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mailgun / flanker

Python email address and Mime parsing library
http://www.mailgun.com
Apache License 2.0
1.63k stars 204 forks source link

Why the software history was not kept? #119

Open gustavopinto opened 8 years ago

gustavopinto commented 8 years ago

Hi there,

I'm a researcher studying software evolution. As part of my current research, I'm studying the implications of open-sourcing a proprietary software, for instance, if the project succeed in attracting newcomers. However, I observed that some projects, like flanker, deleted their software history.

https://github.com/mailgun/flanker/commit/9eae95fe24a2e70bbcf3a365f0425477233cbd63

Knowing that software history is indispensable for developers (e.g., developers need to refer to history several times a day), I would like to ask flanker developers the following four brief questions:

  1. Why did you decide to not keep the software history?
  2. Do the core developers faced any kind of problems, when trying to refer to the old history? If so, how did they solve these problems?
  3. Do the newcomers faced any kind of problems, when trying to refer to the old history? If so, how did they solve these problems?
  4. How does the lack of history impacted on software evolution? Does it placed any burden in understanding and evolving the software?

Thanks in advance for your collaboration,

Gustavo Pinto, PhD http://www.gustavopinto.org

gustavopinto commented 8 years ago

Hi @russjones, do you have any comments?