Re: [gentoo-project] Call for Agenda Items -- Council Meeting 2015-10-11

[Ian Delaney <idella4@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, 9 Oct 2015 06:29:51 -0400
"Anthony G. Basile" <blueness@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 10/9/15 5:44 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Andrew Savchenko
> > <bircoph@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >> When talking about Gentoo Social Contract violation by GitHub
> >> integration I apply to the following cause of the Social
> >> Contract [1]:
> >>
> >>   However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or
> >>   metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License,
> >> the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons -
> >>   Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the
> >> Open Source Initiative (OSI).
> >>
> >> If developer commits changes directly to git without bugzilla being
> >> used, this is OK, because out git repo is free and we control it.
> >> But when we start to depend on github pull requests or similar
> >> proprietary metadata, the Social Contract is violated.
> > I don't see how we're "depending" on github if we've already agreed
> > that you can do the same thing without using it in the first place.
> 
> You become dependent in that discussions about a bug or patch are now
> on github and if that goes away you loose it.  Therefore we depend on 
> github to keep that history for us and that history is as important
> as the fix itself.  Saying that you don't have to use github doesn't
> fix this unless that history is mirrored on our bugzilla.
> 
> xkcd says it best https://xkcd.com/743/   Many gentoo devs get this
> and that's why they're unhappy about where we've come with this.  I 
> contribute to Gentoo under the assumption of the Social Contract.  I 
> expect it upheld and not watered down.  You can say "I don't see" and 
> put depend in quotes, but all this does is discourage me from 
> contributing and remind me that the conditions under which I
> contributed can be just waved away by capriciousness.  This is not an
> issue that you will make go away with redefining "depend".  It
> strikes at the moral fiber of the open source community.
> 
> As for rage quitting an issue, are you sure that watering down the 
> Social Contract won't cause other kinds of quitting?  This issue is 
> above such theatrics.
> 

and so on and so forth. Sorry but my head is spinning. If the Council
is to do anything on this issue it seems it needs to address the
basics. Does github and its pull requests undermine or violate the
Social contract or not? Clearly it's a corner stone to the fabric of
this dilemma. High profile devs on both sides are arguing yay and ney.
Dammit this has split gentoo community like I haven't seen before.

I always thought of github as a body that hosts opensource repos of
packages embraced by gentoo. Now we're told it's proprietary software
like MS. User beware.

Once the fundamental issues are sorted the state of the pull requests
has a chance of reaching some form of systemic endorsement or approval.
On my part I have agreed to merge pull requests only to find most
around me have stamped their foot and said no. 

A housed divided is a house that falls. What do we have here?

"We will be handling GitHub pull requests on our own." presumably in
isolation to the rest of those who don't. The definition, the epitome of
division. What follows now?

developers of gentoo community tread very carefully.  This is no time
for rashness or brashness.


-- 
kind regards

Ian Delaney