6 ms·

Was Github ruled out because it's not free enough in spirit or are the Gnome folks just wanting to run things on-prem?

parliament32 8y ago
Probably because Github is a closed-source company that can remove you, your repo, or your group at any time, for any reason. Committing to a hosted service is a bad idea (see: Sourceforge). That sort of thing isn't acceptable to a project like Gnome.
- ovao 8y ago
  By committing to use GitHub, you’re only really committing to git. git supports multiple remotes for the purposes of mirroring — use that feature.
  - lambda 8y ago
    > you’re only really committing to git You don't use github just for git. You use it for issue tracking, pull requests and code review, CI hooks, wiki, github pages, kanban boards, bot integration, and so on. That's all stuff that locks you in to Github, and is non-trivial to migrate to another provider.
    - JackCh 8y ago
      > "You don't use github just for git." Well, some people do. I don't, apparently you don't, probably most people don't. But you could and some people do. I've seen a few projects on github with notes to the effect of "don't bother submitting issues/PRs here, do it through our [mailing list/etc]"
      - pscnv 8y ago
        The Linux kernel for example.
        PrimHelios 8y ago
        The kernel is just mirrored on GH, which is why they want PRs and bug reports sent to their mailing list.
        williamdclt 8y ago
        Or Git itself
        apk17 8y ago
        And, with a whiff of irony, git itself.
        sigjuice 8y ago
        Why is this ironic? Git predates github.
        JackCh 8y ago
        It's logical of course, but I see the irony. Or maybe it's not irony, nobody really knows what irony is, but it's mildly.. amusing? It makes half my face smile in a manner similar to but not quite like a smirk.
        sigjuice 8y ago
        Is the Git project expected to uproot themselves and go chasing Github or Gitlab or Gogs or whatever else is fashionable?
        apk17 8y ago
        Definitely not 'expected'. I like the mailing list bug tracking more than having that on git{hub,lab,whatever}. git makes it even possible to host a repo on multiple git* hostings, but apparently nobody came up with a successful distributed pullreq/issue tracker yet.
        JackCh 8y ago
    - ovao 8y ago
      It’s a given that the more GitHub features you use, the more difficult it is to move away from GitHub. It’s also a given that you can reasonably limit the extent to which you use GitHub and thereby limit the difficulty in transitioning to another solution. The idea that it’s GitHub locking you in rather than you locking yourself in to GitHub is the argument I take issue with. But no quarrel at all with Gnome choosing GitLab, because GitLab is genuinely great.
      - ufo 8y ago
        The whole reason GNOME wanted to switch is because they wanted to have all the extra features (issues, etc) in a single place, as is provided by Github and Gitlab. Their old cgit interface already did a good job at hosting their git repositories.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - rcoveson 8y ago
    > By committing to use GitHub, you're only really committing to git. Make sure you also tell your users not to use GitHub's comments, issue tracking, pull requests, release system, favorites/watches, or authentication. So you're suggesting that the new home for the GNOME project's code be GitHub, without the GitHub.
    - ovao 8y ago
      I don’t understand where in that comment you believe I suggested that the Gnome team should have chosen GitHub. Most likely because I made no suggestion. Please try to be more careful with how you approach reading comments.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Issue tracking is optional, if you disable it users wont be able to fill issues. You can easily ignore release system (by not using it) and I am not sure what you mean by authentication. As for pull requests, it is reasonable to expect contributors to submit them wherever your readme points to. I don't mean to say that gnome should use github, I think that it is overall better if there is no single dominating company for open source. Just that organizing so that github is git hosting only is not that hard.
      - smichel17 8y ago
        The whole point of the migration was to consolidate things to make onboarding new contributors easier. If they only used the git part of github, it would be little better than their existing cgit setup.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Gnome is already being mirrored to Github. You can do your pulls from there. Meanwhile, they want to use the bug tracker and other features too.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  To be clear, despite this announcement being posted to gitlab.com (i.e. the "hosted GitLab", which can and will remove you/your/repo any group at any time), the GNOME project is self-hosting their own gitlab instance. So they are indeed insulated from such hypothetical damage.
  - suby 8y ago
    And will? Are there examples where Gitlab removed users / projects for controversial reasons?
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      That's not the point. No matter how trustworthy Gitlab seems, The GNOME Project is still more trustworthy.
      - suby 8y ago
        You'll get no argument on that from me. The way he phrased it though made it sound like this has happened in the past, and I was curious.
    - jeremyjh 8y ago
      I would be shocked if there were not DMCA take-downs that left some people feeling raw - honestly how can you avoid that - but this sort of thing does not attract much notice these days.
    - PrimHelios 8y ago
      Hate to bring up gamergate, but a project related to the movement was completely taken offline by a rogue github employee. There are a number of sources, all of them biased, so I'd prefer not to link any.
- jacekm 8y ago
  Just curious, has this ever happened? Were there any cases where github removed someone's repo?
  - topynate 8y ago
    Yes, WebMConverter. However, I gather the employee responsible is no longer with them.
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    The C+Equality programming language was removed.
  - 0xFFC 8y ago
    PopcornTime I think got removed.
  - eric-hu 8y ago
