Consider to transfer ownership of PhoneNumberKit to the Community

[kuyazee]

As of the moment, the library does not get updated frequently, and there is a backlog of pull requests and issues that need to be checked.

I think it's time for the community to take over this beloved library.

[joshuakcockrell]

I agree that community ownership would be best at this point. We have been maintaining our own private fork which is several commits ahead of the latest February release.

At the very least we need someone from the community able to merge in the several open pull requests. It looks like community members have been active in reviewing the pull requests but no one can merge them which is a big blocker.

[kuyazee]

That is true @joshuakcockrell, I have also been maintaining my own private fork so that the validations is always up to date.

There are also pull requests by @twitterkb that have updated the project to Xcode 10.2 and Swift 5.

I'll try to communicate with @marmelroy about this on Twitter. Last time I talked with him was about adding Documentation on how to update the metadata.

[twitterkb]

as it happens, @joshuakcockrell & i work together on the same team at Twitter.

i have a fork at https://github.com/twitterkb/PhoneNumberKit that we use at Twitter and integrates the pull requests you mentioned. i would be to act as maintainer of that with Josh and several of the rest of you as approvers for commits, and effectively make it a community repo.

[kuyazee]

@twitterkb @joshuakcockrell since we'll be waiting for @marmelroy's final decision can we consolidate the PR's for now?

Maybe you could delete your previous PR's and create a new (semi-final) PR containing all the previous ones, just linked in the description.

I'll also draft the Organization PhoneNumberKit here on github where we'll transfer the repo, and add you as admins.

[joshuakcockrell]

I'm a little worried about splitting the community here. Marmelroy's repo ranks very high in SEO and there are already 337 forks of PhoneNumberKit. Ideally, @marmelroy would just transfer PhoneNumberKit over to an organization. That way we could easily manage permissions across the community and he could stay involved.

[kuyazee]

@joshuakcockrell That's the idea. I created the Organization as PhoneNumberKit so the repository could be PhoneNumberKit/PhoneNumberKit, I've invited him as an Owner as well. I've actually sent invites to you and @twitterkb as well.

[twitterkb]

sorry, i've been out of town, so only responding intermittently. i've accepted the organization invitation now.

i understand the worry about splitting the community, but i think we are also in a place where the source base is possibly forking due to inattention by the current owner. for the pull requests we have in place, we are already relying on them locally and have been for a while.

i think it would be okay at this point to fork this repo to the PhoneNumberKit/PhoneNumberKit repo, and invite anyone who has been following this version of it to migrate there … since there's been no activity for months here in any case.

[kuyazee]

That's ok, I understand if you guys are also busy. For now we could probably go with @twitterkb's suggestion and make the org public with a fork as as the source base, but personally I think it's best if we wait for @marmelroy's response since it would be better if the transfer is official.

I've reached out to him through the Email and LinkedIn account listed on his site. If there's no luck with that I'll also try his Twitter and Instagram, but that's all I can say for now, since there has been no response as of yet.

He's probably really busy right now, but I would really like if we keep him in the loop of things.

[twitterkb]

i'm ok taking your lead w.r.t. waiting for @marmelroy's response.

[kuyazee]

This is bad 😅

[isupremedyou]

@kuyazee, was that your attempted email to contact him?

[kuyazee]

@travischapman yes it is, for now I'll try his twitter account. I think this email is dead.

This new attached screenshot is the second failed attempt by gmail.

[kuyazee]

Hello guys, 9 days later and there's still no update from @marmelroy 🙁. @twitterkb I guess it's time we go with your suggestion and use your repository as the Main repo for the community maintained PhoneNumberKit.

[bmwalters]

👍 on forking to an organization. There are some pretty important issues and PRs that have been neglected including #194 (which I would definitely update if moving to a maintained repo) and even basic Swift 5 updates in #263 as mentioned.

[isupremedyou]

@kuyazee agreed. I hope all is well with @marmelroy.

[kuyazee]

Here's the PhoneNumberKit organization me, @twitterkb, and @joshuakcockrell setup for the new fork.

Will be doing custom pod installs for now

pod 'PhoneNumberKit', :git => 'https://github.com/PhoneNumberKit/PhoneNumberKit.git'

Hopefully when @marmelroy comes back, he can transfer ownership, and we can use the normal installation, but until then here's our workaround.

If you could guys could help me with contacting him on twitter his handle is also @marmelroy .

