[kde-community] Official KDE mirror on github

[Vishesh Handa]

On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 5:23 AM, Michael Pyne <mpyne at kde.org> wrote:
> The end result of that type of thought is something like what happened with
> BitKeeper.
>
> I'm not going to say it's impossible to use proprietary tools without having
> that type of drama occur, but I think it would be better if we just skipped to
> the part where we end up preferring a Free/open alternative to handle our
> critical tasks (as also happened with BitKeeper -> git).

I don't think it is just about the technology. It is also about the
visibility of that platform. GitHub is more visible, is used by more
developers, and its workflows are more well known those developers.
It's simple about harnesses an additional platform to help improve our
software. Please note that I'm not advocating for dropping our own
infrastructure.

>
> Besides which, it actually is *already* a general principle of KDE projects.
> There was no point going through all the work and community debate about what
> it should mean to be a "KDE project" if we were just going to walk away from
> those points when something more attractive came along.
>
> It should not be surprising that KDE developers advocate for something more
> than sheer pragmatism; if we were *only* pragmatic we could just recommend
> that people use Windows or Mac, no?
>

That's a strawman argument. I'm not advocating that we recommend
GitHub or other proprietary platforms.

Also, we do ship Mac and Windows binaries along with Linux binaries.
Also, would you not be willing to receive bug reports from users of
your software on those platforms?

> There is at least value in consistency. It would confuse our users if they
> could report bugs one way with KFoo (utilizing support from Github) but
> couldn't report bugs the same way with KBar. It would impact our developers:
> remember that part of the ethos of being a "KDE project" is that the code is
> notionally open to *all* KDE developers. Are we supposed to canvass for bugs
> on both b.k.o and Github for some (but not all) "official" KDE repositories in
> the future? I agree it could be more convenient for an individual KDE app
> developer to allow this feature, but they are not the only stakeholder when
> discussing applications that form part of a "kde.org" release.

Lets break this down -

* Consistency - It is still maintained, but there can be additional
sources as an exception. Just as some people could just directly email
you a patch. (It has certainly happened to me)

* Reporting Bugs in 2 places - The default place should still
bugs.kde.org for now.

* Code open to all developers - How is this changing?


--
Vishesh Handa