Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[Luis Menina <liberforce freeside fr>]

Le 15/08/2013 17:21, fr33domlover a écrit :
> On ה', 2013-08-15 at 17:07 +0200, Luis Menina wrote:
> > Le 15/08/2013 16:48, fr33domlover a écrit :
> > > But assume I'm new to Gnome and I want to contribute. It's easier for me
> > > to do it through GitHub than through Gitorious, because of the mirrors. 
> >
> > Sure. But if you know GNOME, you also may contribute through bugzilla by
> > sending patches using the GNOME repositories. This has not changed.
> > We're adding freedom of choice here, not removing any.
>
> Of course. But since only *one* service is being supported, specifically
> the proprietary GitHub, I suggest the decision is considered seriously
> before it's made. We're not adding several git hosting services, just a
> specific one, and it's centralized.
>
> > > So you do encourage the use of GitHub, even if you don't intend to.
> >
> > It's indirectly encouraging github over gitorious or gitlab, because one
> > has to come first, and that Github has more users. This doesn't mean
> > that gitlab mirrors nor gitorious are forbidden. GNOME has always been a
> > do-ocracy. The one who does the work has the final word, so I'm pretty
> > sure anyone wanting to help mirror on gitlab or gitorious is welcome.
> >
> > Gitlab and gitorious people who strive to keep using only free software
> > are still able to contribute using a GNOME account, bugzilla and the
> > GNOME repositories. Nothing changes for them.
> >
> > Please keep in mind that here only *more* choices are given to people,
> > not *less*. That's all about sharing.
> >
> > > Maybe GitHub will help more people contribute, but I don't see why it's
> > > so important. I prefer to have 3 developers who care, than to have 5 who
> > > don't care. If I didn't mind to use GitHub, I could as well not mind
> > > using Windows. GitHub is proprietary, just like Windows.
> >
> > Do you dismiss a Linux user that uses Skype ? Would you prefer a Windows
> > user that uses Firefox ? For me they are both free software users, event
> > if not using 100% free software. I personally prefer that people use
> > what they want. They should be able to decide if free software is a good
> > thing for them. Free software is good, but it should be praised for
> > being better than the competition *and* free, not just for being free.
>
> I don't dismiss anyone. I just examine things from the point-of-view of
> a developer who believes in software freedom, and hopes other developers
> here believe in it too. Because of the importance of freedom, not
> because it saves money.
>
> I agree people should decide what they think about free software. That's
> why it's important official GitHub mirroring is not done without giving
> maintainers a unique switch for their module, to control whether it's
> mirrored or not.
>
> Free software doesn't have to be better than the competition:
> Libreoffice lacks some MS Office features, and still many people use it.
> Same for many other projects. Personally, I use free software that
> crashes, instead of a proprietary alternative, just because it's free
> software. Software freedom is important to me, very much. That's why I
> ask one little thing:
>
> If you want to make the GitHub mirroring official for the Gnome
> project's modules, allow maintainers to turn it on/off easily. That's
> all. If people as why some modules turn it off, you can say "GitHub is
> proprietary after all, in contradiction to our goals of spreading
> software freedom" and they'll understand.
>
> Is it a legitimate request to have such a switch for maintainers?

If you're producing free software, you don't control where it ends. If
you use a licence that forbids some uses (nuclear plants, weapons), then
it's not free software anymore. The same applies here. Your code could
end up on github anyway (or even already is), and you would have no mean
to prevent this, because that's how free software works. So why use so
much stop energy for that? Better work on having mirrors on gitorious
and gitlab too.

The turning on/off should IMHO be about each maintainer being allowed to
enable/disable pull requests. When disabled, we should make it clear for
contributors on the clones that the maintainer won't care about looking
at the contributions there, and point them out to bugzilla and the GNOME
repositories.