Changes to our Git infrastructure

[Ben Cooksley]

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Cornelius Schumacher
<schumacher at kde.org> wrote:
> 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.

At least as far as I know the only hosted service we have looked at is
Gitorious, and that was undertaken in part by the Board.
Others have been around longer than me and may be able to comment on
more though.

The messaging around things we're willing to adopt has certainly
always been FOSS only.
Otherwise we would probably have some Atlassian products deployed already...

>
>> 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.

There is of course a difference in preferences within our contributors
as well, which we have to take into account as well.

>
> [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html
>
> --
> Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>