[kde-community] Official KDE mirror on github

[Vishesh Handa]

On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 4:37 PM, Boudhayan Gupta <bgupta at kde.org> wrote:
> On 19 September 2015 at 19:34, Vishesh Handa <me at vhanda.in> wrote:
>> Please note that consistency isn't a requirement to be part of KDE. If
>> I decide to write an application in Rust, which is only for Windows,
>> and uses a completely different build system, that is allowed.
>
> How are these two things even remotely similar? Of course you're
> allowed to write a Windows specific app in Rust. Hell, according to
> the manifesto we should be able to write apps for the Commodore64 if
> we want to, provided that the software complies with licensing and
> community engagement requirements of the KDE community. On a more
> realistic note, almost all KDE apps have their own coding style, and
> every maintainer has their own standard on how far to stick to these
> styles.
>
> It is important to note that we're talking about infrastructural
> consistency here, not code consistency. There is a distinction. <snip>
>

My point over here was to illustrate that there are many parts to
building a project, the code, development, handling contributions,
handling bugs, infrastructure, etc. None of these *have* to be
consistent. The manifesto does not actually dictate terms of
"infrastructure".

Relevant part - "Online services associated with the project are
either hosted on KDE infrastructure or have an action plan that
ensures continuity which is approved by the KDE system administration
team"


>>>
>>> 3. Regarding point 4, if developers already have personal GitHub
>>> clones that they use for their own purposes, nothing is stopping them
>>> from continuing to use them. Those clones are not endorsed by KDE,
>>> they are under complete control of the individual
>>> developers/maintainers, they are entirely the responsibility of the
>>> developers/maintainers, and the developers/maintainers are free to do
>>> with them as they see fit.
>>>
>>
>> Because maintainers are not responsible for their own projects anyway?
>> If I'm taking responsibility for a project, I'm also taking
>> responsibility for other parts of it. In this case Github. No one is
>> forcing anyone.
>>
>
> Common ownership. There's a difference between any random open source
> project on GitHub/SF.net/elsewhere and a KDE project. Maintainers are
> responsible for their own projects (that's why they're maintainers).
> They're also responsible for playing nice with the rest of the
> community and abiding by the requirements of the rest of the
> community.

And how does also accepting github requests not play nice with the
rest of the community?

> Also, while the rest of KDE may not have a say in the code
> of the project (the maintainer is the maintainer because he/she
> understands the code to a higher degree than the rest of the people
> here), they do have a say in the project's governance.
>

"governance" is quite a vague word over here.

Release cycles, documentation, QA, online infrastructure? what exactly?

>>> Here's what developers and maintainers should really do: forget that
>>> github.com/kde exists.
>>
>> They can do that if they are comfortable with the status-quo. Some
>> people are clearly not. Your email disregards the points raised and
>> implies that the github readonly mirror is only what is acceptable.
>> That result is clearly not shared by everyone.
>
> This comment disregards the entire e-mail which is about why the
> read-only mirror should be acceptable. Again, why it should be
> acceptable is because it's as important to the KDE infrastructure as
> an anongit server.
>

I think we're talking about different things. The read-only mirror is
done, and shipped. I was talking about projects being able to also use
github, and the rest of the community respecting that decision.