[erlang-questions] Calling for help to improve contents on erlang.org

[Michael Truog]

On 11/13/2014 08:22 AM, Loïc Hoguin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This response is addressed to OTP Team, as Bruce already knows what I am saying here.
>
> Please make the erlang.org code and content open-source, and add a link to this repository at the bottom of all erlang.org pages.
>
> This is not only easier to contribute to for programmers, but will make people who read contribute spontaneously (even if they don't end up using Erlang) and will also address the concerns of those who do not want to contribute to closed software/platforms.

As part of this process it would be good to have public usage of a bug tracker to provide a transparent development process.  There are submissions of issues on github which get attached to pull requests and there is an empty page at the "What you could do" section of http://www.erlang.org/development/ .  Currently, decision making for Erlang has been "The OTP committee has spoken, and it will be so!" which follows a waterfall development model (a blessing process in the cathedral, as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar) and pursues the idea that Erlang is a proprietary R&D product.  If Erlang is open-source a public bug tracker would have entries for every entry found in the release notes (http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_17.3.readme) when an issue is assigned an "OTP-#####" identifier.  If development is more transparent then it will be simpler for the development to occur outside of Ericsson as a community effort.  Otherwise, Ericsson 
politics or problems can adversely affect Erlang as a project when Ericsson process is the bottleneck on development, and that risk can impact other companies/people making them less likely to feel comfortable with using Erlang (due to the business risk of being tied to unknown events at Ericsson).  With more transparency on bugs/features it will be easier to avoid creating errors in Erlang because more community involvement will lead to more testing and oversight of development.  Pursuing that transparency makes it easier to diagnose problems and determine the Erlang release which should be in production (i.e., "What Erlang release does Ericsson put into production?") and package managers (or port trees).

>
> On 11/13/2014 06:14 PM, Bruce Yinhe wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> We are aware that parts of erlang.org <http://erlang.org> need
>> improvement. For example http://www.erlang.org/article/tag/examples and
>> http://www.erlang.org/course/course.html are outdated. We would like to
>> see a number of small code examples for beginners. The purpose of these
>> examples is to provide an attractive and useful introduction for people
>> who are interested in adopting the Erlang programming language.
>>
>> Please send us your input. We would like to call for help from the
>> community since OTP team does not have too much time and it is not
>> possible to submit pull requests for editorial of erlang.org
>> <http://erlang.org> as of now.
>>
>> Any other suggestions for erlang.org <http://erlang.org> are always welcome.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Bruce Yinhe
>> community-manager@REDACTED <mailto:community-manager@REDACTED>
>>
>>
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>