    GitHub removed a Shadowsocks library after being targeted by China's great cannon.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  I feel like this is unfortunate. Github has a giant user-based, and using github would be a great way to reduce the friction of having first-time contributors submit a pull-request. In my case, if KiCAD were hosted on github, I would have already contributed by now. I think its a shame that more of these projects don't adopt a strategy of "let's try github, and if they screw us over, then we'll migrate to a platform with more freedom".
  - mic47 8y ago
    I think it's shame that lot of projects do. Why? 1.) Compared to Phabricator (which I used for almost last 4 years), github is really behind for code review (I didn't use gitlab, so can't compare). There is lot of missing features: I can't comment on selection of lines, see diff of subset of commits, do stacked pull request (one PR depends on another PR), view of open pull request is chaotic Effect is that it's way harder to send small PR for review, unless you work on lot of unrelated things and multiplex. 2.) Github dominance is causing everybody using git, and stiffs competition in source control tools. For example, I find mercurial much better than git: it has similar set of features, but it's easier to use, my day-to-day chores I do with single command, and I am much less likely to screw up my repo.
    - rimliu 8y ago
      Funnily, I ditched hg the moment it screwed my repo. But even then I was pretty sure git would win, and not for PR reasons.
  - Rapzid 8y ago
    Github has dabbled a bit too much in politics in recent years TBH. It doesn't surprise me that projects like GNOME would take pause at that, among the other reasons people are listing.
    - jake_the_third 8y ago
      When my company was evaluating open source cms/hosting solutions, Github was quicky removed from the list of candidates for this very reason. Their criteria for removing software projects was deemed too unstable to depend upon, and the company is too small to garner the same respect from github as bigger companies.
- hk__2 8y ago
  > Probably because Github is a closed-source company that can remove you, your repo, or your group at any time, for any reason. Any company providing a hosted service can do that, including Gitlab (the company) itself. They chose Gitlab (the product) because they are able to host their own instance (edit: and it’s open-source), that’s all.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Possibly more important than any practical implications of GitHub being closed source is the simple fact that relying so intimately on a closed source product would be a really bad look for them, on account of what the first letter in GNOME stands for.
ufo 8y ago
GNOME and Debian are very committed to free software and Github certainly was always out of contention for them due to being proprietary software. As discussed on the article, GitLab also wasn't an option for them before the change from a CLA to a DCO. The CLA meant that although gitlab was licensed under a free software license, GitLab Inc. had permission to relicense future versions of GitLab as proprietary software, without needing to obtain permission from the original contributors. This meant that GitLab used to not be sufficiently free "in spirit" for Debian and GNOME. (While this might seem a bit paranoid, Debian and GNOME want to avoid the worst case scenario of GitLab being acquired by a company that isn't as friendly to software freedom.) All in all, I think GitLab is doing a great job at working together with free software projects like Debian and GNOME and I am sure all the involved parties will greatly benefit from this collaboration.
- sytse 8y ago
  Thanks, glad to hear you like the job we're doing.
wmf 8y ago
"GitHub is not Free Software, of course, which makes it unacceptable to many in the GNOME community."
- ufo 8y ago
  Source of the quote: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure
- yarrel 8y ago
  Only "many"? o_O ;-)
  - wmf 8y ago
    In the dark prehistory of the Linux desktop, Qt/KDE was GPL so Gtk/GNOME went with the "more free" LGPL to support proprietary apps. I guess that strain of pragmatism hasn't gone away.
    - evmar 8y ago
      It's the other way around -- Qt wasn't GPL until 2005, GNOME started in 1997 in response to the non-free license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History
      - wmf 8y ago
        Ah, right, Qt wasn't GPL but it still "infected" apps with a copyleft-like provision.
        mikekchar 8y ago
        It's not massively important, but I still think it's a good idea not to make a conclusion and then work your way back through history viewing with that lens. GNOME was (and is as far as I know) part of GNU. The G stands for GNU -- GNU Network Object Model Environment. It actually had a CORBA ORB in it. Apart from the misguided idea of building a DE around CORBA (which, I admit, I thought was a fantastic idea at the time), the main reason for doing the work was that KDE was built on top of QT. KDE was GPL and everybody was completely happy with that part of it. The problem was that it was built on top of something that the FSF felt was incompatible with the GPL (I can't remember the exact issue). GNOME uses the LGPL for its libraries and the GPL for its applications -- as per virtually every normal FSF project. One of the reasons there were more libraries in GNOME than you might ordinarily have was because it was intended to be a set of distributed components all talking together over TCP/IP. It's an enormous mistake, but as I am fond of saying, we're all young once. Anyway, the point is that your notion that GNOME was somehow more pragmatic in terms of trying to avoid copyleft licenses is completely incorrect.
awalton 8y ago
Both.
simula67 8y ago
You can run Github on prem using Github Enterprise [1]. However, that follows a subscription model and Github can potentially terminate it at any time. Gitlab has an open source version [2], which means that preferring Gitlab over Github prevents giving more control of the project's direction to another entity. ( Not speaking on behalf of GNOME of course, just remarking that it is a good thing that free software projects are preferring Gitlab over Github ) [1] https://enterprise.github.com/faq https://enterprise.github.com/faq [2] https://about.gitlab.com/installation/ce-or-ee/ https://about.gitlab.com/installation/ce-or-ee/
- brodock 8y ago
  Also you are not allowed to use GitHub Enterprise in the "public facing internet" without "Private Mode" which means only people with an account on the system can access that. https://enterprise.github.com/faq#faq-13 https://enterprise.github.com/faq#faq-13

