The mailing-list problem
Many software projects use mailing-lists, which usually means
mailman, not only for discussions around that project, but also for code contributions. A lot of open source projects work that way, including the one I interact with the most, the Linux kernel. A contributor sends patches to a mailing list, these days using
git send-email, and waits for feedback or for his/her patches to be picked up for inclusion if fortunate enough.
Problem is, mailing-lists are awful for code contribution.
A few of the issues at hand:
Dealing with patches and emails can be daunting for new contributors,There's no feedback that someone will look into the patch at some point,There's no tracking of which patch has been processed (eg. included into the tree). A shocking number of patches are just dropped as a direct consequence,There's no way to add metadata to a submission. For instance, we can't assign a reviewer from a pool of people working on the project. As a re…