[PATCH] HACKING: more docs about our philosophy

[PATCH] HACKING: more docs about our philosophy

[Eric Wong]

Reiterating reasons behind what we do might help drive our point
across better.
---
 HACKING | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 1cda588..a766820 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -11,8 +11,31 @@ Please consider our goals in mind:
 These goals apply to everyone: users viewing over the web or NNTP,
 sysadmins running public-inbox, and other hackers working public-inbox.
 
-We will reject any feature which advocates or contributes to a particular
-instance of a public-inbox becoming a single point of failure.
+We will reject any feature which advocates or contributes to any
+particular instance of a public-inbox becoming a single point of failure.
+Things we've considered but rejected include:
+
+* exposing article serial numbers outside of NNTP
+* allowing readers to inject metadata (e.g. votes)
+
+We care about being accessible to folks with vision problems and/or
+lack the computing resources to view so-called "modern" websites.
+This includes folks on slow connections and ancient browsers which
+may be too difficult to upgrade due to resource demands.
+
+Only depend on Free Software packages which exist in the "main"
+section of Debian 7.0 and later.  (We will bump version requirements
+as time passes, but this is current as of January 2016).
+In general, we favor mature and well-tested old things rather than
+the shiny new.
+
+Avoid relying on compiled modules too much.  Even if it is Free,
+compiled code makes packages more expensive to audit, build, and
+distribute and verify.  public-inbox itself will only be implemented
+in scripting languages (currently Perl 5).
+
+Performance should be reasonably good for server administrators, too,
+and we will sacrifice features to achieve predictable performance.
 
 See design_www.txt and design_notes.txt in the Documentation/ directory
 for design decisions made during development.
-- 
EW

[PATCH] TODO: add a few more items

[Eric Wong]

Sometimes I contribute to projects with centralization-inducing
things like reply-to-list and bug trackers.

I dislike those things myself, but most of the time I can deal with
them... for now.
---
 TODO | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+)

diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index d2f57d8..fb7c071 100644
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -2,16 +2,34 @@ TODO items for public-inbox
 
 (Not in any particular order)
 
+* Optional reply-to-list support for mirroring lists that want it :<
+  Reply-to-list encourages the existing list as a single-point-of-failure,
+  but having an extra mirror using public-inbox.org is nice regardless.
+
+* Configurable linkification for per-inbox shorthands:
+  "$gmane/123456" could be configured to expand to the
+  appropriate link pointing to the gmane.org list archives,
+  likewise "[Bug #123456]" could be configured to expand to
+  point to some project's bug tracker at http://example.com/bug/123456
+
 * implement RFC 4685 (Atom message threading)
+
 * configurable constants (quote folding, index limits)
+
 * use tags as date-based skiplists for navigating history
   (maybe not needed with Xapian support nowadays?)
+
 * handle Xapian date range queries:
   http://mid.gmane.org/20151005222157.GE5880@survex.com
+
 * use REQUEST_URI properly for CGI / mod_perl2 compatibility
   with Message-IDs which include '%'
+
 * more test cases (use git fast-import to speed up creation)
+
 * large mbox/Maildir/MH/NNTP spool import (use git fast-import)
+
 * remove dependency on ssoma installation (inline the code)
+
 * improve + document mlmmj integration, currently only at:
   http://bogomips.org/unicorn-public/20140508084301.GA2033%40dcvr.yhbt.net/
-- 
EW