Move to an Organization

[notoriousb1t]

Over in TypeStyle we are discussing possibly moving to csstype instead of maintaining types in our repository. https://github.com/typestyle/typestyle/pull/245

One of my biggest fears with this move is that csstype has one maintainer. Since we have many of the same goals, I think it could make sense for csstype to join the TypeStyle organization if you are open to that. I think many of the members of TypeStyle may be open to that.

If not, I would love to help out with this project. At the very least, I think we can combine efforts to making CSS type safe.

[meyer]

Unsolicited 2 cents:

I think your fears might be assuaged by the beauty of opensource. What I mean:

1. There are lots of high-profile repos on personal accounts that are doing just fine.
2. If the maintainer loses interest, you can fork the repo.
3. @frenic has been incredibly receptive to PRs and this project is going at a healthy pace.

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I have no say in the particulars of this discussion, but I’ll tell you why I like csstype where it is.

I discussed this very topic with some folks a little while before csstype existed. I was looking for a set of camelcased types to use in a CSS in JS lib that I maintain. I wanted types based on the newly-released MDN data—something that was codegen’d, not hand-written. I couldn’t find an MDN-based type generator so I started building one, but I didn’t know where to put it. I didn’t want to put it in the same org as my CSS in JS library, since it’s not specific to my project. Someone alerted me to the cssinjs org. I spoke with some folks in the cssinjs org and they liked the idea. They even created a repo for the project (cssinjs/style-type-generator) and added me to their organisation.

I never felt 100% ok with my generic types sitting in the cssinjs GitHub org, though, and I’ll tell you why: despite the name, the cssinjs org is not a generic CSS in JS org. It’s the org built around a specific CSS in JS solution—JSS. It is highly likely that the requirements of JSS would drive the changes made to the style type generator. That didn’t seem right to me. Moreover, it seemed a bit weird that I’d have dependencies from another CSS in JS org in my CSS in JS project. Vanity on my part, perhaps, but it was my personal project and a lot of hard work. If I was going to do the majority of the work, I would have liked the credit along with it (I hated group assignments in school for the same reason).

I see the same similarities with the TypeStyle org. “Making CSS type safe” is something we all want, but the org exists for a specific implementation of that goal. The TypeStyle org gets unspoken and unearned credit when the csstype repo appears under that name. Doesn’t seem right to me.

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Anyway, a few weeks later, @frenic released csstype which was infinitely better than the shitty pile of scripts I was working on and the whole problem went away.

Sorry for the novella.

[notoriousb1t]

I give your novella ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 😄

Regardless of what organization, I think csstype joining or creating an organization would improve confidence in it.

If the main maintainer loses interest, there won't be a need to fragment the community around it by forking the repo. TypeStyle benefits from the fact that when there is a major change, we discuss it as a community rather than an individual making all of the decisions alone.

[frenic]

I have basically the same story as @meyer. I was about to create my own personal touch for CSS-in-JS called glitz and one of my main goals was to provide solid TypeScript typings, which became a major issue. Because even with the fact that half a dozen other libraries had similar typings for CSS made by hand (in various quality). None of them showed any interest of making them usable by others.

It made me sad watching all of these sheets being created and maintained by different people having wasted numerous of hours doing the same thing but for different interests. So I wanted to create something that wasn't tied to any specific interest and instead provide typings that would benefit most of us in an attempt to redirect that wasted time somewhere else and create even better typings together. Even if there's no other major maintainer for this specific project yet. There are hundreds of maintainers of the MDN data and MDN browser compat data which csstype is in large part all about.

With that said and some other important facts that @meyer is mentioning; no, I'm not interested in moving this repo to TypeStyle. But I welcome anyone who would be interesting in improving these typings or its data sources.

[notoriousb1t]

Regardless of what organization, I think csstype joining or creating an organization would improve confidence in it.

Will you consider creating an organization for csstype?

[frenic]

Sure, that's a good idea to follow the "common interest" principle. But hope it can wait. I'll be AFK for a short while. My partner is about to deliver my third child about now. :sweat_smile:

[notoriousb1t]

Congratulations! 😄 I found that when I had my third kid I ran out of hands.