collaboration: explore communication and collaboration channels

[rmsyn]

Currently, all meetings are held on Google Meet, and collaboration on consortium documents is over Google Docs.

This issue is a proposal to explore communication and collaboration channels used in a number of other Rust work groups.

Some platforms for consideration:

Async Communication

• Zulip (https://zulipchat.com)
  • open source
  • used by most (all?) other Rust work groups
  • handles discussion threads
  • Zulip provides a public server
  • we already have a group under https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com
  • we could self-host a Zulip server, if necessary

Document Collaboration

• HackMD (https://hackmd.io)
  • used by a number of other Rust work groups
  • handles most use-cases covered by Google Docs
  • for non-Markdown documents, we can use GitHub as a document store
• Etherpad (https://etherpad.org)
  • open source
  • handles most use-cases covered by Google Docs
  • a number of public instances are available: Etherpad instances
  • we could self-host an Etherpad server, if necessary

Meetings

• Jitsi (https://jitsi.org)
  • open source
  • can handle many simultaneous connections to multi-party video conferences
  • almost a 1-to-1 alternative to Google Meet or Zoom
  • Jitsi provides a public server to create video conferences
  • we could self-host a Jitsi server, if necessary

In discussions, it has been brought up that corporate firewalls may be an issue for some members.

I would encourage such members to weigh in on what platforms their corporate firewalls allow, and suggest to your security team to make allowances for the above domains. I know this may not be possible, but asking hurts no one :)

If it is not possible due to firewall issues, could that be resolved by the consortium registering a domain, paying for a VPS, and self-hosting the relevant services?

If we go the self-hosting route, I'm willing to contribute time and resources to making it happen.

Please add your thoughts concerns about using the above services.

At the moment, I am unable to attend meetings, and/or contribute to collaborative document editing.

[PLeVasseur]

Hey all -- I asked @rmsyn when they came to me with these options to gather feedback from the rest of the coding guidelines group.

I'm not opinionated on what we use, I just know the tools we currently use (Zulip + Google Meet + Google Docs) for running the group.

I'd recommend letting folks weigh in here and IMHO switch to a different set of tools if there's:

1. desire among a fair number of folks
2. no blockers / setup issues with the tools for most folks

So sound off in the comments here on which tools you're interested in using and if there's any known blockers to the tools.

[JoelMarcey]

At the moment, I am unable to attend meetings, and/or contribute to collaborative document editing.

Is this because of a technical reason?

[rmsyn]

Is this because of a technical reason?

Yes, I am unable to access Google Suite services.