Richard Fontana wrote today:
Of course. Though I don't think I would be in full control of a
repository
on
k.copyleft.org.
Honestly, I could really use someone to volunteer to be a "backup root" on
k.copyleft.org, so if you'd exchange with me a promise you can be the backup
root (e.g., for when I'm on planes without network access, etc. and something
goes down), then I'd be glad to give you root privs on
k.copyleft.org. This
does not magically make Kallithea Franklin-Street-Statement-compliant, but
this particular instance might be for this particular project. ;)
I would say, with the passage of time, the notion that
GitHub-centric
hosting would result in a significantly larger community of contributors
seems questionable
I'd go so far as to say that the anecdotal evidence on that is
incontrovertible on that point, since copyleft-next has been least active
during the post-Gitoriopocalypse era.
(though I am sure some of the issues and comments made through GitHub
on
copyleft-next would not have existed had GitHub not been used).
Well, there is still no Free Software issue tracker that is equivalent to
GitHub's in terms of pull-request integration (Kallithea doesn't have one,
and in fact the Kallithea project itself is still using Bitbucket for that,
which is just as bad as GitHub.
I mean, I guess we could all go down the Phabricator rathole and see if its
issue tracker is "good enough".....
On the other hand, I must admit that my personal views towards GitHub
have
become if anything more positive over the years. Some of [the negative]
reaction [to GitHub's good policies] has appropriated the rhetoric of
proponents of free network services.
This specific argument seems flawed. IIUC, you're arguing that you're more
postive toward GitHub: GitHub tried to do something good on an issue
unrelated to net-service freedom, and that you became more tolerant of
GitHub's net-service freedom compromises because their enemies on the
unrelated issue coopted network service freedom rhetoric.
I should probably blog the rest of this email rather than merely post it
here, but I started writing it here, and, well, it is relevant (albeit as a
META issue) to this project, so here goes:
IMO, the remaining central problem with GitHub is two-fold:
0. many of the features require local installation of proprietary software,
in the form of JavaScript.
1. Failure to comply with other principles in the Franklin Street Statement.
I'm trying to decide if these remaining problems morally demand me to limit
*my* use of GitHub. Notably, I suspect that (0) can be resolved with the
Free Software github CLI tool I mentioned earlier in this thread. If so, the
only moral argument under (0) is that focusing development of a project at
GitHub likely encourages others to use proprietary software (because they
will likely use the web interface, not the CLI tool).
With (1), the Gitoriopocalypse taught me that overzealous attention to
liberation of the entire server-side software in a SaaSS [0] situation might
cause users to miss more important netservice freedom issues. I do think
GitHub is SaaSS, but does the existence of
https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup mitigate that issue enough that enough
that a full-on boycott is overkill? As it turned out, I had to *hand paste*
pending merge requests from Gitorious over to Kallithea because there was no
export tool!
I'm pondering with these questions personally as well -- I'm currently using
github as "Git repository backup" for most of my projects, since I don't
have
"backup" for the Kallithea instances I'm personally in charge of.
I've not received a pull request on any of those projects on GitHub, but if I
did, would I close it with a message saying why to boycott it? Would I
accept the pull request, use github for that one workflow, and encourage the
contributor to use the Kallithea instance in future? I honestly don't know.
Again, these are meta-issues that I'm pondering, and I wonder if
copyleft-next would like to ponder them as well, and perhaps, given Fontana's
apparent increased liking of GitHub, pick a more "meet them in the middle"
tact about GitHub. I have to admit I'd be curious to see that, since roughly
*no one* on GitHub ever raises the issues of concern, maybe the best tact is
to "collaborate on GitHub, but find a way to remind users about the
compromises they're making".
Do you have any thoughts on this, Fontana?
[0] SaaSS is a very useful term coined by Richard M. Stallman, in case anyone
on this list hasn't previously encountered it:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html
--
-- bkuhn
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