Probably because Github is a closed-source company that can remove you, your repo, or your group at any time, for any reason. Committing to a hosted service is a bad idea (see: Sourceforge). That sort of thing isn't acceptable to a project like Gnome.

ovao 8y ago
By committing to use GitHub, you’re only really committing to git. git supports multiple remotes for the purposes of mirroring — use that feature.
- lambda 8y ago
  > you’re only really committing to git You don't use github just for git. You use it for issue tracking, pull requests and code review, CI hooks, wiki, github pages, kanban boards, bot integration, and so on. That's all stuff that locks you in to Github, and is non-trivial to migrate to another provider.
  - JackCh 8y ago
    > "You don't use github just for git." Well, some people do. I don't, apparently you don't, probably most people don't. But you could and some people do. I've seen a few projects on github with notes to the effect of "don't bother submitting issues/PRs here, do it through our [mailing list/etc]"
    - pscnv 8y ago
      The Linux kernel for example.
      - PrimHelios 8y ago
        The kernel is just mirrored on GH, which is why they want PRs and bug reports sent to their mailing list.
      - williamdclt 8y ago
        Or Git itself
      - apk17 8y ago
        And, with a whiff of irony, git itself.
        sigjuice 8y ago
        Why is this ironic? Git predates github.
        JackCh 8y ago
        It's logical of course, but I see the irony. Or maybe it's not irony, nobody really knows what irony is, but it's mildly.. amusing? It makes half my face smile in a manner similar to but not quite like a smirk.
        sigjuice 8y ago
        Is the Git project expected to uproot themselves and go chasing Github or Gitlab or Gogs or whatever else is fashionable?
        apk17 8y ago
        Definitely not 'expected'. I like the mailing list bug tracking more than having that on git{hub,lab,whatever}. git makes it even possible to host a repo on multiple git* hostings, but apparently nobody came up with a successful distributed pullreq/issue tracker yet.
        JackCh 8y ago
  - ovao 8y ago
    It’s a given that the more GitHub features you use, the more difficult it is to move away from GitHub. It’s also a given that you can reasonably limit the extent to which you use GitHub and thereby limit the difficulty in transitioning to another solution. The idea that it’s GitHub locking you in rather than you locking yourself in to GitHub is the argument I take issue with. But no quarrel at all with Gnome choosing GitLab, because GitLab is genuinely great.
    - ufo 8y ago
      The whole reason GNOME wanted to switch is because they wanted to have all the extra features (issues, etc) in a single place, as is provided by Github and Gitlab. Their old cgit interface already did a good job at hosting their git repositories.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rcoveson 8y ago
  > By committing to use GitHub, you're only really committing to git. Make sure you also tell your users not to use GitHub's comments, issue tracking, pull requests, release system, favorites/watches, or authentication. So you're suggesting that the new home for the GNOME project's code be GitHub, without the GitHub.
  - ovao 8y ago
    I don’t understand where in that comment you believe I suggested that the Gnome team should have chosen GitHub. Most likely because I made no suggestion. Please try to be more careful with how you approach reading comments.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Issue tracking is optional, if you disable it users wont be able to fill issues. You can easily ignore release system (by not using it) and I am not sure what you mean by authentication. As for pull requests, it is reasonable to expect contributors to submit them wherever your readme points to. I don't mean to say that gnome should use github, I think that it is overall better if there is no single dominating company for open source. Just that organizing so that github is git hosting only is not that hard.
    - smichel17 8y ago
      The whole point of the migration was to consolidate things to make onboarding new contributors easier. If they only used the git part of github, it would be little better than their existing cgit setup.
- vetinari 8y ago
