[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Mateusz Loskot]

On 30 September 2015 at 07:20, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> Il 30/09/2015 02:04, Jody Garnett ha scritto:
>
>>     I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free
>>     for open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps
>>     a lot in getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But
>>     ... in two years, they may start shipping sponsors links at the end
>>     of the Readme files, and in a moments notice you have to watch 20
>>     seconds ads before cloning. At this point, you will want to bail
>>     out, only to find out that in fact you can not, because you can not
>>     delete the project anymore, or the issue tracker database can not be
>>     exported ...
>>
>>
>> Not much of a problem here, since git means each developer has a copy of
>> the whole project. I know we had the same story with SourceForge ...
>
> I think the concerns about GH are real. I feel uneasy putting strategic
> pieces of infrastructure in the hands of a company is risky over the
> long term. It is true that we have a copy of the whole code base and
> history, but the scenarios suggested are possible and worrisome.

There is also another aspect of the "All move to GitHub, now!" trend,
less obvious than technical ones, I guess.

On one side, OSGeo is FOSS advocate and we advocate it loud.
via numerous keynote speaches given at events around the World.
On the other, we gradually move to proprietary infrastructure based
on non-FOSS, namely GitHub.

The two sides clash, don't they?
People may get confused.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz  Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net