I don’t run a bug tracker, instead all my projects link to this page:

https://uninformativ.de/bugs.html

It basically says, when you find a bug, please send me an email.

Now I’ve read this:

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/EmailVsForgesUnfortunate

I hadn’t thought about this before. That’s a quite valid reason. 🫤 Sadly, it applies to any truly independent self-hosted service. That OAuth thingy (“Sign in with GitHub”) might be the only compromise …

(I rarely get any feedback on my projects, btw. jenny might be an exception, because we’re talking about it here sometimes. Overall, the number of bug reports has dropped significantly since I moved away from GitHub.)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Since I moved all my projects off of Github for a number of reasons, I’ve also seen a significant decrease in “bug reports”, but more so “contributors” too. But… I’ve always run an up-to-date instance of Gitea at https://git.mills.io where all my projects live. Despite that, it hasn’t really seen much use beyond a handful of folk, like y’all here 😢 – Sadly today, I’ve had to disable open registration on my Gitea instance, as well as my own Yarn pod (for Twtxt) because of the horrid amount of SPAM you have to deal with and cleanup.

I agree, Email is a giant PITA. I would never ask anyone to send me patches via Email. However on a positive note, I do sometimes get folks reaching out to me on Signal and sometimes Email. Then we form a bit of a relationship, set things up and go from there. That is actually much nicer.

I’m not sure what else we can do? I’m nNOT moving back to Github, ever.

@prologic@twtxt.net Huh, okay, that’s surprising to me. I had thought that Gitea would be easy enough for people to use. I mean, it even has the “Sign in with GitHub” button. 🤔 And it’s not like Gitea is some arcane/archaic tool like Bugzilla, which is just horrible to use.

So … what’s stopping people?

I’m not sure what else we can do? I’m nNOT moving back to Github, ever.

Same. There are alternatives like https://codeberg.org/ now, but does that really help? GitHub was also a small and independent platform once. Are we supposed to “forge hop” (as in “distro hop”) all the time, migrate from the most non-shitty hoster to the next? That can’t be the solution.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah I”m not really sure to be honest what stops people from contributing. Maybe it’s a discovery problem too? I’m not sure. Should sit down and see what the contributions have been for some of my projects before and after the migration away from Github? 🤔

Are we supposed to “forge hop” (as in “distro hop”) all the time, migrate from the most non-shitty hoster to the next? That can’t be the solution.

I sure hope not, that kind of defeats the point of an ecosystem that is suppose to encourage distributed software development and distributed forms of collaboration. Right? 🤔

How do we collectively improve things?

@prologic@twtxt.net

Should sit down and see what the contributions have been for some of my projects before and after the migration away from Github? 🤔

I might do that for my projects. 🤔

Maybe it’s a discovery problem too?

Yeah, well, apart from my own blog and rarely Mastodon, I don’t really talk about my projects anymore. I used to mention them on forums and reddit and the likes. Forums were really good for that. But I mean, forums are dying out as well, so where do you “promote” your projects? 🤔 On Mastodon, it usually gets drowned in the noise.

I sure hope not, that kind of defeats the point of an ecosystem that is suppose to encourage distributed software development and distributed forms of collaboration. Right? 🤔

It does, yes. Question is, do people actually care about distributed development anymore? (Did they ever?)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

Maybe your softwares are just perfect and there are simply no bug reports and contributions required. :-)

Haha. 😂 I guess my software is just way too irrelevant. 😅 Or maybe not. I just don’t know. I should add some telemetry. 😏

I just also see the issue with smaller mail servers being blocked by the large ones. This also happened to me I believe. My mails just never made it to the people. Or they were ignored, I cannot tell.

To be honest, when I send private email, like insurance stuff or to the bank or similar, I always get a reply. The recipients are German mail servers, usually run by those institutions or individuals. Sometimes it’s MS Outlook or Telekom. In other words, it’s not Google. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …