[OHM] Administrative changes to the OHM Github organization

Wed Nov 6 16:36:28 UTC 2019

First off, I'd like to thank each and every person who has dedicated any
time and effort to the the cause of Open Historical Map. It's a huge
undertaking that requires all of us. However, let's allow cool heads to
prevail here. I don't think Jeff and his cohort are ill-willed and I'm very
excited by the recent developments they've been working on for the OHM.

I do agree that the GitHub org has become very cluttered, but I think we
can work through this without pointing fingers of blame unnecessarily.

Rob, is there any particular reason why you're uncomfortable with sharing
the devops/sysops load with others? I think we should prioritize getting
the new codebase/website up ASAP.

Let's focus on collaboration and good will rather than gatekeeping.

Cheers!

–Tod

On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 7:38 AM Rob H Warren <warren at muninn-project.org>
wrote:

> Storm in a teacup. Stop it.
>
> No data, commit, repo, branch or OHM contribution has been lost. The
> github re-org is in line with vanilla best practices in industrial,
> academic and open source projects.
>
> Your linkedin page lists job titles such as director of engineering, CTO
> and product manager at Microsoft. Given the projects you've managed, you
> should have been calling for this to be fixed a long time ago. The
> "community" had been wrestling for some weeks about how to deal with the
> hairball that the repos had become.
>
> Yes, it's a pain. I have to go through Albin since I have no admin access
> myself but it is necessary.
>
> Now please let him do his job so we can all do ours.
>
> -R
>
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 19:22:41 -0700
> > From: Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org>
> > To: Albin Larsson <albin.post at gmail.com>
> > Cc: Rob H Warren <warren at muninn-project.org>,
> >       "Historic at openstreetmap.org" <historic at openstreetmap.org>
> > Subject: Re: [OHM] Administrative changes to the OHM Github organization
> >
> >
> > Hi all -
> >
> > Here is some background & questions with some details below:
> >
> > I’ve been paying developers to work on OHM features for the last couple
> of
> > years - timeslider, working search, refreshing site to current OSM, etc.,
> > with some new features coming soon, including: new inspector, new styles.
> > The goal of this has been to deliver cool time-based mapping features to
> > the community. They were also in line with documented OHM wish/need
> items.
> >
> > We have not been able to deploy any of this software deployed, which I
> > believe is driving the friction identified by Rob & Albin below.
> >
> > I agree with some of the goals outlined by Rob & Albin:
> > - Having code reviewed by community members before deployment
> > - Having a repo branch that represents deployed production code
> > - Need for a code of conduct
> > - We should align our github repos with best practices
> >
> > While I disagree with some of Rob & Albin's other actions/decisions, I’m
> > also not sure the community fully understands their concerns. For
> example,
> > I don’t believe there was discussion of these concerns in any public,
> group
> > forum over the past year. Regardless of that, I want to see if we find a
> > model that works so that everyone feels respected and valued. Right now,
> > that’s clearly not the case. I’m also very sorry that it reached this
> > breaking point.
> >
> > Rob & Albin -
> >
> > I sincerely hope that you will reconsider the recent pronouncements,
> > restore the community access to github, and open a more interactive
> > discussion about how to resolve your concerns. I’d suggest at least 2
> group
> > meetings and a deadline to have a new model within a month, but would
> > gladly engage in alternative community approaches.
> >
> > Key question: I know you have the community’s best interests at heart,
> but
> > do these decisions have the support of the community? How do you know?
> What
> > if they don’t?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jeff
> >
> > P.S. I recently came across a relevant quote:
> >
> > “Open source projects hinge entirely on contributors. Without regular
> > patches, the project dies. Or, as someone put it, rather ironically, in
> the
> > email that drove me out of the project:
> > ‘A protocol spec only dies when people refuse to work together on it.’ “
> > - https://sealedabstract.com/rants/nanomsg-postmortem-and-other-stories/
> >
> > DETAILS
> >
> > A quick bit of background on my involvement with OHM:
> >
> >   -
> >
> >   I’ve been intrigued with the concept of an any geo, any time based map
> >   since 2004
> >   <
> https://www.slideshare.net/gwhathistory/global-world-history-atlas-introduction-2004
> >
> >
> >
> >   -
> >
> >   Around 2012, I came across the OSM community and the OSM stack and
> >   talked with a bunch of people (Steve Coast, Ian Dees, Mikel Maron)
> about
> >   using it for historical mapping. Turns out, it had been discussed by a
> >   bunch of other people prior to that (Frankie Roberto, Schuyler Erle,
> Tim
> >   Waters, Sanjay & others)
> >   -
> >
> >   In late 2012 and early 2013, I helped set up the original OHM website
> >   along with Rob, Tim Waters, Sanjay, & others & hosted the first
> Hangouts
> >   -
> >
> >   From 2015-2017, I had to check out of the community for a few years due
> >   to work, getting married, etc. I regret that absence deeply.
> >   -
> >
> >   In early 2018, came back to my passion, OHM, and found that little had
> >   changed in terms of features to the core website. The OHM Tasking
> Manager
> >   <http://tasks.openhistoricalmap.org/> was up (Thanks, Bert) & that was
> >   and is awesome. The site itself was still up in spite of a scary
> outage and
