handling Inbox contributions was: [squeak-dev] The Inbox: Morphic-kb.428.mcz

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Wed Apr 28 18:38:01 UTC 2010


> author(s) of methods and their change history. Surely, if some of the
> methods will miss this information (like anonymous submission), this
> would make this model less useful.

Hi Ken and sig, but this argument implies we will "lose" something
(identification of contributors) by merely _allowing_ anonymous
contributions.  In fact, we don't lose that or anything else, but
actually _gain_ the ability to collect anonymous contributions where,
otherwise, we would get nothing.

Don't forget, the initials of regular community members would still be
in the methods even if they weren't logged into SqueakSource when they
submitted to the Inbox.  Non-regular community members are the ones we
are in danger of losing their contributions altogether with a required
sign-up.  In the cooperative model of any reasonable size, some of the
single-contribution contributors _will_ be picked off by the
registration requirement, and therefore we would lose contributions,
with or without initials.

I am all for having valid and useful accounting information in the
image.  However, anything submitted to the Inbox is automatically
under the MIT license anyway, so I don't know whether we would need to
"track down" the "dark-knight" contributors.. at least not for any
kind of licensing reasons.

Regards,
  Chris



On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26 April 2010 22:47, Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com> wrote:
>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>> Subject: Re: handling Inbox contributions was: [squeak-dev] The Inbox:
>>> Morphic-kb.428.mcz
>>> From: Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Mon, April 26, 2010 2:37 pm
>>> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>>> <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>>>
>>>
>>> Oh, I didn't think about that!  Yes, I completely agree, there should
>>> not be a requirement of "registration" to make a contribution.
>>>
>>> For me, personally, registration _has been_ a real and significant
>>> barrier for me when attempting to access other kinds of content or
>>> programs..  I've gotten excited to read something, and then suddenly
>>> I'm being asked to fill out a web-form.  Good-bye....
>>>
>>> I think that great TED talk by Clay Shirky you referenced the other
>>> day illustrates a good reason why..  it would shorten those "long
>>> tails" of single-contribution, individual contributors, because the
>>> registration _would_ pick some of them off..
>>
>> Well, I'm not sure I agree.  We have pressure in the other direction
>> which is that we have to track the contributors to  ensure that all
>> submissions are properly licensed and to give credit where it is due.
>> Is typing data into 5-6 fields one time really too much work to ensure
>> you get your props?
>>
>
> Me too (not agree). Squeak has an unique capabilities allowing us to
> track down the
> author(s) of methods and their change history. Surely, if some of the
> methods will miss this information (like anonymous submission), this
> would make this model less useful.
> I like the idea that every piece of code contributed to Squeak points
> to its author and so, in case of need, we may contact him.
> This helps us greatly in communicating, organizing work and
> maintaining the code (not mentioning keeping a license-clean record).
> So, i don't think that anonymous contributions is a good idea.
>
>> Ken
>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>>> > On 26.04.2010, at 19:38, Ken Causey wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On Mon, 2010-04-26 at 12:14 -0500, Chris Muller wrote:
>>> >>> When someone commits to trunk, the e-mail gives the name of the
>>> >>> contriibutor.  Would that also be useful for inbox contributions?
>>> >>
>>> >> Of course but this would happen (and only happen) if the user logged in
>>> >> before submitting the contribution.  Right now for perfectly valid
>>> >> reasons we don't require logging in wishing the inbox to be as open as
>>> >> reasonably possible.
>>> >>
>>> >> I recently suggested we change this to require logging in since creating
>>> >> an account is open to everyone and it seems like a small enough barrier
>>> >> to me.  But it is a barrier and therefore worthy of consideration, pros
>>> >> versus cons, etc.
>>> >>
>>> >> Ken
>>> >
>>> > Yes, it's a lot easier to say "when you have a fix, just select the inbox and commit your package", instead of explaining how to register (you need a web browser for that, can't do from within Squeak), then modify the repository definitions to add your user name, but alert them to not fill in the password yet, then commit ... If committing to the inbox would ask your username and allow to create an account right there (and remember it for the next time) then this might be a lot less inconvenient.
>>> >
>>> > Also, squeaksource does not yet support "being logged in" as an access restriction anyway. It's either "everyone can write without logging in" or "only approved developers can write".
>>> >
>>> > Help welcome, the server code we're running is at
>>> > http://source.squeak.org/ss.html
>>> >
>>> > - Bert -
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>
>



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