[eclipse.org-architecture-council] [Bug 251747] New: Interactions of com

[bugzilla-daemon@xxxxxxxxxxx]

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=251747  
Product/Component: Community / Architecture Council
           Summary: Interactions of committers with the community - private
                    discussions
           Product: Community
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Mac OS X
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P3
         Component: Architecture Council
        AssignedTo: eclipse.org-architecture-council@xxxxxxxxxxx
        ReportedBy: antoine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Hi all,

I would like to discuss rules for committers to interact with the community.

As a committer, I am proud to bring a great level of support on my project:
-newsgroup
-mailing lists
-IRC
-bugzilla

I strive to reply daily on those media. I love it. We had our first
contributors and we openly engage into technical discussions that result into
more richness.

In a word, we have an ecosystem growing out there.

Now, from time to time, I get requests from people who contact me privately.
I have an issue with that.
1. It is not making our ecosystem richer.
Nobody with the same question will find the answer on google. That is very bad.

2. It is not scaling
If everybody does that, we are in great trouble. Big time.

3. It is a source of IP litigation
Imagine John comes up with the question: "I want to define that to show that
widget at 90 degrees", with all his sample code, and two days later your
company delivers a product that does just that. How innocent does that look ?

4. It opens the door to backroom meetings
Imagine an individual is interested into committing to your project, and wants
to discuss things in private. What do you reply ? What should be your attitude
?
A priori it would be great to discuss things privately, but on a second thought
isn't this the root of all evils ?

5. Conflict of interest
Contacting me privately means you are doing business with me. My company is
asking money for people to contact me privately. My company sets up a NDA when
I interact with those people.

Now, an argument that is pushed is that people are very careful when it comes
to being involved in a project. In particular they don't want to go public
until they are sure things go right.

I believe this is a wrong argument. I think people should have be honest about
it, and create an alias like john.anonymous@xxxxxxxxx. Declare they are
looking, that they are representing a company, and state their interest.

So, to work on this, I blogged about it here:
http://www.lunar-ocean.com/blog/please-post-to-the-newsgroup/
and opened a bug:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=237041

So far, no one replied on the bug. Nothing. I find it quite infuriating that
there is absolutely no help for the clueless committer, who can get into very
serious trouble trying to help people.
Can you please look at this and let me know what you think ?

Also, it would be great for Eclipse to offer and promote a way for people that
want to be anonymous to post on newsgroup or mailing lists. 

We need to state it:
you can't contact me privately.
you can contact me in public.
you can be anonymous.

I beg your help for Eclipse to have a united and responsible answer on this
matter.


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