> >   hosting transfer (Thanks to Rob!). But, it was lacking new features
> and the
> >   site were out of sync with mainline OSM. Unsatisfied with the pace of
> OHM
> >   feature dev over the past 5 years and not seeing any motion for that to
> >   change, out of my own pocket, I hired a nonprofit dev firm
> >   <https://www.greeninfo.org/> with ties to Stamen <https://stamen.com/>
> >   and OSM board members. I asked them to start working on desired
> features
> >   already identified within the community. Later, we added members of
> > Development
> >   Seed <https://www.developmentseed.org/>, another firm with very close
> >   ties to the OSM community and also the original OHM sysadmin, Sanjay. I
> >   viewed all of these people as legitimate 1st-class members of the OHM
> >   community and with OHM’s goals and best interests at heart. All of the
> work
> >   performed has been designated open source and as close to license free
> as
> >   possible. No one involved in this effort has any commercial interest
> in the
> >   work being done. We all just want to get features added to OHM and to
> see
> >   it thrive. I have not wanted to identify myself as the source of the
> >   funding of these efforts on this list, as I have thought it wasn’t
> >   important, don’t want any credit, and don’t want this to be viewed as 1
> >   person’s project. It’s not. It’s a community effort.
> >   -
> >
> >   They have built the time slider you’ve seen on our prototype site, made
> >   search work, and are working on a new inspector and map style. We are
> >   currently trying to get this software deployed, which is driving some
> of
> >   the friction identified in Albin & Rob’s mail.
> >   -
> >
> >   I’ve also worked to make the OHM community more active and have been
> >   hosting frequent meetings, postings to the aliases, attendance at
> >   conferences, and outreach to other groups, which I’ve tried to share
> with
> >   the community.
> >   -
> >
> >   My ultimate goals have been to:
> >   -
> >
> >      Get the OHM feature-rich enough to be a more appealing platform a
> >      wider user base
> >      -
> >
> >      Make OHM a more appealing part of grant proposals
> >      -
> >
> >      Essentially to make OHM a little closer to its stated vision of a
> >      rich environment for historical mapping
> >
> >
> > I would suggest we use HOT OSM as a good comparable and example of how to
> > encourage participation across a community and to create a rich
> environment
> > for application development. https://github.com/hotosm
> >
> > I’d also suggest we look at some basic best practices for github
> > organization management,
> >
> https://github.com/todogroup/guides/blob/master/participating-in-open-source.md
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 1:40 PM Albin Larsson <albin.post at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Jeff and thank you for sharing your concerns and questions.
> >>
> >>> Can you share some of the details about the "concerns about the
> >> sustainability of the project" or of how the gatekeeper approach will
> work?
> >>
> >> I do not intend to turn this into a gatekeeper approach long term. To
> >> begin I think we need to make sure the code on Github represent the
> code on
> >> the server. Baby steps. Regarding pull request those will be managed by
> >> whoever maintains a repository. The only repository which today
> represents
> >> code running on the server is the task manager one. Bert who maintains
> it
> >> have already full access to it and can merge pull requests.
> >>
> >> Before this change anyone of the many owners could delete any code,
> invite
> >> anyone, commit whatever code, and edit git history. We can't have it
> that
> >> way and we can certainly not deploy code we do not trust.
> >>
> >>> If I made a pull request to completely rebase the whole project, as the
> >> code base is 7 years old, how would that be reviewed?
> >>
> >> No matter the organisation that would require both meetings and
> >> coordination. I assume in the end when it comes to Github the repository
> >> would be replaced with a new one.
> >>
> >>> what are the metrics of success for this model?
> >>
> >> The first aim is to to actually clean up Github and make sure it
> >> represents the code on the server. To allow incremental change in the
> first
> >> place.
> >>
> >>> Contrary to Albin's assertion, I for one, am very confident about the
> >> future of the project, but I do have concerns about our current lack of
> >> governance and individual control over any parts of our operations.
> >>
> >> I read such concerns as sustainability concerns. I'm deeply sorry if I
> >> have misrepresented someones concerns.
> >>
> >>> This project was started as a community effort, with community
> >> consultation, and community input to how things should be done. I am
> hoping
> >> that will continue.
> >>
> >> It's my belief that this change and the clean up will allow community
> >> contributions to be merged and deployed to begin with. Without that
> >> possibility community meetings and input doesn't do much. While general
> >> concerns regarding governance are related to this I consider such
> concerns
> >> out of scope for this particular effort. Solutions to those concerns
> would
> >> also require wider community consultation.
> >>
> >> Best regards
> >> //
> >> Albin Larsson
> >>
> >> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 15:53 Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Albin, Rob -
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for bringing these issues to light & thank you both for your
> >>> leadership & hard work.
> >>>
> >>> I don't speak for the community, but there may be many questions out
> >>> there about these points, I certainly have many questions, I don't
