Re: Some Hurd related thoughts from someone who has no right to talk

[Joshua Branson]

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Hi Joshua,
>
>> We need to show people how to use mailing lists.  I'm actually wanting
>> to make a youtube video explaining this...Mailings lists are still super
>> hard.  They are not intuitive...
>
> What do you find unintuitive about them?  Do you mean the patch workflow
> via email or general discussion via mailing list?

With respect, I mean that they do not work out of the box.  If I wanted
to start working with a project on Github or Gitlab, then I can use a
web interface.  While I agree that mailing lists are probably superior,
since people can use whatever email client that they want...mailing
lists are still difficult for the computer illiterate to use.

>
>> I've started using Gnus, because John
>> Wigley (current Emacs maintainer) recommended it.  But it is really easy
>> to subscribe to a mailing list and have your inbox get flooded.  I
>> personally can no longer use my hotmail account, because I subscribed to
>> emacs-devel, bug hurd, bug guix, and guix devel.  My inbox was
>> completely flooded with emails, I was unable to unsubscribe to guix
>> devel, and It's really hard to filter email from a mailing list out of
>> your inbox.
>>
>> I'm currently able to use multiple mailing lists because I subscribe to
>> them via the email "+" trick.  I think I'm subscribed to bug-hurd with
>> jbranso+bug-hurd@gnu.org.  And I have a rule that filters email sent to
>> that email address to a separate bug hurd folder.
>
> I’m subscribed to many mailing lists and I filter on the “List-Id”
> header.  (You will also find a link to unsubscribe in the
> “List-Unsubscribe” header.)  I found it more cumbersome to use email
> address tags like “+bug-hurd”.

How do you filter on the "List-Id" header?  I only know how to do that
via a sieve script.  Personally, I think that the server should
filter all emails.  I believe that generally the client is not very fast
at filtering emails.

>
> Gnus is a complex piece of software and I have to admit that despite
> living in Emacs I have not been able to make it work for me.  I use
> mu4e, which makes searching and filtering of emails very easy.  In fact,
> on the server side I only have a rule to file all mailing list emails to
> a separate IMAP folder.  I access the mails of individual mailing lists
> by filtering with mu4e.
>
> My filter rule for Emacs devel, for example, looks simply like this:
>
>     list:emacs-devel.gnu.org
>
> I bound that mu4e search to a bookmark so I don’t need to type it.  For
> Guile things its
>
>     (list:guile-user.gnu.org OR list:guile-devel.gnu.org OR
>     list:bug-guile.gnu.org)
>

Thank you for explaining this.  That would be a VERY NICE way to use
mailing lists, but the average computer user, or the beginning hacker,
doesn't know how to set up mu4e.  You have to install it, configure it,
and setup a maildir.  I personally had a really hard time trying to
figure out how to use offlineimap or the alternatives.

I completely agree that mailing lists are superior.  I just wish that we
had an equally good web-based workflow.  That way new contributers could
use the web-based workflow...Then when they are ready to use an email
based workflow, they could.

> and so on.
>
> I’ll gladly share more information about this set up off list.

Yes please.  I'm always glad to learn new things.

>
>> We need to have GNU/Hurd hangouts, just like the Emacs hangouts.
>> I had one such hangout, but only one person showed up.  I'm not
>> sure what free software solution we should have to do Hurd
>> hangouts.  Maybe Google Chat is still the best solution...
>
> What do you mean by “GNU/Hurd hangouts”?

Sacha Chua had a Emacs Hangouts.  Once a month she would use Google
Hangouts and people from all over the world would listen and chat.  She
had specific interviews with Emacs developers, etc.  Those hangouts were
actually how I found out about golden-ratio-mode, which is an awesome
Emacs minor mode!

It would be nice if the Hurd had a similar thing.  There are cool things
that people can do with the Hurd already, but it's not really well known.

>
>> We need an easy way to have people assign code to GNU.  If you live in
>> the U.S. you can actually use an electronic signature!  We could have
>> software that would automate the copyright assigning process.
>
> I think the problem here is not due to a lack of automation software,
> but due to the fact that this is a legal process and changes thus have
> to be coordinated with lawyers to make sure the assignment is still
> considered valid.

I actually talked to the copyright assignment guy, who works for the
FSF. He told me that he tried to write a tool that would accept
copyright assignments.  He personally is not a developer, so he could
not finish it.  BUT he encouraged me to write such a tool.  Maybe I'll
spend a weekend making a wordpress theme that'll do this.

>
> --
> Ricardo