On Sat, 25 Apr 2020 at 13:32, Richard Stallman <
address@hidden> wrote:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
If this is meant as a way to implement pull requests, there is no need
for it. We will not implement pull requests by copying proposed
patches into our repo before they are installed.
There seems to be some confusion regarding 'pull requests'. When you look at it, all a pull request is is a request to merge a branch from another repo into your repo. Nothing is added to your repo until you perform the merge. The pull request adds nothing to your repo. Some of this confusion is likely due to github and to some extent, gitlab, putting some UI 'sugar' on top of the process to make it easier. However, you can do/manage pull requests completely from the git command line (although it is a bit fiddly). Basically, you add the PR repository to your LOCAL repo and check it out as a branch. Do whatever you need (review, fix, etc), commit it to your local repository. Perhaps do some diffs against your master repository and if all is good, merge it with your local master branch. At this point, there is still no change to the 'main' master repository. If the merge all goes fine, you can then push the changes to your master branch in your main repository. It is only at this point that the changes have been introduced to the main repository.
So, in short, making a PR has NO impact on the master repository until someone with write permission ie.g. the owner, merges the PR into the master repository. In this respect, it is no different from when the owner recieves a patch via email. Others cannot see the PR in the master repository (they would be able to see it and clone it from the pull requestor's repository, just like I can pull fro any public repository in github or gitlab), It is only after the owner (or someone with write permission to the 'master' repository (i.e. the one on savannah) merges that PR into the master repo that it will be seen by anyone who has cloned the master repo.
It should also be noted that the 'git pull-request' command is NOT a standard git command. This is an extension that github has added. It would be possible to create an FSF GNU git module which does something similar or more specific to suit FSF requirements. For example, you could have a module which looks at the size of the changes in the commit, checks a list of people who have submitted copyright paperwork and only allow the pull request to complete if either the change is 'tiny' or the submitter has provided copyright assignment.