Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

I have just learned that Github's data export is, *at the very least*, missing Gists and all of my contributions to repositories that *aren't* mine. The only thing included is the data for my own repositories. What the hell.

Like, to be clear, the 'collateral damage' here is that all of those things - any issues or PRs I've created anywhere, any comments I've left on other people's issues or PRs - are just *gone*. No indication. As if they've never existed.

This means that historical parts of multiple standards processes have just... disappeared. For no good reason. With no recourse for the standards organizations involved.

This also seems like a pretty strong argument to *not* do any sort of spec work on Github, because apparently they will just disappear it with no recourse

Known (significant) collateral damage so far:
- My Matrix spec contributions, including at least one MSC that I wrote
- My NixOS contributions, including some fairly important contributions to RFCs
- Any work done for $customer that lives on Github

No response from Github yet. This is uh, maybe not a great way to deal with flagged accounts?

So one of the major differences between corporate software development and community software development is the difference in transparency.

In corporate projects, the default is secrecy; you don't tell stuff to outsiders unless you have a reason to. In community projects, the default is openness; you always do everything out in the open unless you have a reason *not* to.

And I think that the a lot of the problems people have with Element and - by extension - Matrix are to do with precisely that: Element's projects are run as corporate projects, not as community projects.

I don't mean that there's no spec process, or that it's proprietary, or that there's no work out in the open - I mean that it is not out in the open *by default*. As Element grows, it is becoming increasingly common to hear the word "internal".

"Internal" is the death knell of a community project. Internal projects, internal discussion, internal review, internal priorities. Internal means secrecy; not visible to the community, not taking its input, not *accountable* to that community.

Some things, like actively exploitable vulnerabilities, *need* to be kept internal - but most everything else shouldn't be. Spec changes shouldn't be under internal discussion. Refactoring shouldn't be an internal process.

Or to put it differently: at the very least, the full state of the project must be visible to the whole community at any given time - *without* actively having to ask The Right Person about it. Maybe in some cases read-only, but it must be visible without delay or barrier.

And if you're trying to run a community project as a corporation, yes, that means needing to disclose the internal workings of your corporation. Yes, also the 'company secrets'. Yes, also the internal bureaucratic processes.

And yes, also take feedback on them from the community. If you want to do it right, it needs to be a symbiotic relationship, even if that means not doing the 'standard thing' from a corporate perspective.

Element has failed to do this, and the result is that people are feeling more and more alienated from the process; a process which they increasingly have no visibility into, and zero control over.

It's nominally still a community project, but in practice there's always some unspecified and invisible "internal" roadblock standing in the way of contributions, with no timeline of any sort, and a distinct sense of neglect.

And that's how it ends up taking 7 years to fix a grating notification sound: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/5891#issuecomment-1620570919

Element needs to do better. The Matrix foundation, which Element is still the major contributor to in practice, needs to *demand* better. I think Matrix has real potential, but I would prefer if it didn't require a community fork to get there.

#Matrix #Element #FOSS

Occasionally someone will learn that the CW/CN field is called 'subject' in the protocol, and respond with "so people are just *misusing* the subject field!"

And I find it extremely telling when that is the first response, rather than "wait, why do people need to use the subject field for this, why isn't there a CW feature in the protocol?"

And like, it's not just the notification sound. *So much* stuff in Matrix-land is being held back by this problem!

This comment is such an excellent summary of the problem with Element: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/5891#issuecomment-1620570919

Today kinda sucks.

I guess all my own projects are on my own Gitea, at least...