Re: github mirror of lilypond?

[David Kastrup]

Erlend Aasland <address@hidden> writes:

>> On 19 Jan 2020, at 00:00, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>> Erlend Aasland <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> GitHub is putting our eggs in Microsoft's basket.  Not too enthused
>> about that idea.
>
> Technically, you already did, since there is a GitHub LilyPond mirror…

Disagree.  The repository is of actually little concern: there are a
gazillion private copies and there are enough hosting services offering
a Git repository that one more or less does not really make a
difference.

What is of concern is the whole metadata about issues and their handling
and resolution, the stuff you propose moving to GitHub in the first
place.

The current use of Savannah hosting for that reason is not a whole lot
more than a vote of confidence to GNU/FSF/Stallman (which at the current
point of time are more separate entities than they historically were)
but not of practical importance.

Our current ties to Google (via Rietveld) and SourceForge (for
Allura/issue tracking) are practically speaking more tenuous to replace.
Of course they deserve replacing, but doing so by picking GitHub would
definitely be a much more invasive step for the project than just
entertaining a Git mirror.

Make no mistake: our current dependencies in that regard are of lukewarm
quality concerning the "Free Software" regard and are a crutch
technically.  So a change is definitely called for.  But I don't
consider GitHub a nobrainer or I'd likely have an account there: I chose
not to the last time I read their terms of use, and while I haven't
rechecked since then, its change of ownership does not inspire
confidence.  Now of course the terms and guarantees then might have been
chosen in order not to interfere with potential high-powered
acquisitions, a goal many startups work towards to, and may be something
that Microsoft does not need to bother with.  So in theory they might
even have improved.  I'd need to check again.  But LilyPond is a size
where taking out a commercial offer would be pretty expensive, and
taking out a free offer means you have nothing to rely or insist on
since there hasn't been an exchange of considerations involved.

-- 
David Kastrup