[twitterkb]

ok, for https://github.com/PhoneNumberKit/PhoneNumberKit, i have pushed to master several housecleaning patches (which i consider to be pretty non-controversial) that have been in review as pull-requests on this repo for a long time, and most of which have been running in production for us for a long time. they include primarily version upgrades:

• Prepare for Swift 5 + Xcode 10.2 compatibility ,
• Xcode 10.2: update localization configuration for 0 files
• Xcode 10.2: Swift 5.0 migration check -> SWIFT_VERSION = 4.2
• Xcode 10.2: mark all upgrades complete to silence warnings

and finally one slightly newer one

• lastUpgradeVersion = "1030" in .xcscheme files.

hopefully there is agreement that these are non-controversial starter patches for the new org, and that everyone using Xcode 10.2 and Xcode 10.3 will benefit from them.

from here, i think we can start going through the process on that repo of further pull requests as forked from that repo.

when @marmelroy returns, hopefully he also approves of this action as well as ownership transfer of the repo.

[kuyazee]

To translate the changes on the fork from this repo, pull requests #274 #275 #273 #263 has been merged on the community one.

This comment is added for tracking purposes, no need to reply.

[marmelroy]

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in responding. Was away for some time.

It's true that this repo has been quite neglected but I've always been happy to give anyone interested in contributing collaborator rights to this project.

What are the arguments in favour of creating a new repo vs adding more collaborators to the current one?

I am a little worried about splitting the community and making it hard for users to find which version they should use.

In the meanwhile, I will update the repo and release a new version with the pending PRs.

For anyone in this thread interested in becoming a collaborator, please add an emoji on this comment.

[kuyazee]

Hello @marmelroy, we actually didn't want to create a new repo, but just to transfer the ownership of your repo to the PhoneNumberKit org, we already sent an invite to you with the user type set to owner.

By the way, if we transfer the ownership of this repository to that organization will the current stars, forks, and SEO rank disappear? If yes, maybe just adding us as collaborators would be the best.

[twitterkb]

Twitter will go whatever way the community prefers, since it seems there may be negative ramifications in terms of forks, stars, etc if we do move.

at this point, i personally sort of prefer going with the PhoneNumberKit organization because the naming of it does feel more official … and i'll admit that we started using the PhoneNumberKit organization version at Twitter just a couple of days ago because all of the momentum seemed to be going that way, and sticking with this repo is now going to mean some git gymnastics to get back.

but, Twitter as an org will be glad to do those gymnastics and stay with this version of the repo if there is collaborator involvement that means no more six month lags in responses to pull requests.

[kuyazee]

Yeah I agree with @twitterkb, will now close this issue and close the PhoneNumberKit organization.

Since it looks like the cons outweigh the pros, I'll be closing this issue and will be making the PhoneNumberKit organization private for now.

[kuyazee]

Hello Everyone, I'm reopening this ticket as the current collaborators need more power because we're currently stuck without having more access. Collaborators don't have access to the settings panel on GitHub projects, only Maintainers have that.

Managing branches - requires admin rights

We need to change where pull requests are being merged so we can have a proper release process

Publishing a new Podspec - requires access to PhoneNumberKit's podspec

Currently we're telling users to use the current commit from the master branch, but it would be better if the current admin hands it over or gives us shared access.

In response to this, I am also proposing that we start a slack/discord channel where current collaborators/maintainers could contact each other. Which do you guys prefer?

cc: @marmelroy @twitterkb @travischapman @bmwalters @joshuakcockrell

[twitterkb]

@joshuakcockrell and i would prefer slack, i think, since that's what we use internally.

and we would be agreeable to having PhoneNumberKit under community control for the reasons state.

[kuyazee]

Hey guys I've just setup the slack workspace, you may self invite using this link

[kuyazee]

Hello @marmelroy since you're online right now it would be great if you could give me and @twitterkb access to the pod trunk so we can release new pod versions. See my message above for more information thank you.

[marmelroy]

Sure @kuyazee.

I've given you owner access to the pod trunk so you can release new pod versions. I will need @twitterkb's email address that's attached to a cocoapod account to add him.

Seems like I can't change the admin rights for collaborators to manage branches. Can you explain a little bit more what y you're trying to do and maybe we can find another solution?

Can you send me a link to join the Slack too?

[kuyazee]

Hello again @marmelroy you can self invite on the slack group using this link it's active though.

For the branching, part I'm thinking something in the lines of having develop as the default branch and master protected a pull-request only branch.