, we have a none trivial upgrade
<flaburgan> non-trivial (does that exist in english?)
<tubbo> flaburgan: yes it does
<MrZYX> tubbo: celluloid (underlying framework of sidekiq) switched from threads to fibers
<tubbo> oh ok
<tubbo> so that's breaking things i assume?
<flaburgan> okay, so it's recommended to upgrade ruby to 2.0 before upgrading sidekiq
<MrZYX> that's why I'd like to see the ruby upgrade alongside the sidekiq upgrade
<MrZYX> ruby 2.0.0 handles fibers _a lot_ better
<fabianrbz> I'm fine with keeping the 1.9.3 support, so ruby2 + sidekiq for the next release?
<MrZYX> hm, did someone count? :P
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, that would be cool
<jaywink> leave it up to the ruby guys :) whatever is best
<flaburgan> MrZYX, count what?
<MrZYX> I guess we need a short lived loomio proposal here
<flaburgan> oh the votes
<flaburgan> MrZYX, no, I think you can go like that
<raven24> loomio++
<DeadSuperHero> +
<flaburgan> upgrade ruby and sidekiq
<flaburgan> test it during ~2 weeks
<flaburgan> then, release
<flaburgan> okay there is other points I wanted to discuss about
<MrZYX> flaburgan: hm, I kinda did that 3-4 months ago....
<flaburgan> MrZYX, you bumbed to the most recent version of sidekiq?
<MrZYX> about a week ago, yeah
<MrZYX> but to the fibers switch when I opened the PR
<flaburgan> okay
<flaburgan> so I wanted to discuss about our organization
<flaburgan> especially, raven24 and MrZYX are the only 2 persons really knowing the codebase
<MrZYX> (https://discourse.diasporafoundation.org/t/ruby-versions/279)
<flaburgan> so when you are not available
<flaburgan> because of university, work, anything
<flaburgan> the project is not going forward
<flaburgan> so we need more people technical enough to review PRs
<flaburgan> (thanks fabianrbz is now more present :D)
<jaywink> guys have to go to bed :) plz post logs in wiki, will read them tomorrow. awesome that we will have more interaction :)
<DeadSuperHero> perhaps some of the more experienced debs can ask help for tasks of things they work on
<flaburgan> we also need to have a better documentation
<DeadSuperHero> maybe they can instruct newbies as to what to do?
<DeadSuperHero> *devs
<marekjm> or docs but I feel I'm getting annoying tith this...
<DeadSuperHero> Yeah, I mean, docs can always be better. Half of the battle is just knowing what to do in the first place, though, and whether or not our docs are enough for that is a good thing to ask ourselves.
<fabianrbz> lost connection for some minutes :/
<raven24> IMHO the problem is too much tight coupling of everything
<DeadSuperHero> Yeah, that is a big problem.
<flaburgan> DeadSuperHero, honestly, there is almost nothing in our technical doc: https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Category:Technical
<raven24> it would be easier to grasp what's what if there were more smaller parts
<DeadSuperHero> I agree.
<DeadSuperHero> So, what all can we make simpler, then?
<raven24> e.g. federation gem instead of federation code inside the controllers
<DeadSuperHero> Definitely. Anything else?
<raven24> or (see my last PR) extracting the backbone stuff into their own controllers
<DeadSuperHero> We could probably move the rest of Diaspora's UI over to Bootstrap fully, and get away from BluePrint.
<DeadSuperHero> That would at least clear up things on fronted development a little, or at least standardize it.
<fabianrbz> raven24, DeadSuperHero +1
<raven24> yeah, CSS is a big mess, too
<marekjm> OK guys, I gotta go.
<fabianrbz> we have tons of unused CSS
<DeadSuperHero> We could definitely fix that, especially as CSS is the easier part of diaspora to develop on compared to the backend.
<flaburgan> marekjm, see you buddy
<fabianrbz> true
<fabianrbz> marekjm: see ya
<flaburgan> I can work on CSS stuff
<marekjm> Maybe somebody could have a look at what I've written so far in the protocol from the session and correct it. I tried to write brief summary.
