[PureOS] "PureOS changes" notifications

[Chris Lamb]

Hi -project,

Many years ago I created an IRC bot for Debian that would live on
its own channel and simply notify on new uploads, bugs and similar
changes in that distribution:

  https://chris-lamb.co.uk/projects/debian-devel-changes-bot

… it is now rather popular and, indeed, many people have noted to me
in the interim years not only how motivating it was to be exposed to
others' work like that without having to explicitly or actively
look for it but it informs & keeps them up-to-date on the project
in a wider, less-technical, sense.

I found it also a valuable learning tool — if I don't understand a
bug report that scrolls past I sometimes click it and invariably
end up learning something I didn't previously know.

§

In this light, I created the following ticket early last year to
get this rolling for PureOS:

  https://tracker.pureos.net/T375

… however, movement on this appears to have stalled or otherwise is
lower on others' priority lists than I believe it should be.

The basic idea would be to have a separate "dev/pureos/changes" (or
similarly named) Matrix room that would have this info spammed into
it. Discussions would remain on dev/pureos or, of course, on issue
tracker, etc.

The bug itself unfortunately is a little ambiguous about what we
would like to include in the notifications (tracker bugs vs uploads
vs Git commits...), but I firmly and adamently believe that getting
*anything* at the moment would be great start so I wasn't being
overly specific by design. (The task is also being tracked in
parallel on the sysadmin tasks tracker too, adding somewhat to the
confusion.)

Note that this would also help relieve some developers of feeling
like they are the only ones who know about certain areas,
preventing further potential "siloing" of knowledge.

Just to underline, whilst it might appear to be a "wishlist"
feature, I believe it will provide some always-needeed social
cohesion and connection within the PureOS development team! As
geeks we often criminally underrated such things.. we are humans
too!

Any thoughts?  In particular, can we get some strong +1's from you
all (especially Jeremiah) to take back to the ticket and hopefully
parley that into getting this reprioritised?


Best wishes,

-- 
Chris Lamb
https://puri.sm