[Galene] Re: [RFC] Contributing guidelines[RFC] Contributing guidelines

[Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>]

> I’m not suggesting these are the rules; I’m simply proposing a framework
> to start a discussion about a contribution guideline.

Valent, you have published an authoritative-sounding document that
contains a number of incorrect statements.  You did not include
a disclaimer.  Since this list is being archived, this document will
appear in web searches, and induce potential contributors in error.

Here's a few examples.  You say

>    Contributions that expose private user data, such as IP addresses or
>    user names, will not be accepted.

That's formulated in a very categorical manner.  Please see commit
a76f225b (the /identify command), which exposes IP addresses.  This
protocol extension was carefully designed to balance the needs of users
(who want their privacy respected) and the needs of moderators (who want
to be able to ban an IP address that's being used for abuse).  (The
original proposal was to log all IP addresses, which I rejected for
privacy reasons.  We then had a bunch of back-and-forth discussion, which
lead to the /identify command.)

>   Anything that requires an external daemon (e.g. an SQL server) is out
>   of the question.

Again, that's formulated in a very categorical manner (was it written by
an LLM?).  It is plainly incorrect.  There are features in Galene that
require an external server (galene-ldap, galene-sip).  A more correct
statement would that it must remain possible to make a simple deployment
of Galene without relying on external servers.  (And even that is not
quite correct: you need working DNS and an X.509 provider.)

>  - Use a dedicated branch for each pull request, based on current master.

That's rather patronising: it implies that we're entitled to tell people
how to organise their work in their private repository.  As long as people
send usable pull requests or patches, we have no right to tell them what
to do in the privacy of their local repository.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  Valent, please do not
publish further authoritative-sounding lists without including a clear
disclaimer.

-- Juliusz