Re: [DISCUSSION] Contributing policy for WORG

[Joseph Turner <joseph@ushin.org>]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Corwin recently noticed that our
> https://orgmode.org/worg/worg-about.html page is not very consistent
> about whom and how should contribute to WORG.
>
> One part of that page suggests to "Create an account on Sourcehut" and
> then push changes freely, while another part suggests going through the
> mailing list.
>
> My first reflex was to make things consistent with Org code
> contributions, but I recall that Bastien had somewhat different ideas
> about WORG contributions - more in line with "free to push changes" and
> generally with a spirit of wiki pages (Bastien, correct me if I am
> making things up).
>
> Now, thinking about it, I do believe that our general goal should be
> making it easier for users to push changes to WORG - easier than
> contributing code. And these days creating an account might be easier
> for people compared to writing to a mailing list.
>
> Maybe we can simplify things even more by settings something up so that
> people can download, edit, and upload WORG pages right from Emacs. For
> example, hyperdrive might be used as an alternative to git workflow,
> especially if we can cook some kind of setup via a simple M-x <dwm>
> command. (see <https://breatheoutbreathe.in/blog/2024-12-16-mirror-worg-to-a-hyperdrive.html>)

Thanks for the suggestion!  I imagine such a command would do this:

- install hyperdrive.el
- download and install external gateway program with hyperdrive-install
- open worg hyperdrive.  We could use the hyperdrive I created for the
  blog post hyper://bpb1bq6sdfajw4bok7k9tdmrq153pbwzcyfkrqrfxw3hhihyddhy/
  which is also accessible here:
  https://bpb1bq6sdfajw4bok7k9tdmrq153pbwzcyfkrqrfxw3hhihyddhy.hyper.hypha.coop/
  but I'd suggest the worg maintainers (Ihor) create a new hyperdrive that
  mirrors worg, so that the maintainers control the keys.
- Create a new hyperdrive which mirrors the maintainers' worg hyperdrive.

Then the users edit their hyperdrive and then run a second command to:

- send the URL of the user-created hyperdrive to the maintainers.  How?
  Via email?  hyperdrive.el doesn't currently have a way to "push"
  changes to someone else, only "pull", although this could be added.

For the worg use-case, where all changes need to go back to a central
hub (the worg maintainers and the central git repository), I think
hyperdrive might not help all that much.

Hyperdrive is useful for distributing content like a personal website on
a peer-to-peer network.  The hyperdrive.el Emacs interface adds things
like Org mode link handling, but it doesn't support collaboratively
editing text documents.  [ The hypercore stack does include the
https://github.com/holepunchto/autobase library for creating multiwriter
data structures, but significant effort would be required to create an
auto-merging program on top of hyperdrive.  Here's an example of the
kind of multiwriter programs which can be written with autobase:
https://github.com/hypercore-protocol/p2p-multiwriter-with-autobase ]

From Ihor's direct email to me:

> I imagined that we can simply point users to
> 1. install hyperdrive from ELPA
> 2. M-x magic
> 3. View/edit/add WORG pages locally in Emacs
> 4. <more magic> (involving me adding user hyperdrives to sync with mine,
>    where I can push upstream)
> 5. The edits appear on WORG website

Something like this might work for one-time contributions, but
subsequent contributions would require restarting the process, since
after the maintainers copy the desired changes, there's currently no way
merge the two hyperdrive histories.

Perhaps someone wants to write a CRDT designed to handle Org documents. :)

Joseph