Last week a group of some high profile open source developers banded together to write an “Open Letter to Github” to express their sepecific frustrations with Github Issues. At the time of writing the number of co-signers is over 1200 individuals. Their demands are simple:
- Issues needs custom fields and enforceable templates.
- Issues needs a 👍/👎 voting mechanism to reduce email noise.
- Issues needs better
CONTRIBUTING.mdpromotion.
I agree with these concerns. They slow the progress of open software. I would also pile on that the Mobile version of Github issues is unusable due to lack of basic feature parity.
Aside from bending the ears of people I know there, Github support channels feels like submitting your feedback to a dumpster. It’s a little alarming that Github isn’t in constant communication with their higher profile developers, using them for research on product needs.
What’s more concerning, tweets from ex-Githubber, Zach Holman, seem to confirm the worst possible scenario…
Really makes me sad to read https://t.co/pCls7jN8dp. Half the points were on my todo list for 2015. So much more could’ve been done.
— Zach Holman (@holman) January 15, 2016@jarjar2k7 no one’s working on them, so probably not
— Zach Holman (@holman) January 15, 2016…Github Issues might be a ghost ship. The feature doesn’t appear prioritized or staffed. It’s incommunicado. A ship with no crew, decommissioned but not yet scrapped.