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

[Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org>]

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On 02/15/15 04:57, Ben de Groot wrote:
> On 15 February 2015 at 10:23, Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
>> On L, 2015-02-14 at 16:37 -0500, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 3:48 PM, Andreas K. Huettel 
>>> <dilfridge@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> We need to resolve this discussion somehow, by formulating a
>>>> clear policy. Which is why I'm putting it up here for
>>>> discussion and will ask to add it to the next council meeting
>>>> agenda.
>>> 
>>> I tend to agree with what seems to be the general sentiment.
>>> As long as we still accept patches via bugzilla/etc, then we
>>> aren't "depending" on github.
>>> 
>>> FOSS alternatives are to be preferred, but since we don't have
>>> those set up, I don't see why we have to live without anything
>>> in the meantime.  If somebody wants to host such a thing, I'd
>>> encourage them to do so, and work with infra if they'll accept
>>> help.
>> 
>> That is a good question. I'm sorry if I am the only one to point
>> this out, but: We do NOT have even a WEB VIEW of our OFFICIAL
>> overlays to see what is going on there without BLINDLY cloning
>> git URIs randomly! Why should contributors care ONE BIT about
>> things outside their comfort zone of contributions, which is
>> github in many cases these days? After 6 months of complete
>> blindness on official overlays, I was eventually pointed at an
>> outside cgit which shows what's going on there.
>> 
>> After 2 years of talking, we are still using CVS.
>> 
>> It is not surprising one bit that GitHub is the last hope to
>> people hoping to help out, with some folks willing to get their
>> contributions to actually MATTER. We have failed the community to
>> provide any reasonable free software ways to contribute. So
>> semi-open source ways it is.
>> 
>> 
>> With all the respect to the infra team they have done with their 
>> existing capabilities, but we need to do better and find better
>> ways to achieve what we can with existing resources and fix this
>> completely sad state.
>> 
>> 
>> Mart
>> 
>> 
> 
> It is unfortunate that things fall through the cracks at infra,
> and more and more useful tools are not provided by services under 
> gentoo.org, but by personal initiatives and hosted on other
> domains.
> 
> For this reason I propose that Sven Wegener, Michał Górny, and
> Patrick Lauer be made members of the infra team, because they get
> things done that the other infra members don't (for whatever
> reason, not pointing fingers here). I'm thinking here about useful
> tools such as:
> 
> - https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-portage-rsync-mirror -
> http://cgit.gentooexperimental.org/ - #gentoo-commits bot -
> AutoRepoman
> 

I too believe that infra shouldn't be a blocking factor in our
development process. If the infra team is not giving what we want to
develop software in collaboration with the user community we need to
look to other alternatives. If we need to use github or $foobar to
facilitate that so be it. Maybe the social contract does not apply
100% anymore and we need to adapt it. Being flexible and relevant is
critical for a distro to succeed. We can't simply turn down
contributors based on what means they use to contribute.

- -- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras
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