  Gnome is already being mirrored to Github. You can do your pulls from there. Meanwhile, they want to use the bug tracker and other features too.
tomjakubowski 8y ago
To be clear, despite this announcement being posted to gitlab.com (i.e. the "hosted GitLab", which can and will remove you/your/repo any group at any time), the GNOME project is self-hosting their own gitlab instance. So they are indeed insulated from such hypothetical damage.
- suby 8y ago
  And will? Are there examples where Gitlab removed users / projects for controversial reasons?
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    That's not the point. No matter how trustworthy Gitlab seems, The GNOME Project is still more trustworthy.
    - suby 8y ago
      You'll get no argument on that from me. The way he phrased it though made it sound like this has happened in the past, and I was curious.
  - jeremyjh 8y ago
    I would be shocked if there were not DMCA take-downs that left some people feeling raw - honestly how can you avoid that - but this sort of thing does not attract much notice these days.
  - PrimHelios 8y ago
    Hate to bring up gamergate, but a project related to the movement was completely taken offline by a rogue github employee. There are a number of sources, all of them biased, so I'd prefer not to link any.
jacekm 8y ago
Just curious, has this ever happened? Were there any cases where github removed someone's repo?
- topynate 8y ago
  Yes, WebMConverter. However, I gather the employee responsible is no longer with them.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  The C+Equality programming language was removed.
- 0xFFC 8y ago
  PopcornTime I think got removed.
- eric-hu 8y ago
  GitHub removed a Shadowsocks library after being targeted by China's great cannon.
cellularmitosis 8y ago
I feel like this is unfortunate. Github has a giant user-based, and using github would be a great way to reduce the friction of having first-time contributors submit a pull-request. In my case, if KiCAD were hosted on github, I would have already contributed by now. I think its a shame that more of these projects don't adopt a strategy of "let's try github, and if they screw us over, then we'll migrate to a platform with more freedom".
- mic47 8y ago
  I think it's shame that lot of projects do. Why? 1.) Compared to Phabricator (which I used for almost last 4 years), github is really behind for code review (I didn't use gitlab, so can't compare). There is lot of missing features: I can't comment on selection of lines, see diff of subset of commits, do stacked pull request (one PR depends on another PR), view of open pull request is chaotic Effect is that it's way harder to send small PR for review, unless you work on lot of unrelated things and multiplex. 2.) Github dominance is causing everybody using git, and stiffs competition in source control tools. For example, I find mercurial much better than git: it has similar set of features, but it's easier to use, my day-to-day chores I do with single command, and I am much less likely to screw up my repo.
  - rimliu 8y ago
    Funnily, I ditched hg the moment it screwed my repo. But even then I was pretty sure git would win, and not for PR reasons.
- Rapzid 8y ago
  Github has dabbled a bit too much in politics in recent years TBH. It doesn't surprise me that projects like GNOME would take pause at that, among the other reasons people are listing.
  - jake_the_third 8y ago
    When my company was evaluating open source cms/hosting solutions, Github was quicky removed from the list of candidates for this very reason. Their criteria for removing software projects was deemed too unstable to depend upon, and the company is too small to garner the same respect from github as bigger companies.
hk__2 8y ago
> Probably because Github is a closed-source company that can remove you, your repo, or your group at any time, for any reason. Any company providing a hosted service can do that, including Gitlab (the company) itself. They chose Gitlab (the product) because they are able to host their own instance (edit: and it’s open-source), that’s all.
bunderbunder 8y ago
Possibly more important than any practical implications of GitHub being closed source is the simple fact that relying so intimately on a closed source product would be a really bad look for them, on account of what the first letter in GNOME stands for.