<marekjm> See ya all tomorrow ;-)
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: cool!
<flaburgan> That's what we are doing for more than one year, refactoring stuff :p
<raven24> well, if we're not working on it full-time ... 
<flaburgan> :p
<raven24> managing such a huge codebase is a big task
<flaburgan> raven24, well, I just finished my engineering school
<flaburgan> and I was thinking about working on it the full-time
<flaburgan> diaspora is a lovely project
<flaburgan> but I don't want to do that alone
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: but it is really important, having a solid codebase + solid tests is the only way to go
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, yeah I know
<flaburgan> I was saying that to say "we already know that this is a priority
<fabianrbz> yeah
<flaburgan> raven24, that was one of "inside" question in "how do you see the future of diaspora*"
<flaburgan> do we want to find a business model, and put diaspora a step higher
<flaburgan> I think that nobody here is ready to do it
<DeadSuperHero> Well, what kind of revenue could Diaspora generate?
<flaburgan> DeadSuperHero, we could imagine tons of different ways to earn money with a software like diaspora*
<fabianrbz> so, just to be clear, ruby 2, sidekick and dependencies are the most important things for the next release right? I ask, so I know where to focus on
<raven24> I don't see a "business" opportunity ... I think we're better of relying on user contributions out of belief instead of money
<DeadSuperHero> Aside from donations and selling t-shirts, we could probably do some kind of "host your own diaspora pod" platform, with the proceeds going directly to diaspora development
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, for this release, yeah. For the next one, integrate raven24 gem for the federation
<DeadSuperHero> we could probably do another crowd funding campaign, as was discussed in the past
<flaburgan> DeadSuperHero, yeah
<flaburgan> but as we said, person doesn't have money
<flaburgan> corporation has it
<flaburgan> :p
<raven24> yes, but that's a topic for loomio :)
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: cool! 
<fabianrbz> raven24: +1
<flaburgan> raven24, it is
<raven24> well, maybe at some point, we can add "corporate" features
<raven24> and sell those. eg. pay for customizations and support
<flaburgan> but my point is, without your and MrZYX expertise
<flaburgan> we cannot do anything
<DeadSuperHero> �How do we feel about project inter-op? There's still a good handful of decentralized socnets out there, and I feel like we all could have something useful to learn from one another.
<DeadSuperHero> Granted, that's a huge undertaking if we want to do protocol stuff
<raven24> I don't think so, well maybe handling github might become harder, but the codebase is still only a (messy) rails app,
<DeadSuperHero> but it might not be bad just to develop a presence across different federated communities and try to get them to talk to one another more.
<flaburgan> DeadSuperHero, good question but I'd like to finish on this topic
<raven24> so given enough motivation anyone can read up on how everything works
<raven24> (brb)
<LeBarjack> free software magic ^^
<flaburgan> do we want to contribute on diaspora like we are doing for a year now, with nice but slow progress
<flaburgan> or do we want to be bigger, try to be full-time on it, so find money to do that, etc..
<DeadSuperHero> I think we do want to be bigger, to some degree.
<DeadSuperHero> But that depends on people, money, and constant development.
<flaburgan> DeadSuperHero, I'm not sure
<flaburgan> it's really time and mind consuming 
<flaburgan> so it's a choice to do
<flaburgan> and we cannot do it without MrZYX and raven24 (and maybe DenSchub?) because they are the only ones who really know how diaspora* works
<MrZYX> I don't see a either or here
<DenSchub> MrZYX++.
<MrZYX> if you want to make diaspora and work full time on it do it
<DeadSuperHero> I think the obvious thing to do is to figure out how to make it easier to develop and deploy Diaspora. That might at least give us more developers in the future.
<MrZYX> doesn't mean it can't still be a hobby for everybody else
<DeadSuperHero> Definitely.
<DeadSuperHero> That being said, it would be nice to be able to sponsor some full-time developers.
