Re: [gpsd-users] Problems with the gpsd website move

[Ed W]

On 03/03/2012 17:04, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > If you are saying that nongnu.org uses mailman, then I think it's
> > clear you loose nothing by switching away?
> But I don't see a net gain, either.  Yes, I have read and evaluated
> your arguments.

But you are just making a sweeping generalisation here.  I don't see how 
I can help you because you haven't actually stated specifics of *what* 
is wrong/right with various potential solutions.

Personally I find that others who have experience of various tools can 
frequently shed light on ways of "achieving goals" that might not have 
been immediately obvious to a less experienced evaluator.  However, you 
aren't actually sharing your complaints about various options, just 
claiming general "botches", so it's not straightforward to help you find 
a "best" solution.

Look, lets try and get objective. Github would be a net benefit to you 
because:

- It gives you an instantly updatable static website, which is tracked 
via git. This means that the website can be easily given access control, 
forked and developed offline by any contributor, taken offline by a user 
and backed up in a way which makes it simple to revert to any previous 
point in time. (And very simple deployment). It can appear as it's own 
vanity domain name eg http://www.gpsd.net or whatever

- You get, what is voted, a pretty decent issue tracker, which is 
tightly integrated with your sourcecode control system.

- The threshold to contribute code is lowered. A large number of coders 
(google to easily find evidence) claim that github (or gitorious) vastly 
reduce the friction to contribute patches through the use of fork/pull 
requests. In the case of github you would benefit from easily being able 
to review proposed patches, comment on them, throw them back for rework, 
etc.

- Simple Wiki is available for content that should be easily editable - 
out on a limb, but the list of supported GPSs might be a use for such a 
wiki page...

- VERY nice web based code viewer which is both very fast to click 
around and offers all the common repo operations.  (Sure cgit is ok, but 
github/gitorious viewers are a HUGE step up!)


The only negatives I see are that it's a commercial backed project and I 
sense that is less preferable to you than a non profit or charity based, 
open source project?

I don't see that the mailing lists need to change from where they are 
today.  Nor that any additional login tokens should be required vs today


OK, there is my strawman.  It's a specific suggestion and for sure it's 
not perfect.  Why not knock it down for specific reasons and then myself 
and others can at least deal with those specifics and perhaps it's 
possible to find a solution to them (eg perhaps some of the perceived 
problems are simply lack of understanding of the solution?)

If you would like to quickly create a login with the name "gpsd" on 
github, then I would be delighted to help you evaluate it as a solution. 
I genuinely feel that you can setup an account, do a couple of "git 
pushes" and have your static website and code up and running in perhaps 
10 mins or so.  From there it's straightforward to evaluate and if you 
wish to abort there is a delete button (however, I would encourage you 
to at least consider leaving a backup of the code on github - it should 
be easily to keep it up to date using hooks on wherever the main repo lives)

Trying to help...

Good luck

Ed W