Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: github's copilot feature

[Anna <cyber+gentoo@sysrq.in>]

On 2022-07-17 15:08, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 17, 2022 at 11:27:56AM +0500, Anna wrote:
> > On 2022-07-16 14:56, John Helmert III wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 06:35:32PM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 5:43 PM William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 04:33:43PM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I just found out while I was on vacation about Github's copilot feature.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > It looks like the SFC is urging foss developers to ditch github over
> > > > > this.
> > > > >
> > > > 
> > > > I get the sentiment, but I don't see what direct impact it will have.
> > > > If Gentoo stops using Github all our code will inevitably still be on
> > > > there and will still end up being used to train copilot.
> > > 
> > > Inevitably? If most of our activity moves somewhere else, I don't see
> > > why we couldn't blow away all of https://github.com/gentoo.
> > 
> > Very bad idea. That would break sync mirrors for hundreds of users.
> 
> The last time I checked, we only rely officially on *.gentoo.org (gentoo
> infra) per our social contract as primary infrastructure. I think we
> need to be sure users understand that github.com/gentoo is secondary and
> could go away any time.

If you just sync from GitHub, you don't use any proprietary software
(only non-free JavaScript is problematic).

And there are reasons to use GitHub mirror instead of our anongit, which
is like 100 times slower (since it doesn't use any CDN).

Ditching GitHub is complicated since it requires to solve both technical
and humanitarian problems (how would you change people's habits if you
are just one FOSS community, and your opponent is a multi-billion
transnational corporation that can do literally anything in its
interests and avoid persecution?).

This stream of consciousness leads me to politics (our interests cannot
be protected if all important decisions are made by CEOs rather than
democratically), which doesn't really fit this list's topic, so I'll
stop here. I'd be happy to discuss it in private tho :)