Bazaaring the cathedral (Lowering the Barrier to Entry)

[Marcin Cieslak]

On Wed, 1 Apr 2015, Eitan Adler wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> One of the key reasons for the lack of people is the high barrier of
> entry to joining the FreeBSD project.  While every modern project uses
> git (usually hosted on github),

As much as I love github - please try to go to 
http://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports and try to view history
of one particular port. Example task I am facing right now:
"I need to compile iojs 1.0.4 using older version of FreeBSD port".

Github web interface says to me:

> > Sorry, this commit history is taking too long to generate.
> > Refresh the page to try again, or view this history locally using the following command:
> > git log master -- www/iojs/Makefile

Sure one might argue every ports should be a separate repository
and we should use git submodules. No, thank you.

> Our wiki and code review tools are in an even worse position than our
> repository.  In order to contribute you need to send an email to
> clusteradm@ and hope they deem you worthy enough of access. The bug
> tracking system is in a better shape but isn't perfect: while any user
> can create an account, their privileges are limited: they can't help
> close out bad PRs, reclassify good ones, or do other generally useful
> work.

I am pretty frustrated I can't login to Phabricator without @freebsd.org
address. This is something that should be addressed _ReallySoonNow_

I don't follow FreeBSD intrastructure discussions but I don't understand
while we jumed from gnats onto bugzilla instead of going straight to Phabricator
Maniphest.

Also from my Phabricator experience it is still a bit better suited
for svn-centralized model than git (although it supports git as well).

> Today I hope we turn ourselves from the cathedral into a truly open
> and democratic project!

I'd love to have a Phabricator account but despite using FreeBSD
since I think version 2.1 and contributing very little I never
aspired to get a commit bit.

//Marcin