<MrZYX> so this "do _we_ want" is annoying me
<flaburgan> MrZYX, alone it's useless, diaspora can be a success (with companies) only if there is a team behind it
<MrZYX> it's not everybody in or everybody out
<flaburgan> MrZYX, sure
<flaburgan> I would love to work full-time on diaspora
<flaburgan> but I definitely don't think I'm able to do it alone like that
<MrZYX> then find a team
<DenSchub> Q: who would hire people? so.. who decides who is good enough or not? ;)
<MrZYX> I already explained to you that I'll never work full time on diaspora and why I won't
<LeBarjack> You are never really alone when coding free software
<flaburgan> (to be honest I didn't remember the why :p)
<flaburgan> don't*
<flaburgan> I think we're just going to continue like we do for a year at the moment, and we will see what will arrive with the future
<flaburgan> but we need to have more people familiar with the codebase
<MrZYX> because it's my hobby and it should be fun, if I'm paid to work on it I can't throw it in a corner for one or two weeks if I'm fed up with it anymore and I don't want that kind of relationship with this project
<LeBarjack> That's a pity that jaywink had to stop his course
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: heap, but with small releases, and organization I think it will improve a lot
<LeBarjack> there were a lot of enthusiatic people who were willing to giv a try at hacking diaspora
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, I'm not sure... the biggest problems we are facing are: Rails (in France, everybody I know is using PHP, JEE or Python...)
<fabianrbz> the next release will be big, and the one after it too
<flaburgan> and not enough documentation
<fabianrbz> I understand -I live in Uruguay, ruby isn't the most popular language :(-
<flaburgan> so let's focus on that: what could we do to have more contributors
<giganetom> flaburgan: I'd not say that Rails is a problem. I've never did any serious thing in Ruby or Rails before the Opengraph thingy in D*
<giganetom> but the lack of docs is a major PITA.
<flaburgan> giganetom, well, we cannot do anything about that anyway :p
<flaburgan> (Rails)
<DenSchub> hands up, who is missing developer docs?
<fabianrbz> I don't think the lack of docks is the biggest problem
<fabianrbz> docs*
<raven24> good rails code is self-documenting. 
<giganetom> (raises hand) I actually do. OK, not the biggest, but it's at the top... well... few.
<raven24> that also means we don't have good code :)
<flaburgan> raven24, the point is
<fabianrbz> raven24: true, trying to understand the code is a good way to learn
<DenSchub> giganetom: flaburgan: we are talking about full-time (paid) development here.
<flaburgan> just to know that images are in assets, translations in config, tests in features, that what is in assets will be compiled
<DenSchub> ever worked as a software developer?
<DeadSuperHero> Maybe we could also document what parts of Diaspora has the worst code?
<flaburgan> DenSchub, kind of, why?
<DeadSuperHero> Like, which parts are really hard to understand and don't explain themselves?
<DenSchub> I don't know a single codebase with paid developers which is documented. APIs are documentated, that's it.
<MrZYX> DeadSuperHero: https://codeclimate.com/github/diaspora/diaspora gives a good rough overview
<fabianrbz> DeadSuperHero: instead of putting effort in documenting it I prefer to refactor them :)
<raven24> flaburgan: that's all rails and the gems we have in use. sure, it couldn't hurt to mention it ;)
<DenSchub> you will NEVER find a "if you need to change the code processing a post, look at controllers/posts.rb"
<flaburgan> DenSchub, I was not talking about that kind of doc
<flaburgan> just explaining things
<flaburgan> simple stuff, like "sharing with someone means the server will send your public key to the other server"
<DenSchub> yes. same thing.
<flaburgan> tons of people out there *never* contributed to a FOSS project
<DenSchub> take a look at the federation code and you WILL KNOW what it's doing
<flaburgan> look at carolina and julia
<flaburgan> they had no idea what a pull request was
<flaburgan> the project is just big
<DenSchub> nah it's not.
<flaburgan> ^^
<raven24> it really isn't that big
<raven24> the learning curve is a bit steep, but it's manageable
<flaburgan> if you are motivated
<flaburgan> but I agree
<DenSchub> and we should stop mentoring kiddies trying to get a single line of code fixed. that might sound snotty, but mentoring kiddies is counterproductive.
