Hello,

I'm on the development team for OpenColorIO, and would like to raise the conversation around project communication platforms. Quickly looking at the Collaboration Tools list for ASWF I see the usual options of Mailing Lists and Issue Tracking. However, OCIO has greatly benefited by having real-time communication through a Slack group which promotes candid responses from maintainers and community members instead of long essays like this. I believe this fosters a greater feeling of participation and community which was very helpful in re-kindling development with the project.

I'm am definitely not a proponent of Slack. In fact, I really dislike it and am starting the conversation with our community on switching to an alternative. When/if OpenColorIO is moved under the care of the ASWF, I would like to see a real-time communication platform promoted. At the moment the best option which I have yet to use in practice is Zulip (https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source/).

The features they offer seem to be a substantial gain over Slack or alternatives.

• Apache 2.0 Licensed
• Free hosting for OSS (maybe ASWF hosts a server)
• Join without invitation
• Permalink to conversations
• Github issue links e.g. #1234
• Github/Jenkins/TravisCI integrations
• Proper nested conversations (thank goodness)
• Public archival coming soon apparently

In summary, real-time communication with asynchronous participation is vital to project success. With the declining use of email-lists ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.09529.pdf) I'd love to see an option promoted and used across ASWF projects.