Re: Announcing GNOME's official GitHub mirror

[Christian Persch <chpe gnome org>]

Hi;

From the associated blog post:
> As per people concerned about the fact that github is a closed source
> service, I have a few things to highlight: this is just a mirror, we
> won't rely on them for any of our activities. Also, GitHub has
> contributed a great deal of their infrastructure code to the free
> software commons and they offer a free and very valuable service to
> anyone who has a free software project. I hope that this alleviates
> any concerns with regards to this topic.

It doesn't. 

By using gibhub for our 'official' git mirror, we're still
promoting the use of a proprietary web service. I do see the advantage
of having a web space that allows anyone to put up a clone/fork of one
of our repos, but why was github chosen instead of a truly Free (AGPL'd)
web service like gitorious?

Also, I'd like to question when and how it was decided to give this
github mirror 'official' status? I see from the board meeting minutes
of 9.7.2013 that the foundation is sending a trademark complaint letter
to an academic institution because they're (completely legitimately IMO)
abbreviating "General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment" with
"GNOME"; but OTOH we're allowing a proprietary web service to use the
trademark as the "GNOME Official Github Mirror" ‽

Very concerned,
        Christian