<flaburgan> DenSchub, that point us to the real problem
<flaburgan> the diaspora* project has a bad reputation
<LeBarjack> popularization of the principles beneath the federation code is really useful
<flaburgan> good developers looked at it 3 years ago
<flaburgan> they saw an awful code
<flaburgan> and they will never come back again
<LeBarjack> that what jaywink attempted with his course
<DenSchub> hold on a second.
<flaburgan> LeBarjack, you're talking about Eliademy? You said he stops, you know why? no time?
<DenSchub> they still SEE bad code. and mentoring people at adding CSS will not help at all
<LeBarjack> no time, I guess
<flaburgan> DenSchub, what do you propose?
<MrZYX> flaburgan: back then the major problem wasn't so much the bad code but the ignorance shown to contributors
<flaburgan> MrZYX, :(
<DenSchub> flaburgan: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/pull/4517 for example. last comment is a month old
<DenSchub> somebody should really ping those people
<DenSchub> add presure. if it's not done within a time range, unassign the bug, find someone else to finish it
<LeBarjack> it's the job of a project lead
<flaburgan> DenSchub, I was tempted to do that but MrZYX said to me that it was not really useful most of the time
<DenSchub> leaving a bug to die alone vs. at least trying to get it up
<flaburgan> we have an issue "adopt a pull request"
<flaburgan> :P
<flaburgan> Anyway what can we do to have more (good) contributors? I think that 
<flaburgan> inside diaspora
<flaburgan> bugmash is a good thing
<flaburgan> maybe we could organize an hackaton too?
<flaburgan> like we decide of a week end
<DenSchub> tagging good-first-bugs ;)
<flaburgan> that we block for work on diaspora
<flaburgan> DenSchub, we have the newcomer tag ;)
<DenSchub> see, _I_ didn't even realize that
<DenSchub> do "we" mentor/promote those bugs?
<flaburgan> DenSchub, goob posted bugmash monday but he stopped
<flaburgan> I don't know when
<LeBarjack> good night everybody
<flaburgan> we should relaunch that
<DenSchub> yes you should.
<flaburgan> I will ;)
<DenSchub> cool.
<DenSchub> find a mentor _and talk with them_ before posting it public. just sayin'. ;)
<flaburgan> Do you think that to boost the development, a kind of a hackton during a week end would be nice?
<DenSchub> nope
<DenSchub> we don't have enough useful tasks which could be done in 48 hours
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: another thing we should do is to encourage people to give feedback on bugs, provide more info, logs or even check if they still exist
<MrZYX> even clear steps to reproduce in a local environment often already shows where the bug is to an experienced developer
<DenSchub> i totally hate github issues for not being able to create meta bugs/blocking bugs
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: +1
<flaburgan> Last point, maybe it will wait the next meeting put
<flaburgan> I find the Git workflow page of the wiki really complicated
<flaburgan> the gitflow tool is not really useful when you think about it
<flaburgan> it's useful for people releasing
<MrZYX> not for contributors, I agree
<flaburgan> but for newcomers, it's a little bit overkill
<fabianrbz> I'll say let's drop that
<flaburgan> yeah I think it could be nice
<MrZYX> for contributors yeah
<flaburgan> someone wants to clean that page?
<MrZYX> don't you? :P
<flaburgan> I can, it was just a question :p
<DenSchub> don't talk about doing stuff, do stuff.
<flaburgan> And be burnout :p
<flaburgan> I really think too that we need a clear, up-to-date, todo list
<flaburgan> github issues are not that
<DenSchub> yep
<DenSchub> github issues with meta bugs and priorities would be cool
<DenSchub> meh :)
<flaburgan> I create this page https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/TODO-list a while ago
<fabianrbz> we should mark the issues we want for the next release with a milestone
<flaburgan> It's a mess to see that almost nothing was done in this list for 4 months now :(
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, that's done in github
<fabianrbz> I'll add the milestone to the sidekiq and the dependencies
<fabianrbz> flaburgan: really?
