[gmx-developers] team communication tools for GROMACS

[Szilárd Páll]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Berk Hess <hess at kth.se> wrote:

> This depends on where we want to keep information related to how to
> contribute to Gromacs. If this lives somewhere else on the wiki, a long
> blog history is not so important. We might need to copy parts of useful
> posts to the wiki then.
>

This is not meant to be a blog or wiki; the goal is to have an interactive
chat-like channel where you see who's online, can have ad-hoc or organized
discussions, share code, thoughts, ideas in a main or dedicated per-topic
discussion streams/channels.

Additionally, allowing new people to just drop by and ask questions is also
important, I believe.

I have been checking out slack in a sandbox account, whoever is interested
can get access by dropping me a mail!



>
> Cheers,
>
> Berk
>
>
> On 10/02/2015 04:00 PM, Szilárd Páll wrote:
>
> I personally think that starting to use a collaborative platform by
> severely restricting who can participate partly defeats the purpose of the
> new tool. Such a restriction will severely limit the possibilities for
> interaction with new people. Whatever we choose, I think it's crucial to
> allow wide participation with as low barrier as possible while ensuring
> that the features code-devs want are well-supported.
>
>
> I wonder how important is a saving history for very long periods?
>
> I see a few use cases:
> - Casual and semi-formal dev interaction on various channels; typically
> short-term chats, I imagine e.g. discussing a/some of changes (e.g.
> switching form gerrit for more interactivity, starting a quick hangout from
> there if needed)
> - Help and support channel for non-core/code devs, e.g. method developers,
> people interested in using the code for their research, infrequent
> contributors, HPC center sysadmins, distro maintainers, etc.
> - Longer-term planning, decision-making and discussion e.g. on a planned
> feature.
>
> It seems to me that some of this, in particular the first two do not
> necessarily need archival (or information could be dumped from the lack
> channel when it seems useful/necessary).
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Szilárd
>
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 12:41 AM, Erik Lindahl <erik.lindahl at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 01 Oct 2015, at 23:33, Roland Schulz < <roland at utk.edu>roland at utk.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 5:32 AM, Szilárd Páll <pall.szilard at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 4:08 PM, Roland Schulz < <roland at utk.edu>
>>> roland at utk.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There are a couple see for example:
>>>> <http://beebom.com/2015/04/slack-alternatives-for-team-communication>
>>>> http://beebom.com/2015/04/slack-alternatives-for-team-communication
>>>>
>>>
>>> I've seen this list, unfortunately none of those listed seemed to offer
>>> a great deal more/better functionality than slack - except perhaps HipChat
>>> with 25k history limit, or Pie with no limits _but_  data lock-in due to
>>> lack of export in the free version - , but I have to admit, I only browsed
>>> briefly.
>>>
>>
>> I think the pricing structure for slack is quite bad for us. I think the
>> 10,000 is not sufficient in the medium term. And it is probably to
>> expensive to use anything other than their free plan. And if we hit the
>> limit and can't afford upgrading, then even if they let us allow to export
>> data, we would loose all experience, integration, and training with that
>> system.
>>
>> Bitrix24 has a first paid plan which might be affordable and a limit
>> which is probably sufficient even in the medium term. The free plan is
>> sufficient to test.
>>
>> We might want to ask for some of them whether they would be willing to
>> offer us a plan as a academic open-source project which is discounted. And
>> we should make sure that the pricing plan is sustainable for the long term
>> so that we don't need to switch later.
>>
>>
>> Slack appears to offer educational plans with 85% discount, which might
>> work.
>>
>> To keep the number of accounts manageable, I think we could do something
>> where active developers (basically those who frequently commit code) get
>> personal/paid slack accounts on our tab, and then there are features where
>> we can invite guest users into open channels so anybody can participate in
>> those discussions even though they might not be as active developing.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Erik
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>
>
>
>
>
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