ufo 8y ago

GNOME and Debian are very committed to free software and Github certainly was always out of contention for them due to being proprietary software. As discussed on the article, GitLab also wasn't an option for them before the change from a CLA to a DCO. The CLA meant that although gitlab was licensed under a free software license, GitLab Inc. had permission to relicense future versions of GitLab as proprietary software, without needing to obtain permission from the original contributors. This meant that GitLab used to not be sufficiently free "in spirit" for Debian and GNOME. (While this might seem a bit paranoid, Debian and GNOME want to avoid the worst case scenario of GitLab being acquired by a company that isn't as friendly to software freedom.) All in all, I think GitLab is doing a great job at working together with free software projects like Debian and GNOME and I am sure all the involved parties will greatly benefit from this collaboration.

sytse 8y ago
Thanks, glad to hear you like the job we're doing.

wmf 8y ago

"GitHub is not Free Software, of course, which makes it unacceptable to many in the GNOME community."

ufo 8y ago
Source of the quote: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/DevelopmentInfrastructure
yarrel 8y ago
Only "many"? o_O ;-)
- wmf 8y ago
  In the dark prehistory of the Linux desktop, Qt/KDE was GPL so Gtk/GNOME went with the "more free" LGPL to support proprietary apps. I guess that strain of pragmatism hasn't gone away.
  - evmar 8y ago
    It's the other way around -- Qt wasn't GPL until 2005, GNOME started in 1997 in response to the non-free license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History
    - wmf 8y ago
      Ah, right, Qt wasn't GPL but it still "infected" apps with a copyleft-like provision.
      - mikekchar 8y ago
        It's not massively important, but I still think it's a good idea not to make a conclusion and then work your way back through history viewing with that lens. GNOME was (and is as far as I know) part of GNU. The G stands for GNU -- GNU Network Object Model Environment. It actually had a CORBA ORB in it. Apart from the misguided idea of building a DE around CORBA (which, I admit, I thought was a fantastic idea at the time), the main reason for doing the work was that KDE was built on top of QT. KDE was GPL and everybody was completely happy with that part of it. The problem was that it was built on top of something that the FSF felt was incompatible with the GPL (I can't remember the exact issue). GNOME uses the LGPL for its libraries and the GPL for its applications -- as per virtually every normal FSF project. One of the reasons there were more libraries in GNOME than you might ordinarily have was because it was intended to be a set of distributed components all talking together over TCP/IP. It's an enormous mistake, but as I am fond of saying, we're all young once. Anyway, the point is that your notion that GNOME was somehow more pragmatic in terms of trying to avoid copyleft licenses is completely incorrect.

awalton 8y ago

Both.

simula67 8y ago

You can run Github on prem using Github Enterprise [1]. However, that follows a subscription model and Github can potentially terminate it at any time. Gitlab has an open source version [2], which means that preferring Gitlab over Github prevents giving more control of the project's direction to another entity. ( Not speaking on behalf of GNOME of course, just remarking that it is a good thing that free software projects are preferring Gitlab over Github ) [1] https://enterprise.github.com/faq https://enterprise.github.com/faq [2] https://about.gitlab.com/installation/ce-or-ee/ https://about.gitlab.com/installation/ce-or-ee/

brodock 8y ago
Also you are not allowed to use GitHub Enterprise in the "public facing internet" without "Private Mode" which means only people with an account on the system can access that. https://enterprise.github.com/faq#faq-13 https://enterprise.github.com/faq#faq-13