Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo, GitHub, and the Social Contract

["Michał Górny" <mgorny@gentoo.org>]

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Dnia 2015-02-15, o godz. 15:39:58
Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@gentoo.org> napisał(a):

> On Sun, 15 Feb 2015 10:55:41 +0100 Alexey Lapitsky wrote:
> > Hi Mart,
> > 
> > I agree with every sentence from your email.
> > 
> > Rich made a great example about the rabbit hole. I don't think we
> > should blindly follow the social contract.
> > 
> > Just want to add that Github has pushed forward so many open source
> > projects that we must ask ourselves a different question:
> > 
> > Is Gentoo willing to say "no" to the new users, developers and the
> > speed of development just because Github is not FOSS?
> 
> Is Gentoo willing to say "no" to the software freedom and its own
> social obligations in order to make contributions easier in the
> simplest way possible?

Please explain me, how *exactly* does allowing contributions via
proprietary platform hurt free software?

> What if github will change its policy at any random moment, e.g.
> will kick projects or deny whole countries to contribute? What if
> they will require payment for services at some time?

Then users will simply stop using it. Simple as that.

> Github itself is uncontrolled by Gentoo community, this rises
> security concerns as well.

Everything rises security concerns, and especially random stuff hosted
by Gentoo Infra with no clear ToS, privacy policy and other basic
documentation in place.

Next thing I know, we should stop using third party mirrors because we
have no control over them and users can end up relying on their mirror
of choice reliably providing Gentoo files. And at the same time,
a number of developers ignores the fact that SRC_URIs are no longer
valid and files are only kept alive by random mirrors.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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