[kde-community] Official KDE mirror on github

[Martin Graesslin]

On Monday, August 17, 2015 08:55:57 AM Jos van den Oever wrote:
> On Monday 17 August 2015 07:46:44 Martin Graesslin wrote:
> > Hi community,
> > 
> > over the last months I observed the following:
> > * people not finding our git repositories
> 
> Searching on ixquick:
> 'calligra git' https://community.kde.org/Calligra/Git
> 'kde git' https://community.kde.org/Sysadmin/GitKdeOrgManual
> 'kwin git' https://github.com/faho/kwin-tiling
> 'plasma git' https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/Development
> 
> Searching on Google:
> 'calligra git' https://community.kde.org/Calligra/Building/2
> 'kde git' https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Git
> 'kwin git'
> http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/04/kwin-moved-to-an-own-reposito
> ry/ 'plasma git' -> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/plasma-desktop-git/
> 
> On google the highest link to github was in position 4. Not too bad.
> 
> There was no link to https://projects.kde.org/ or https://quickgit.kde.org/
> 
> What part of the KDE infrastructures can be fixed to make the repositories
> easier to find?
> 
> > * people being surprised that our code is not on github
> 
> This is good moment to educate them on the ideals of KDE.

Yes certainly, I start with lecturing a potential new contributor </sarcasm> 
No, I say sorry that our code is so difficult to find.

> 
> > * some projects starting to use github in addition to our own
> > infrastructure
> We have a manifesto that disallows this.

Yes we have. Do you want to enforce it in this point and kick out projects 
which just won the akademy award, because they are interested in more 
contributors?

The manifesto is there to guide us, but it's not put in stone to not allow to 
change to reality.

> 
> > Whether we like it or not, github has become a place to look for free
> > software nowadays and if you are not on github your software just doesn't
> > exist. Given that we can say KDE doesn't produce source code because we
> > are
> > not on github.
> 
> And Android has become the only phone OS. Windows the only PC os. Microsoft
> Office is the only office suite. Google is the only search engine. Chrome is
> the only browser. Facebook is the only way for communicating with other
> humans (even if they are in view).

And in all cases we integrate with those examples:
* we have software for Android
* we have software for Microsoft Windows
* We have google as default search engine
* We used to have a bridge to Facebook chat system

So apparently we do integrate with proprietary services without losing our 
identity. So I fail to see your point here.

> 
> > Other projects have an official mirror (see e.g. [1]) which solves the
> > three points I have listed above.
> > 
> > I suggest that we:
> > * introduce an official mirror for all KDE repositories on github
> > * replace all existing (non-official) clones
> > * disallow pull-requests on github to not replace our development model by
> > a proprietary platform.
> > 
> > Comments?
> 
> GitHub might be over the top of its popularity. If KDE moves to GitHub, we
> will make our hits in search engines point to GitHub more often.

I am not suggesting to "moving to github".  I'm suggesting to setup an 
official mirror.

> I've started using GitLab for repositories that I have to collaborate on
> with non-KDE people. The reason for this is that GitLab allows moving to
> servers that are under my control. There are other GitHub alternative
> coming up such as Gogs.

The point why I wrote the mail is that people expect things to be on github. 
All these alternatives are great but miss the one point: they are not github. 
And for what is worth: let's also get official mirrors on those 
infrastructure.

> 
> If KDE mirrors to GitHub but not to the alternatives, KDE is giving GitHub
> an advantage over the open competition.

yes, let's do that, too.

> 
> If KDE mirrors to GitHub, it should keep a policy of never linking to
> GitHub. The route from GitHub to KDE should be only one direction. In
> practice people will start pointing to GitHub instead of

fully agree, though it might be difficult in practice. E.g. if we have this 
setup I would do a post that KWin is now on github and link it. So maybe just 
in "official" documentation.

Cheers
Martin
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