I couldn't agree more. We really need to be warning users several versions in advance,
and I mean months or even years. I don't wan't to come up with a number, but I would
guess that maybe 85 %, (or even 95 % ?) of the world-wide Git user base is unaware that any discussion
on that topic ever took place.
Brian mentioned that some people voicing their concern on the list did not abide by the code of conduct.
There was also very vocal disagreement voiced in the Git-for-Windows GitHub project before the
discussion reached the mailing list, of which a lot was also considered to not abide by that project's
code of conduct. While I agree that discussion should be done with respect, and some people that
are driven to react to such important changes might not be aware of any code of conduct they should
follow, because they don't participate in the "day-to-day" life of the project, just the fact that they even
care enough to voice their disagreement should be a big red flag in terms of how this change should be done,
in my opinion.
I had avoided commenting on this whole subject, but the main point you are bringing,
that such a change, if done, should be made with great care to our user base and a lot
more warning, is a very important one.
Thanks for bringing it up.
Philippe.
Not just Git-for-Windows but there is also numerous reddit threads
expressing both disbelief that this would even be considered and anger
at how it might hurt various workflows as well as issues on gitlab and
gitea which were closed as soon as any discussion started normally
citing the code of conduct even if no real violations occurred. The one
exception was gitlab where it was closed, reopened and allowed for long
discussion before being closed again. In the gitlab one certainly user
issues were brought up, even if primarily by me, before being discarded
as those for the change purely on emotional reasoning. What I find sort
of interesting is the constant claim that its a direct reference to
slavery also without any proof.
Overall this is a massive change that will affect users, documentation,
and classes for years to come if made and should only be made with
clear, articulatable, realizable benefits such as the SHA1 change.
Breaking years of documentation and books without that clear and obvious
benefit is a disservice to users and likely to cause significant harm in
the short and long term and a clear tenant of why few projects change
things just to change things. The risk of unintended effects is too
great once something is well recognized as python and others have found
out trying to remove what their perceived as problematic language
leading to multiple incompatible versions.
Whinis
