Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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Alternative site name brainstorming
Since there are still many people unsatisfied with the current site name, I thought it would be good to have a centralised place for some brainstorming. If you have any ideas, please post them below! ...
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Are technical questions about specific software that happens to be open source on-topic?
Let us say I have a question about an open source project that looks something like:
Hi! I am a newbie user of XYZ. So, while I was referring to XYZ's API doc, I couldn't understand what function ...
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Free Software in the description, please?
See this post on area51.
To some people, there is an important distinction between Free Software and Open Source Software, at a philosophical level. I'm not really interested in having that fight ...
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More site name brainstorming - Part II
Today, we had a visit from Tim Post to discuss our potential name change. After a meeting at Stack Exchange and some discussion in a chatroom, we've nearly settled on our site name:
Free & Open......
ArtOfCodeMod
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Are NC & ND Creative Commons licenses on topic?
Creative Commons produce a family of related licenses. Most of these are Open licenses (not recommended for software) and are clearly on topic. A couple are not Open, but are very closely related to ...
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More site name brainstorming - Part III
In episode 1, we discussed changing the site name. A pretty much consensual answer proposed Free & Open.
In episode 2, it was revealed that there is no longer a consensus. The proposal for “Free &...
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What's wrong with "External Resources" questions?
So one of the proposed custom close reasons is for external resources questions. It seems to be pretty widely agreed-upon that asking for external resources is a bad thing, and the close reason has ...
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Make the site about Open Information!
Note: I understand this is very long, but be sure to read and understanding everything in this post.
Alright! Day 6 into the beta, and we're about to introduce a new addition to the scope!
The ...
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OSI and Open Source SE
According to this Area 51 Discussion Post, the Open Source Initiative was contacted regarding the use of their logo. In the end, the OSI was interested in promoting this site, hoping to use it to ...
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Do we want to allow specific questions?
Following this comment, do we want questions to be general, and helpful to as many people as possible, or do we want to also allow more specific questions that help smaller groups of people?
I'm ...
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Is open source limited to software?
In open source, are we talking only about software, or also about other things? There is free documentation (GFDL, Creative Commons), open data (already has its own Stack Exchange site), open recipes....
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Are historical questions on topic?
Should questions about the history of the open source idea or open source projects be on topic? The closest I've seen to one is How could using code released under CC0 infringe on the author's ...
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How far into legal questions do we stray?
Questions like Can I change the caps to lowercase in licenses? and Do software patents for common formats (gif, mp3, h264) apply globally? are legal questions that impact open source software.
To ...
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How to encourage questions about anything but licenses?
I've gotta say That I was reasonably excited to see this proposal go into beta, but to date, it's been mostly nothing more than licensing questions. I was hoping for... something more.
What other ...
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Are questions on hosting platforms on-topic?
I found this: How can I recover content from an open source project host that has shut down?
It seems to be asking about how to recover information from a hosting service that has fallen. It asks ...
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Are questions about collaborative development on-topic
I haven't found our site's "mission statement" yet, so consider this another step in developing one.
Will we consider questions about collaborative development in general to be on-topic.
Although ...
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Should questions pertaining to open knowledge be in scope
Recently, How can I trust Wikipedia, if everyone can change it? was asked. I feel questions like this pertaining to open knowledge should be in the scope of this site (even if it isn't necessarily now)...
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What should our site goals be?
After some small amount of discussion on this meta post and here in chat, I have a question for the community here.
What are our goals?
As a Stack Exchange site, we're here to answer on-topic ...
ArtOfCodeMod
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free-software, fsf, free-software-definition and other associated tags
For both the FSF and OSI we have a few set of related tags:
free-software, fsf, free-software-definition
osi, open-source-definition
I created the two -definition tags, as I thought they were more ...
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Where is [old arcane project] now maintained, maybe as a fork under another name?
Imagine a highly-specific open source library whose website has disappeared, or has been abandoned. Is it on-topic to ask whether the project still lives somewhere else, maybe as a fork under another ...
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Are questions on getting your project "blessed" on scope?
This question was closed
How do I make sure my installer doesn't set off virus scanners?
as a dupe of
How to give evidence that an open-source project is reputable?
Personally, I think ...
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Custom close reasons for this site?
We are currently running with a default set of reasons to VTC a question, or for flagging.
Should we also have some custom reasons? If so what might be suitable?
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What should our reference policy be?
There are some things that are common sense. For example, it's pretty clear that if someone licenses a software program with a free license, then a person using the software has certain freedoms ...
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Tag [license] or [licensing]
I've noticed that we have two tags which essentially seem to mean the same thing: [license] and [licensing]. Which one should we keep? Or is there maybe a subtle distinction which might make it worth ...
