X-Git-Url: http://www.git.stargrave.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=HACKING;h=a766820957f89748ebd4522efdd9c55a6a94eaff;hb=65ff86f333a1f8276943248efef7fa2a64afe9e3;hp=46f8a3edd93f1f8abdfa002fc082117c4b804acf;hpb=938cf615b743c62f5359285c2fd7da7b9f0ba6b0;p=public-inbox.git diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING index 46f8a3ed..a7668209 100644 --- a/HACKING +++ b/HACKING @@ -6,10 +6,36 @@ It is archived at . Please consider our goals in mind: - Accessibility, Compatibility, Performance + Decentralization, Accessibility, Compatibility, Performance These goals apply to everyone: users viewing over the web or NNTP, sysadmins running public-inbox, and other hackers working public-inbox. +We will reject any feature which advocates or contributes to any +particular instance of a public-inbox becoming a single point of failure. +Things we've considered but rejected include: + +* exposing article serial numbers outside of NNTP +* allowing readers to inject metadata (e.g. votes) + +We care about being accessible to folks with vision problems and/or +lack the computing resources to view so-called "modern" websites. +This includes folks on slow connections and ancient browsers which +may be too difficult to upgrade due to resource demands. + +Only depend on Free Software packages which exist in the "main" +section of Debian 7.0 and later. (We will bump version requirements +as time passes, but this is current as of January 2016). +In general, we favor mature and well-tested old things rather than +the shiny new. + +Avoid relying on compiled modules too much. Even if it is Free, +compiled code makes packages more expensive to audit, build, and +distribute and verify. public-inbox itself will only be implemented +in scripting languages (currently Perl 5). + +Performance should be reasonably good for server administrators, too, +and we will sacrifice features to achieve predictable performance. + See design_www.txt and design_notes.txt in the Documentation/ directory for design decisions made during development.