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Created August 2, 2014 03:22
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This is the email I sent to callback@strongloop.com to detail my concerns surrounding their recent aquisitioin of express
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Express.md

Dear Issac Roth,

I am writing, as per you request (https://twitter.com/ijroth/status/495402251490316288) to raise my concerns about the recent handling of express.js by Strong Loop. I understand from reading everything I can find online that TJ Holowaychuk was consulted before the move and that the idea of sponsoring was raised with the maintainer (although the full extent of this move was perhaps not fully understood by everyone). However, there are a few things that still concern me:

  1. No consultation seems to have occurred with the wider community.
  2. In your post announcing the change http://strongloop.com/strongblog/tj-holowaychuk-sponsorship-of-express/ you describe your first order of business as "is to get familiarized with the project’s practices, release processes and get started on more visible community contributions”. This does not appear to correlate well with your actions of immediately transferring ownership of the repo to a strongloop location.
  3. Pull requests are not being handled in a manor consistent with a well maintained open source project (expressjs/express#2266) - note that they used to be.

It is too late to really do anything about point 1, so I will move on from that and trust that Strong Loop have learnt this lesson.

As for the location of the repository (point 2). I think it’s clear from discussions both in GitHub and on Twitter, that the community feels the express repository, and the corresponding repository for the website both belong in the expressjs organisation. This seems like a simple thing to fix that will vastly reduce the animosity that the community feels towards you.

The pull request I referenced in point 3 is perhaps an un-related issue, but I still feel it has not been handled in a way that will ultimately lead to a good resolution. The change appears to have been rejected on grounds that the diff is too large, despite broad support for the change from everyone in the issue tracker. Further, the suggestion of alternative ways to contribute to express are not only unhelpful, but somewhat patronising. By submitting a pull request I have already demonstrated that I have a grasp of how GitHub work, and can browse the issues on my own. The purpose in submitting a pull request was not to raise my profile or feel like I was contributing, it was to fix something that has bugged me for a long time, and is almost certainly also bugging some significant number of other people.

Forbes Lindesay

@ijroth
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ijroth commented Aug 2, 2014

Hi Forbes,

Better to just to respond in public. Sorry for suggesting email I was just looking for a longer-form place to understand where you were coming from.

We had a call with Doug to understand how he was handling PRs. He mentioned a few guiding principles such as backward compatibility, keeping the API small, and adding tests.

So on first pass, Ritchie was trying to be consistent with that guidance.

If you disagree with Ritchie’s judgment here, it would be great to get feedback from the broader community as you mention. I think people watch the repo so that is one way, maybe @ mentioning some folks on the issue would also pull them in to comment.

We can probably move this discussion back to the issue: expressjs/express#2266
Doug has chimed in and hopefully others will as well with ideas on how to make a rename if that is what many users would prefer. We want to make Express easier to use, as you do.

Issac

@secretfader
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I await their response on this. Since the repo move, I haven't seen any direction, or willingness to negotiate from the Strongloop crew. Until they demonstrate clear leadership, and begin to collaborate with the community, I'll assume they're satisfied with the status quo, and unwilling to budge. And that position, as you pointed out, is indefensible.

@ForbesLindesay
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@ijroth Although it was the pull request that pushed me to look at this issue more closely, I do truly believe that point 2 is the more important point. If we could just get express moved into the expressjs organisation, that would go a long way towards resolving things.

As for the PR itself, I think @dougwilson's proposals for ways to move forwards with the change make a lot of sense, especially the suggestion to take the opportunity to implement expressjs/express#1906.

@dougwilson
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As for the PR itself, I think @dougwilson's proposals for ways to move forwards with the change make a lot of sense, especially the suggestion to take the opportunity to implement expressjs/express#1906.

And just in case it hasn't been clear to everyone: those points are actions for the repo maintainers, not the person trying to make a contribution. I had discussed that I try to keep the bar to contributions from the community as low as possible and if a PR does not meet cleanliness requirements, it's the merger's job to perform the actions if the repo wants to be welcoming to contributions.

Clean ups are also typically done as amends, so the commit is still authored by the contributor. Some recent examples:

Note that I fixed up stuff for the contributors so they didn't have to, because they already took a big step making the PR in the first place.

@Fishrock123
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We want to make Express easier to use, as you do.

Docs! :D

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