Re: [Repo-criteria-discuss] The GNU ethical repository criteria will only harm free software.

[Mike Gerwitz]

On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 07:08:31 -0400, Robert Call (Bob) wrote:
> In the recent past, some may remember that gitorious, a large host of
> free software source code repositories for a number of projects, was
> sold to a company who has has a record of not acting in the best
> interest of the free software community. Gitorious was folded and many
> projects were left without a place to host source code. The same can be
> said for the non-free Google Code which became defunct a few months ago.

I wrote about this here:

  https://about.gitlab.com/2015/05/20/gitlab-gitorious-free-software/

Sytse Sijbrandij (CEO) and I have been working together and will
continue to do.  I'll have more information on that once we release
GitLab's evaluation.

> * advocate for individual projects to host their own source code
> repositories

While this is good from an SaaSS perspective, this is onerous for
smaller projects, so it won't solve the problem---hosts are still needed
for everyone else who isn't willing to do that.  Repositories will also
be mirrored---as is often the case today---on other hosts, and users may
be more likely to get the code form there than on the official
website, especially if that mirror is on a popular hosting service.

> * draft a set of standards / practices to help fix the issue where
> developers don't sign their source code.

While I agree with the issue[0], that would be outside the scope of
these criteria:  The goal here is to provide criteria in determining
whether a host itself is compatible with GNU's philosophy, and should
not be used as a host for GNU projects.

So we are talking about centralized services here, intentionally.  If
you have any decentralized services that you feel should be evaluated,
please let us know.


[0]: (outdated) http://mikegerwitz.com/papers/git-horror-story

-- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker | GNU Maintainer
http://mikegerwitz.com
FSF Member #5804 | GPG Key ID: 0x8EE30EAB

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