[Owncloud] Gitorious vs Github

Fri May 4 10:26:32 UTC 2012

Yep, if we move we should definitely only do it after the release. We
can still already discuss and plan though. ;)

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:07 PM, Frank Karlitschek <frank at owncloud.org> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I understand that this is a fascinating discussion.
> There are very good reasons to move to github and there are very good reasons to stay at gitorious.
> So this is not an easy decision.
>
> I suggest that we postpone this discussion after the ownCloud 4 release because we are all very busy at the moment and we won´t move in the next few days anyways.
>
>
> Cheers
> Frank
>
>
> On 03.05.2012, at 19:05, Klaas Freitag <freitag at owncloud.com> wrote:
>
>> On 03.05.2012 16:14, Stefan Göckeritz wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>> I agree, 100%!
>> Good that you agree ;-)
>>
>>> Let's move...
>> I think this discussion should come to a productive state now to let us make a decision finally.
>>
>> Here is once again a brief comparison of the two systems:
>> http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/GitHub_vs_Gitorious

This comparison is very superficial. Lists like these are always very
biased and technical. If you used both Gitorious and Github for some
time, you will see for yourself what is better.

(Regarding lists like these, also see
http://www.marco.org/2011/12/19/amazon-kindle-vs-ipad )

>>
>> Please note one very important point, a lot of replies in this thread showed that it was not clear: Github is NOT free software. That means: If they decide to switch off, charge, drop users as they like (!) etc., we can NOT set it up (or have somebody else setting it up) in a similar manner. Thats different with gitorious. That is free software, it can be freely downloaded and installed elsewhere if gitorious vanishes. Note the difference, especially for a project like us that names free software as that argument for data security and privacy. Please think about that again.
>>

_If_ that happens. If it doesn’t happen, we just use inferior
software. And even though we can not set it up _exactly_ like Github,
we can still set up Gitorious or Gitlab.

The argument of free software for data security and privacy is not as
important in this case where everything is public anyway – and we
don’t control the server, _and_ the software isn’t federated so it
would not make sense to maintain our own installation, because that
would be even more work that is not coding but organizing
infrastructure that is already there. As ownCloud is for personal
data, this is vastly different.

>> Now it seems that most contributors to ownCloud do not care so much about that and want to switch to github. The arguments are understandable, its more useable, its very vibrant, gitorious has ongoing problems with availability and a not so handy workflow.
>>
>> But before we jump in and move, lets collect answers to the following questions (and maybe more questions) and than come up with a public transition plan which everybody can agree on:
>> - We have releases. These should be taken under consideration when talking about the timeframe of the move.

Yes, as Frank said, if we move we should only do so after the release
of ownCloud 4.

>> - The timeframe when the transition runs.

Just like the move from KDE projects to Gitorious was pretty easy, the
transition is going to be a day maximum.

>> - Who moves the repos?

It’s not that difficult really. I volunteer. I already contacted the
person who has github.com/owncloud and he agreed to transfer the name
to us.

>> - Are there repos to rename while we're over it?

android-devel to android
android-main can be android-current
android-devel-extensions to android-extensions
www to website
mirall to desktop
owncloud-admin to commandline or admin
sync-qt can be removed (I contacted Juan)

>> - How do we migrate users?

Everyone gets an account at Github and we will add them to the
ownCloud organization. Github has far easier group & permission
handling.

>> - What consequencies has the github model/licensing for ownCloud Inc.?

None, since it’s just the free software project ownCloud that moves – right?

>> - maybe more.
>> - (Add your question here)
>>
>> Maybe all these questions are answered easily, but they should be listed, answered and finally the base for a decision. A move will be effort and that should be decided wisely about.
>> Who volunteers to drive that?
>>
>> Regarding the bugtracker, do we agree that it is no option to switch to the github bugtracker? First, it sucks - as Jans example OpenHatch from below also says. And second, I doubt that we can migrate users and bugs successfully from buggenie to github bugtracker. And we can not scare off ownCloud contributors by wasting their bugs they entered so far.

The Github issue tracker doesn’t suck as hard as it is said. It’s
pretty easy, connected with the code and pull requests. Lots of people
use it and it can only become better. The level of pain is nearly 0,
where buggenie would be a solid 9 at least (seriously, wth?).
I agree on the issue of transferrable issues though. Github wikis use
git as backend so that is no problem, but I don’t know about issue
import/export –
just a quick search away: https://gist.github.com/768875 and
https://github.com/trustmaster/trac2github

>>
>> Our buggenie is not as genious as it needs to be for us, but thats a different story and I am sure we can improve that. Different email ;-)
>>
>> thanks,
>>
>> Klaas
>>
>>>
>>> Am Donnerstag, 3. Mai 2012 16:10:06 schrieb Jan-Christoph Borchardt:
>>>> By the way, OpenHatch (http://openhatch.org ) recently moved from
>>>> Gitorious to Github for similar reasons as the issues we have:
>>>> http://lists.openhatch.org/pipermail/devel/2011-November/002521.html
>>>>
>>>> I can only emphasize that Gitorious is also a centralized service. I
>>>> can not use my account anywhere else, nor can I be sure they run the
>>>> code they purportedly do. They can shut down any minute – and in fact,
>>>> they have way more downtime or problems than Github. It often is a
>>>> pain to work with when it simply doesn’t do what it is supposed to do
>>>> – which is »just work, damnit«.
>>>>
>>
>>
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