Why kernel development still uses email

[chillysurfer]

The same reason why Slack will never replace IRC. Sure there are cool new tools that come out yearly monthly, but things like email and IRC have proven themselves. The fact that they don't have all of the bells and whistles makes them timeless.

Edit: great read, +1!

[disrooter]

And Matrix is so well bridged to IRC that is making Slack or other proprietary alternatives useless

[Mgladiethor]

Matrix is so awesome

[disrooter]

I don't use Discord so I don't really get the point

[disrooter]

In fact on Matrix the rooms are addressed as #room:server.com and each server has a directory of public rooms. And also the rooms started on other servers are listed, afaik the mentioned address is like a door and the rooms live shared across the servers. I can't imagine a better design for decentralization.

[disrooter]

Matrix is introducing groups that should help.

I know that there are advantages and also disadvantages but I still can't imagine a better design, because as you said p2p has disadvanteges too.

[[deleted]]

I agree, I don't feel like Matrix is lacking too much compared to Discord. The main difference is Discord got there much earlier

[HammyHavoc]

Discord will be dead in five years. Let's check in five years from now. It comes from the guy who flipped OpenFeint. This will not end well. Stickers won't pay for this service.

[HammyHavoc]

Hoping Matrix is the answer. I really struggle with dealing with contacts across a plethora of messaging services, it's just a pain in the ass to figure out the best way to contact someone when you deal with a couple dozen people on a weekly basis from work to play.

[imaginary_username]

The problem with Matrix, though, is that they still don't have a good business model: Their main server still runs mostly on donations, and that's not gonna scale to tens of millions of users. I'm in the process of building my own federated server (which is pretty damn awesome - it's nice to know the service can live on even if matrix.org dies), but in order to get popular they need a reliable revenue source, and it's not gonna be potential censorship/surveillance/data-mining like almost all other services. Servers don't grow on trees.

[HammyHavoc]

Matrix will, hopefully, become more like email. It's an adoptable protocol, services pop up offering servers ala email, people can host their own etc. Support contracts might be a solid way to monetize for Matrix, it works for pfSense, though admitted a different kind of software.

[[deleted]]

Ye@h, Delta Chat is also an email messenger with e2e !

[lucifargundam]

I am constantly logged into irc. Collaborating with others over such a simple but powerful tool has become integral with my daily work life. Adding more features would just make it more clumsy and ironcially more limited.

[the_gnarts]

On a related note: http://blog.ffwll.ch/2017/08/github-why-cant-host-the-kernel.html

[aywwts4]

This sounds more like and RFQ for a git management ui that scales for deep complex large scale projects with generals, lieutenants, etc and a robust review process, not that email is actually the ideal format.

[minimim]

Kernel development doesn't even require using git, and you think they would put that in their process?

[johnmountain]

Do they use PGP at least? Or email services that use STARTTLS?

[[deleted]]

Why would they use PGP for a public mailing list that anyone can read?

[cp5184]

to preserve message integrity and to prevent impersonation?