<flaburgan> great
<flaburgan> yeah
<flaburgan> https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues?milestone=8&page=1&state=open
<fabianrbz> oh cool, I'll add the dependencies then
<fabianrbz> that's another thing, there are a lot of issues regarding bad translations
<flaburgan> I would love to be able to do that without having the merge rights
<flaburgan> yeah :9
<fabianrbz> just wrong syntax in the yml files
<flaburgan> DeadSuperHero, by the way, you should come on IRC more often
<fabianrbz> you can https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Contribute_translations
<flaburgan> like... everyday?
<MrZYX> fabianrbz: btw if you merge stuff, feel free to assign the "next" milestone ;)
<fabianrbz> MrZYX:  hehe
<flaburgan> MrZYX, fabianrbz with the Ruby upgrade, how do you feel, 0.2.1.0 or 0.3.0.0
<DeadSuperHero> Depends on how big said upgrade is
<flaburgan> we have a nice improvement to the mobile version coming with taratatach 
<fabianrbz> mmmh
<flaburgan> if it's merge, I would say it's big enough for 0.3
<MrZYX> I'm tending against 0.2.1.0 since ruby doesn't follow semver and while we may decide to not support it it'll still run on 1.9 for a while
<fabianrbz> yeah, we are not changing the "api" either, and it's backward compatible
<fabianrbz> so 0.2.1.0 should be ok
<fabianrbz> about the translations, I know I said I look into the bad files, I haven't had time to learn how webtranslateit works and also I worked on other issues, I'll try to work on the after the important blockers for the release
<flaburgan> from a user point of view, the new features are: improved conversation view, easier access to the actions on aspect
<flaburgan> statistics
<flaburgan> yeah, nothing big enough to talk about a 0.3
<flaburgan> okay if we stay at 0.2.1.0 then I think we should release asap
<DenSchub> dudes. don't forget we still have a 1.0.0.0 ;)
<DenSchub> a 0.3 is totally fine
<DenSchub> let's not end like linux :p
<MrZYX> I miss the 2.x days :(
<MrZYX> :P
<flaburgan> :p
* raven24 gotta go to sleep, work in the morning
<flaburgan> yeah me too
<flaburgan> (well I don't work but tired)
<MrZYX> DenSchub: gnupg is at 2.0.22 after 16 years ;P
<raven24> someone please copy the chat log
<raven24> thx, g'night
<DenSchub> MrZYX: i know
<fabianrbz> see ya
<DenSchub> raven24: sleep well :)
<fabianrbz> ok guys, have to leave now
<flaburgan> yeah I'm going to leave too
<fabianrbz> let's get this release out!
<flaburgan> fabianrbz, ruby + sidekiq and we're almost good
<flaburgan> MrZYX, what about devise?
<fabianrbz> +dependencies ;)
<MrZYX> if you have time to bump it go for it
<fabianrbz> MrZYX: I'll take a look at the devise  PR
<flaburgan> I have no idea what it is
<fabianrbz> see ya
<MrZYX> ok great
<MrZYX> bye
<MrZYX> flaburgan: the authentication framework we use
<flaburgan> oh yeah, I heard about it
< flaburgan is thinking
<flaburgan> we mainly need more motivated people, that's all
<flaburgan> okay, maybe I should work more on communication than on refactoring css stuff
<flaburgan> that could be more useful
<MrZYX> lets wrap up, who posts the log to the wiki?
<flaburgan> MrZYX, I can copy paste it to the pad at the moment and clear everything tomorrow?
<MrZYX> if that gives a clean log, sure
<flaburgan> I do not have the time when I copy paste
<flaburgan> is that a problem?
<flaburgan> what client do you use?
<MrZYX> on contrary IMO
<MrZYX> pidgin but don't tell anyone :P
<DenSchub> PIDGIN!
<flaburgan> :p
<DenSchub> GET OUT!
<DenSchub> (i'm kidding, of course.)
<flaburgan> oh crap
<DenSchub> auto-v script ftw!
<MrZYX> yes, I have /devoice and /kick and /ban and and and available DenSchub ;P
<flaburgan> hexchat stop history for one hour :(
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