Changes to our Git infrastructure

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Sunday 04 January 2015 13:38:09 Jeff Mitchell wrote:
> 
> GitHub has been mentioned as a comparison point, but I can't credibly
> believe that we're willing to migrate to GitHub en masse, no matter what
> the flow of the industry is. I'm not stating my personal preferences on
> the matter, but the direction and feedback to the sysadmins has always
> been FOSS-only. If GitHub *is* on the table, then we need to consider
> other non-FOSS possibilities as well.

"FOSS-only" is a too simple requirement for a hosted service. It might be 
perfectly possible and fine to use a service which is not running free 
software as long as it doesn't force you to run non-free software. The issues 
are elsewhere (recommeded reading is Richard Stallman's text about this 
problem [1]). That's why I'm asking what exactly are our requirement there, 
and do the arguments we had last time we took a decision still hold? And yes, 
while GitHub is the poster child here, that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at 
other service providers, if we generally consider this to be an option.

> I do agree that we want the barrier to entry to be as low as possible.
> As is often the case, I think that may conflict somewhat with what some
> of the more/very experienced developers might find to be most useful to
> them personally. Finding the best balance is a difficult task.

That's true, and that's exactly the reason why we should consciously decide 
what our target is. It might be perfectly valid to focus on current 
contributors and go with something like a gerrit-based solution, but if we 
want to focus on new people there might be better solutions.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>