Re: Please, no GitHub

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 14.12.2015 um 07:40 schrieb Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>>> stating the license on the source files themselves), and don't mention
>>> the difference between GPL 3-or-later and GPL 3-only, this leading
>>> people to choose the latter without realizing they made a choice.
>>> This fails C5.
> 
>> Nobody is as experienced as you are in such subtle differences.
> 
> We are trying to educate other people about this
> through methods such as our repository criteria.
> 
>> 99% of the GitHub contributors are developers and programming
>> specialist. And not legal/license specialists.
> 
> That's why it is important for the site to lead them in the right
> direction.
> 
>> And to be honest, instead of recommending not to use GitHub
>> at all because of IMHO subtle flaws, FSF should offer something
>> better.
> 
> We already do: savannah.gnu.org.  We don't have the staff to provide
> fast service, but on the most important dimension -- the ethical one
> -- it is far superior to GitHub.

Well, the best ethics and intention does not help if the service does not
work as needed and becomes a burden to projects like GNUstep. This
makes developers go away instead of coming in.

> 
> Would you like to volunteer to help take care of Savannah?

No. I am already volunteering more than I can afford (even this discussion
already distracts me from other topics).

> That could make a practical improvement.

And I am not at all a web hosting specialist.

> 
>> And if there are not enough contributors to improve Savannah,
>> FSF should look to make contributions to it more attractive.
> 
> I don't see a way to do that.  Do you have any suggestions?

Well, the easiest answer would be: $$$ but I don't know if FSF has
and wants to do such funding. Or could e.g. offer advertising on
savannah to collect some $$$. I.e. copy the Google business
model.

> 
>                                                                Or
>> talk directly to GitHub people.
> 
> I already did, starting about a year ago.  I even had dinner with one
> of their executives.  It seems to be a promising conversation, but
> they dropped it inexplicably.  So we developed our repo criteria
> instead.
> 
> If they want to resume the conversation, I won't refuse.

Well, if you want that they change something you should not necessarily
wait until they decide to do. Constant dripping wears the rock away...

Yes, I know that is easily said and extremely difficult to do. So please
don't feel urged by me to do anything.