> Just because you don't like IRC doesn't make it less open
No, but having discussions somewhere completely unlinked to your open source repository without a searchable archive and no way to link to discussions does.
Hell, even gitter, which is a pretty clumsy tool lets you link directly to discussion, e.g. https://gitter.im/SublimeLSP/Lobby?at=5dce95d835889012b111a0... (although the fact that this project immediately moved to discord, a less open discussion tool without easy searching isn't amazing).
Do you prefer having to answer the same questions over and over in IRC rather than link to the discussion from a single authoritative issue?
For context: I'm 27 and in the last 10 years, I've used IRC maybe twice. To me, and many others, IRC is an opaque, closed, system. I have absolutely no idea how I would start to search your IRC channel. Hell, I thought IRC logs were only for conversations you were present for. If you can't just give somebody a link to a conversation (which you can in Slack, Gitter, Discord, Teams, mailing lists, Jira, bug trackers, etc) then I'm not sure it counts as open.
> so you're not entitled to support, features, or yes, even explanations of why decisions were made
I was initially going to respond by saying "then you shouldn't ask for contributions". However, the sway repo is actually much better than most and the CONTRIBUTING.md makes it pretty clear you should discuss things with the maintainers first.
Perhaps I'll update my projects with clearer guidance as to whether I'm interested in contributions...
> Join the IRC channel (#sway on irc.freenode.net).
This is a clickable link.
>without a searchable archive and no way to link to discussions does
This misrepresents how IRC is supposed to work. You're not supposed to catch up on what you missed. You're supposed to have the conversation there. It's like chatting at the watercooler, not writing into stone.
If you're "searching" the logs as part of your normal IRC routine, you're using IRC incorrectly.
>> so you're not entitled to support, features, or yes, even explanations of why decisions were made
>I was initially going to respond by saying "then you shouldn't ask for contributions".
You're not entitled to it, but you might receive it anyway. And the only one of these which relates directly to contributions is explanations - withholding features and support, in fact, leads to more contributions. I have written about this on my blog on several occasions if you want to learn more about this approach.
> If you're "searching" the logs as part of your normal IRC routine, you're using IRC incorrectly.
I fully agree, nobody wants to search IRC logs for technical information about a project.
If the only documentation about a technical decision in an open source project is an IRC discussion, then that project is just doing open source wrong. Those logs are at best hard to search for, and more often than not, non-existent.
When we have "online" meetings (IRC / Discord / Zulip / Matrix / Zoom / ...) to discuss technical issues in our open source projects, we always publish a full summary of the meetings so that everyone who wasn't there can read them and follow the rationale, or raise issues with it.
No, but having discussions somewhere completely unlinked to your open source repository without a searchable archive and no way to link to discussions does.
Hell, even gitter, which is a pretty clumsy tool lets you link directly to discussion, e.g. https://gitter.im/SublimeLSP/Lobby?at=5dce95d835889012b111a0... (although the fact that this project immediately moved to discord, a less open discussion tool without easy searching isn't amazing).
Do you prefer having to answer the same questions over and over in IRC rather than link to the discussion from a single authoritative issue?
For context: I'm 27 and in the last 10 years, I've used IRC maybe twice. To me, and many others, IRC is an opaque, closed, system. I have absolutely no idea how I would start to search your IRC channel. Hell, I thought IRC logs were only for conversations you were present for. If you can't just give somebody a link to a conversation (which you can in Slack, Gitter, Discord, Teams, mailing lists, Jira, bug trackers, etc) then I'm not sure it counts as open.
> so you're not entitled to support, features, or yes, even explanations of why decisions were made
I was initially going to respond by saying "then you shouldn't ask for contributions". However, the sway repo is actually much better than most and the CONTRIBUTING.md makes it pretty clear you should discuss things with the maintainers first.
Perhaps I'll update my projects with clearer guidance as to whether I'm interested in contributions...