Re: [Libcdio-devel] RFC - move libcdio from savannah.gnu.org to github?

[Pete Batard]

Hi,

Personally, I see a lot more benefits than drawback in moving this repo 
to GitHub.

While GitHub is under Microsoft's ownership, they still don't have any 
legal ability to go against the license of the project, which, IMO, is 
the only thing that matters. Especially, since Microsoft can not own the 
code, and we can simply move to a different host if GitHub hosting no 
longer seems advantageous, I consider that any trying to predict what 
Microsoft may have in store for GitHub in the future, is kind of moot.

It is also my opinion that the benefits of being hosted on GitHub far 
outweigh the drawbacks, especially considering the 1st class CI 
environment it provides, among many other things.

From having to work with their systems, I am regularly a VERY outspoken 
critique of Microsoft (their blatant abuse of power when it comes to 
preventing anything licensed under GPLv3 from being signed for Secure 
Boot, as well as the many, many, other examples of Microsoft harbouring 
a hostile stance against end users are not something I can ever turn my 
back onto), but, so far, and even with the grey area of Copilot (which 
IMO simply just a matter of law having not yet caught up with new 
technology and which will naturally sort itself out when it does), I 
have not found the Microsoft stewardship of GitHub to have become a 
dealbreaker. Instead, I continue to see GitHub as the benchmark upon 
which other source hosting entities should measure themselves, and the 
fact that GitHub has become the de-facto Open Source hosting service out 
there, and therefore the only one I see that could help us actually 
attract contributors, makes me weigh in very favourably in favour of 
moving the hosting of libcdio to GitHub.

For instance, *time permitting*, and since this is something I have also 
very recently done for another project that moved its source from 
SourceForge to GitHub [1] (a move that was done outside of any influence 
from my part, as I only discovered the move after it was completed), I 
*may* try to add GitHub Actions automated builds and testing to libcdio, 
if it moves there.

And while I do see the point of trying to weigh some of the more "social 
media" aspects of GitHub, against the more tried and trusted way of 
doing things, and I wholeheartedly agree that a lot of modern social 
media tendencies seem to push towards not preserving or making it 
incredibly difficult to preserve interaction history, let alone access 
it publicly in the first place, I do not feel like the current GitHub 
modes of "social" interactions fall into the latter category. Sure, they 
do bring in some of the more unfortunate aspects of modern social media 
interactions, where abuse is more rampant than with traditional e-mail 
exchange, but I think that is the price one has to pay to be able to 
engage with a wider audience, and make sure that, through a wider reach, 
the project itself does ultimately benefit.

So that's a +1 from me for a move to GitHub.

Regards,

/Pete

[1] https://github.com/ncroxon/gnu-efi


On 2024.09.06 01:43, Rocky Bernstein wrote:
> I'd like your opinion about moving the libcdio git repository from
> savannah.gnu.org to  github (or some other git repository)
>
> The mechanisms at savannah.gnu.org have not been improving or developing
> while github, gitlab, etc., seem to be constantly improving.
>
> Your thoughts?