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Are getting started questions relevant here?
Now that we have this network, I'm sure there'll be newbies coming in asking questions like,
How do I get started with Mozilla/KDE/etc?
or
How do I start contributing to project xyz?
I guess ...
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How to avoid political wars?
In chat it was brought up, that the site tends to become political. While I don't think that's the case I may overlook the things, so I ask how the community stands towards it. Also, how should we ...
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Should we just allow open source?
In the question Are NC Creative Commons licenses on topic? I argued that the NC-clause of Creative Commons (and ND for that matter) isn't conforming to Open Source (while CC-BY and CC-SA are). But in ...
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What should our site-description be?
We have mods now, that can change a lot of things, among them the site-description in the tour.
It currently reads:
Open Source Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for
people organizing,...
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Should we copy questions from the GNU GPL FAQ
I noticed the question How to license program output? which is a verbatim copy of an entry of the GNU GPL FAQ. Naturally, the current top answer also quotes said entry of the FAQ.
Should we get ...
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Are FAQs on-topic?
This question is asking a question that can easily be answered by reading the resources from the well known resources (FSF and OSI).
I think such a question is a FAQ regarding Free Software and Open ...
user114
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What are the criteria for which a name will be considered acceptable?
Tim Post (Director of Stack Overflow Communities) has visited this site before to help us with the issue of choosing a site name. He and the other staff had ruled out the 'Free & Open' name, but I ...
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How do we neutralize the site to be more accepting?
We've seen many issues so far on the issue of neutrality between things such as:
the Open Source Initiative;
the Free Software Foundation;
Creative Commons and more;
Don't get me wrong, the issue ...
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What are our main risks of not getting to public beta?
Although it seems like we have only just started, in private beta years we've been doing this a long time. How are we doing? Is there anything that we should be doing but are not yet? Are we doing ...
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2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, ...
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2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
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Are questions about the licences of popular open source projects on-topic here?
I have a question I want to ask about the license of Ruby (MRI), and what portions of the project it covers (specifically, I'm wondering whether or not it covers bundled gems which are distributed in ...
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Should questions regarding licenses and usage of OSS from other sites be migrated here
I was looking for an answer to a concern of mine and occasionally found it in StackOverflow and it is closed as off-topic which it is there, but I think that the question is pretty on topic in here. ...
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Are licensing posts going to dominate Open Source?
After looking in the "Tags" page on the main site... I've noticed that out of the top 5 tags, 3 of them are licensing tags (license, creative-commons, and licensing)... The top tag on the site being ...
user144
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Community Promotion Ads [duplicate]
We recently entered public beta, so we need to get word out to the rest of Stack Exchange about Open Source Stack Exchange. One of the best ways of doing this is with Community Promotion Ads.
Here is ...
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What, exactly, are moderators doing to review reviewers?
In a recent meta post, which has since changed dramatically so many comments are no longer on topic there, a moderator said a few things that I feel need to be discussed.
The following quotes are ...
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What should we name our chatroom?
The default was Open Source, I, on a whim, changed it to The MIT License.
Let's let the community decide, how should we name our chatroom?
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Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
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Should we reach out to all organizations?
Earlier this evening, many members of the community participated in chat with a representative (for lack of a better word that comes to mind) from the Open Source Initiative.
Having been initially ...
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Advertising Open Source - Community Ads for 2016
It's 2016, and the new 300px-wide sidebar has just rolled out network wide. When that's complete, graduated sites around the network will start to run new community ad cycles.
To be ready for them, ...
ArtOfCodeMod
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Beyond licensing
I feel that one of the main draws of Open Source Stack Exchange are discussions around licensing.
These are of course essential to free and open source software but they are not all of it.
How ...
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Winter Bash 2016 is almost here - do we want to participate?
Like last year, I have an email from Stack Exchange, telling me that Winter Bash 2016 is ready, and will start on 19 December.
Because previous years have seen such a positive response, the default ...
ArtOfCodeMod
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License recommendations
Intro: Contrary to popular belief, recommendation questions can work well on Stack Exchange. See for instance Software Recommendations, where questions and answers are of high quality.
QUESTION: ...
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What urgent matters do we need to resolve?
What this post is for
Some issues we face as a community are more urgent than others. We can ask meta-questions about them, upvote those meta questions and the mods can feature some of those meta-...
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Do we want to allow question about specific open source products?
Differences between Firefox and Iceweasel is a question that isn't directly about open source, but rather about an open source product. This is not exactly included in our scope as it is, but could ...
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Discussing scope overhauls with Programmers SE
Earlier today, a few moderators (myself included) had a chat about site overlap and scope reform across various sites. Before I continue, let me make note of a highly related post:
Revisiting what is ...
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