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Mbin: A kbin fork that promises to never review PRs before merging them (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by density@kbin.social to c/fediverse@kbin.social

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Somebody who was previously active on the kbin codeberg repo has left that to make a fork of kbin called mbin.

repo: https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin

In the readme it says:

Important: Mbin is focused on what the community wants, pull requests can be merged by any repo member. Discussions take place on Matrix then consensus has to be reached by the community. If approved by the community, no additional reviews are required on the PR. It's built entirely on trust.

As a person who hangs around in repos but isn't a developer that sounds totally insane. Couldn't someone easily slip malicious, or just bad, code in? Like you could just describe one cool feature but make a PR of something totally different. Obviously that could happen to any project at any time but my understanding of "code review" is to at least have some due diligence.

I don't think I would want to use any kind of software with a dev structure like this. Is it a normal way of doing stuff?

Is there something I'm missing that explains how this is not wildly irresponsible?

As for "consensus" every generation must read the classic The Tyranny of Stuctureless. Written about the feminist movement but its wisdom applies to all movements with libertarian (in the positive sense) tendencies. Those who do not are condemned to a life of drama, not liberation.

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[–] TheVillageGuy@kbin.melroy.org 0 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Real-life stuff was kinda more important for me at the moment than managing the project.

As it should be, always, for everybody, you won't ever hear me judge you on that, so please don't try to make me look bad by implicitly suggesting I am.

What you failed to do however is delegate, even temporarily, your responsibilities to people you trust. Instead you left people who trusted you dangling, only sporadically feeding them promises you would never fulfill. It seems keeping them on a leash was kinda more important to you than securing the future of kbin.

I won't go on about this any further.

I hope I'll never have to mention this again, so you'll never have to. Which would imply that you'll have come to terms and lived up to your promises, both recent ones and from the past.

[–] ernest@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yes, I say this fully aware - there are many things that I have failed at. Much of what I said, I failed to achieve. However, I never wanted to keep people on a leash; I am more of a person who prefers to stay on the sidelines and engage in what brings me the greatest pleasure - coding, just like any other contributor.

Believe me, I tried to delegate tasks, had many private conversations and discussions. Perhaps it wasn't visible from the outside. However, in that mental state, the last thing I wanted to do was resolve conflicts among adults, and it all started to boil down to that. As @BaldProphet mentioned - "microcosm of the open-source community."

Moreover, there were too many different visions of the project, ignoring requests, etc. That's precisely why I decided to temporarily halt development, to secure the future of kbin. It was my decision, and as I mentioned, forking turned out to be the best thing that could happen. As you can see, the differences are not that significant, but it will be easier for all of us - especially since we can always draw inspiration from each other, and I don't think anyone has a problem with that.

However, I still maintain contact with many people, and sometimes they mention to me the attitude of certain individuals on mbin's Matrix - it is at least puzzling. In any case, I want to stay away from that and focus on my work with contributors who understand and prefer my approach.

[–] TheVillageGuy@kbin.melroy.org 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Thank you for your in depth, genuine, reply

Believe me, I tried to delegate tasks, had many private conversations and discussions. Perhaps it wasn't visible from the outside

I am sorry but I'm having a hard time believing you when you say that you were seriously trying to delegate, as not a single soul ever said anything which would remotely confirm this. I believe you had conversations, but they ultimately didn't result in anything in this context.

However, in that mental state, the last thing I wanted to do was resolve conflicts among adults

I am not sure how to interpret this as there were no conflicts that I'm aware of that needed resolving during your absence, everybody was just waiting

I am more of a person who prefers to stay on the sidelines and engage in what brings me the greatest pleasure - coding, just like any other contributor.

There's nothing wrong with being like that, there are other people willing to do things like resolving issues. Like me. I realize I appeared out of nowhere. As a new instance owner it took a while for me to notice, but when the situation became clear to me I was ready to jump in and help, just like all the other people who had offered their help (before me).

You've basically just admitted that you were either incapable of or unwilling to engage in structural problem solving and management of the kbin project. That's fine, but you should have reached out and informed the community as soon as you became aware of this.

forking turned out to be the best thing that could happen

Yes, forking can have positive side effects and perhaps having two versions in development synchronously can merit more than one. This however was not the proper way to achieve this and using it as an excuse to justify your behavior and inaction is unjust.

However, it is not too late. You can still do the right thing by starting delegation now, by clearly assigning multiple people to all essential tasks, and giving multiple people complete control of kbin.social, so that, should a similar situation occur in the future, you and the community will confidently know that the project will not grind to a halt again.

Then seek a constructive dialog with the mbin community and we can make the project, in it's current for, work. Together.

If you feel uncomfortable with or are have trouble doing any of this, as you've clearly indicated you'd rather spend your time on coding, you are always welcome to ask me for advice.

Never hesitate to ask for help.

[–] Horza@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

At this point you are just evidencing that Ernest's judgement was spot on.

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