> agree
> >>> with many of the points above, and I'd love to see if we can organize
> some
> >>> community solutions.
> >>>
> >>> Can you share some of the details about the "concerns about the
> >>> sustainability of the project" or of how the gatekeeper approach will
> work?
> >>> E.g. how will pull requests be approved? If I made a pull request to
> >>> completely rebase the whole project, as the code base is 7 years old,
> how
> >>> would that be reviewed?  Also, what are the metrics of success for this
> >>> model?
> >>>
> >>> Contrary to Albin's assertion, I for one, am very confident about the
> >>> future of the project, but I do have concerns about our current lack of
> >>> governance and individual control over any parts of our operations.
> >>>
> >>> I'll send more thoughts in the next couple of days, but I find these
> >>> steps to be quite strong reactions to some vaguely-referenced & not
> openly
> >>> discussed concerns.
> >>>
> >>> This project was started as a community effort, with community
> >>> consultation, and community input to how things should be done. I am
> hoping
> >>> that will continue.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>> Jeff
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:48 AM Rob H Warren <
> warren at muninn-project.org>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I want to thank Albin for taking care of the github organization,
> which
> >>>> is a thankless job. Projects on github were no longer manageable and
> not
> >>>> being able to track what was deployable and who-owned-what was
> hindering
> >>>> operations. OHM is going through the same issues that OSM and other
> open
> >>>> source projects have to deal with and this was necessary. Going
> forward,
> >>>> pull requests are going to be required to specific repos for any
> >>>> operational deploy.
> >>>>
> >>>> There are many critics of this gatekeeper approach[1]; balanced out by
> >>>> the chaos that results when too many cooks spoil the broth. Vectored
> tiles
> >>>> and the timeslider *will* be integrated into the main site and a
> clustered
> >>>> tile service is on its way. Please realize that the devil is in the
> >>>> details, there is technical debt and there are moving parts that are
> not
> >>>> obvious.
> >>>>
> >>>> OHM is based on the OSM stack with all of its glitter and warts. Yes,
> it
> >>>> has acknowledged problems. It was also designed by people with the
> >>>> foresight to support third party applications and authentication. If
> you
> >>>> think some great application is missing, go ahead and build it; no
> one will
> >>>> stop you. But before you do, take the time to read through the
> relevant
> >>>> standards and ask around: all of these standards have more than one
> gotcha!
> >>>> It's your time that's wasted if it doesn't work and half-baked
> solutions
> >>>> will not get deployed.
> >>>>
> >>>> It may be time for a code of conduct[2,3], through I'm not sure how to
> >>>> formalize "We're not your employees" and "Be a decent human being".
> I've
> >>>> hesitated to discuss this publicly so far, but my watershed moment was
> >>>> earlier this year when OHM "followed me to work". Someone (who could
> be a
> >>>> stand-in for "Pig-Pen" in the Peanuts comic) managed to get into a
> >>>> corporate event to share their strong enthusiasm about OHM. It's still
> >>>> unclear how a badge was issued but it did not reflect positively on
> anyone.
> >>>>
> >>>> Besides the routine administrivia, I've received demands/requests for
> >>>> root access, password files and raw database dumps. DNS requests for
> >>>> services that were meant to die. Sometimes the request is politely
> written,
> >>>> sometimes not. The behaviour is best described by the quote: "The
> reason
> >>>> it's so vicious is because it doesn't matter".  Also, we may have
> never
> >>>> written this down because it should be earthquake obvious but: OHM
> has a
> >>>> responsibility to its users and will not release its user data.
> Period. I
> >>>> can't make it any clearer.
> >>>>
> >>>> Lastly, OHM is a community project with a decentralized structure that
> >>>> caters to a wide audience. This includes the survivalist in his log
> cabin
> >>>> on a 27th floor NYC condo,  the teenager in his parent's basement
> with an
> >>>> unhealthy interest in the Sumer trade routes and other documenting
> >>>> ...forgotten payphone locations? We don't judge, you are all welcome.
> Do
> >>>> what you are passionate about, go your own way and do good work.
> >>>>
> >>>> All my best,
> >>>> R
> >>>> [1] https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/
> >>>> [2]
> >>>>
> https://nolanlawson.com/2017/03/05/what-it-feels-like-to-be-an-open-source-maintainer/
> >>>> [3] https://lwn.net/Articles/759654/
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Historic mailing list
> >>>> Historic at openstreetmap.org
> >>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/historic
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Jeff Meyer
> >>> 206-676-2347
> >>> osm: Open Historical Map (OHM)
> >>> <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map> / my OSM user
> >>> page <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer>
> >>> t: @OpenHistMap
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Historic mailing list
> >>> Historic at openstreetmap.org
> >>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/historic
> >>>
> >>
> >
> > --
> > Jeff Meyer
> > 206-676-2347
> > osm: Open Historical Map (OHM)
> > <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map> / my OSM user
> page
> > <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer>
> > t: @OpenHistMap
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-- 
Tod Robbins, MLIS
todrobbins.com
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