Friday, March 12, 2021

Overcoming fear of public communication in open source

When given the choice between communicating in private or in public, many people opt for private communication. They send questions or unfinished patches to individuals instead of posting on mailing lists, forums, or chat rooms. This post explains why public communication is a faster and more efficient way for developers to communicate in open source communities than private communication. A big factor in the private vs public decision is psychological and I've provided a checklist to give you confidence when communicating in public.

Time and time again I find people initiating discussions through private channels when I know it would be advantageous to have them in public instead. I even keep an email reply template handy asking the sender to reach out to the public mailing list instead of communicating with me in private. Communicating in public is a good default unless you need confidentiality (security bugs, business reasons, etc). So why do people prefer to ask questions or send patches off-list?

Why we fear public communication

I'm interested in understanding why people avoid public communications channels in open source communities. The purpose of mailing lists, chat rooms, and forums is to engage in discussions and share knowledge. Members of these communities are interested in the topic and want to engage in discussion. But there are some common reasons I've found why people don't make use of public communications channels:

  • I don't want to create noise. Mailing lists are home to important discussions between experienced members of the community. Sending a relatively simple question or unfinished patch that no expert would need to ask can make you doubt whether it deserves to be sent at all. This is a fallacy. As long as the question or patches are relevant to the community and you have done your homework (see the checklist below), there is no need to worry about creating noise.
  • I will look dumb or seem like a bad programmer. When you need help it's likely that your understanding is incomplete. We often hold ourselves to artifically high standards when asking for help in public, yet when we observe others interacting in public we don't hold their questions or unfinished code against them. Only if they show a repeated pattern of sloppy work does it damage their reputation. Asking for help in public won't harm your image.
  • Too much traffic. Big open source communities are often so active that no single person can keep track of everything that is going on. Even core members of the community rely on filtering only topics relevant to them. Since filtering becomes necessary at scale anyway, there's no need to worry about sending too many messages.

A note about tone: in the past people were more likely to be put off by the unfriendly tone in chat rooms and mailing lists. Over time the tone seems to have improved in general, probably due to multiple factors like open source becoming more professional, codes of conduct making participants aware of their behavior, etc. I don't want to cover the pros and cons of these factors, but suffice to say that nowadays tone is less of a problem and that's a good thing for everyone.

Why public communication is faster and more efficient

Next let's look at the reasons why public communication is beneficial:

Including the community from the start avoids waste

If you ask for help in private it's possible that the answer you get will not end up being consensus in the community. When you eventually send patches to the community they might disagree with the approach you settled on in private and you'll have to redo your work to get the patches merged. This can be avoided by including the community from the start.

Similarly, you can avoid duplicating work when multiple people are investigating the same problem in private without knowing about each other. If you discuss what you are doing in public then you can collaborate and avoid spending time creating multiple solutions, only one of which can be merged.

Public discussions create a searchable knowledge base

If you find a solution to your problem in private, that doesn't help others who have the same question. Public discussions are typically archived and searchable on the web. When the next person has the same question they will find the answer online and won't need to ask at all!

Additionally, everyone benefits and learns from each other when questions are asked in public. We soak up knowledge by following these discussions. If they are private then we don't have this opportunity.

Get a reply even if the person you asked is unavailable

The person you intended to reach may be away due to timezones, holidays, etc. A private discussion is blocked until they respond to your message. Public discussions, on the other hand, can progress even when the original participants are unavailable. You can get an answer to your question faster by asking in public.

Public activity gives visibility to your work

Private discussions are invisible to your teammates, managers, and other people affected by your progress. When you communicate in public they will be able plan better, help out when needed, and give you credit for the effort you are putting in.

A checklist before you press Send

Hopefully I have encouraged you to go ahead and ask questions or send unfinished patches in public. Here is a checklist that will help you feel confident about communicating in public:

Before asking questions...

  1. Have you searched the web, documentation, and code?
  2. Have you added printfs, GDB breakpoints, or enabled tracing to understand the behavior of the system?

Before sending patches...

  1. Is the code formatted according to the coding standard?
  2. Are the error cases handled, memory allocation/ownership correctly implemented, and thread safety addressed? Most of the time you can figure these out yourself and forgetting to do so may distract from the topics you want help with.
  3. Did you add todo comments pointing out unfinished aspects of the code? Being upfront about what is missing helps readers understand the status of the code and saves them time trying to distinguish requirements you forgot from things that are simply not yet implemented.
  4. Do the commit descriptions explain the purpose of the code changes and does the cover letter give an overview of the patch series?
  5. Are you using git-format-patch --subject-prefix RFC (same for git-publish) to mark your patches as a "request for comment"? This tells people you are seeking input on unfinished code.

Finally, do you know who to CC on emails or mention in comments/chats? Look up the relevant maintainers or active developers using git-log(1), scripts/, etc.


Private communication can be slower, less efficient, and adds less value to an open source community. For many people public communication feels a little scary and they prefer to avoid it. I hope that by understanding the advantages of public communication you will be motivated to use public communication channels more.