It seems that some time last year iNaturalist started using a private workspace at linear.app for issue tracking. Maybe they were also using a private system before that, but I wasn’t aware of it. Regardless, it’s odd for an open source project like iNaturalist to use a closed issue tracking system, as it discourages volunteer participation. I know iNaturalist has never been gung ho on cultivating volunteer developers (judging by how hard it is to get pull requests reviewed or merged), but I’m wondering if anyone on staff could comment on this decision and its implications, or better yet, comment on iNaturalist’s position regarding being an open source project and its relationship with volunteer code contributors. It doesn’t seem like this subject gets discussed very much and I really have no idea what the current staff’s thoughts about it are.
i’m not necessarily against iNat staff and associates using a closed communication system for development – it helps to at least have this as an option when it’s necessary to share sensitive information – but it would be helpful to include good enough notes on the commits in the open source repo to allow all folks to follow generally what’s going on.
Typically the way sensitive information or discussions are handled in open source projects is that there is some tag or component or group that is used to switch issues from public to private as needed, e.g. “Security” or “Sensitive”. Most issue tracking systems that I’ve used support this, e.g. Phabricator, Jira, Bugzilla. Sadly, GitHub doesn’t though. I’m curious if linear.app supports a public mode for issues or if iNaturalist has any policies on adding non-staff to their linear.app projects. I’m not trying to agitate for any particular set-up, I’m just curious if iNaturalist is intentionally moving more towards a closed development model or if this is just an accident of adopting a new development platform.