On the subject of becoming organized

Dear HTACG Team Members,

We're all a bunch of developers that want to make HTML Tidy succeed, but we
all have different visions of what success is. For most of us (including
me), we've been satisfied that Tidy does (or could be made to do, with our
own tweaks) what it's supposed to do.

To me, though, that's a very narrow view of success and it's only led Tidy
to point that it was a few weeks ago (and, really, still as of this
writing). HTACG was started in order to prevent this from happening again.

Although working, stable HTML Tidy is certainly our highest priority, we
can't ignore other tasks that will ensure HTML Tidy's reputation in the
greater world. A broader definition for success should include:

- a stable release (discussed in a previous list message).

- an active development branch (also discussed previously).

- a transparent change control process (via the mailing lists discussed
previously).

- an open community available to all comers (via HTACG).

- specific guidelines and best practices for feature suggestions, pull
requests, testing, and so on, that anyone can reference and not feel like
an outsider if they wish to participate (some drafts and placeholders at
https://github.com/htacg/community).


I realize that a lot of coders just want to code, make pull requests, etc.,
and that's fine. I know that asking you to subscribe to mailing lists kind
of sucks. Three weeks ago I was content simply maintaining my own fork and
didn't envision myself trying to really the troops.

But if you're interested in the future health of HTML Tidy, we have to put
the groundwork into place, and it has to have at least just a little bit of
organization discipline. It doesn't have to a rigid structure, but it has
to have some type of structure in order to maintain credibility to people
and organizations that are not already a part of our group.

Please support us by joining this mailing list. You do not have to be an
HTACG member to post or to subscribe, although HTACG members will be able
to vote once I iron out those details.

-- 
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Jim Derry
Clinton Township, MI, USA
Nanjing, Jiangsu, China PRC