> Everybody gets to use their favourite tooling

well, no. For my work, my favorite tooling is the one that:

- Allows 1-command checkout of proposed change

- Allows two-way discussion, with ability to comment either on specific lines of the patch, or on the overall system, and with ability to mark each comment "resolved" or not.

- Has some sort of dashboards that shows what needs to be done

I can use lowest common denominator - the email messages - but it is really lacking & awkward. Even basic merge request / pull request interface are much nicer.

Personally, I think discussions should happen organically over any channel; a tool like Github only gives a false impression that everything happens there, but really it usually doesn’t. Regarding dashboard for maintainers, there are tools that do it well, but usually they are dedicated to that; I don’t think using PRs or issues gives a complete exhaustive picture of what needs to be done, and forcing every maintainer to use one lowest common denominator tool like Github is these days doesn’t seem like a good idea.

As far as checkout, doing it with an emailed patch is one command, actually.