Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[fr33domlover <fr33domlover mailoo org>]

My code could get to GitHub anyway, you're right. But I prefer it get
there manually, without me officially mirroring it there, and not in an
official automatic Gnome-global manner.

It has nothing to do with adding other services too. Even if as a
maintainer I'd have Gitorious mirroring support, I'd like it to be on
while GitHub mirroring is off.

The reason: GitHub is proprietary and centralized. I don't prevent
people from cloning and uploading to GitHub: I just don't want it to be
done officially, if a maintainer chooses to turn it off.

Just a little switch, that's all.

A pull request switch is a good idea too (in addition to the mirroring
on/off switch), for the practical reasons mentioned by many people here.
I agree.

On ה', 2013-08-15 at 17:39 +0200, Luis Menina wrote:
> 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.