[postgis-devel] PSC Vote: Move from svn to Git (and by git I mean Gitea)

[Sandro Santilli]

Bborie, thanks for your contribution.

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 09:17:59AM -0700, Bborie Park wrote:

>       - I understand the concerns that arise when we see that Github is a
>       proprietary platform. The platform is absolutely proprietary. The version
>       control system underneath is OSS. So "how" we work would be on a
>       proprietary platform, not "what" we work on. Having used GitLab and
>       BitBucket as well, they've all got proprietary bits that may
> cause  concern.

Just an observation: Gitea does not have such proprietary bits.
It is developed in the open, anyone can become a maintainer,
maintainers yearly vote for owners (read "PSC").

>       - Because of the traction created by Github, communities have
>       accelerated faster than I can believe.

I'm not sure it's _community_ that grew. One thing I see happening
very often all around is that discussion threads like this one are
hard to conduct. They end up being done in one "issues", which does
look like the wrong place to me (how many times we asked NOT to
discuss in trac tickets?).

Partecipation becomes more "impersonal": people contribute "proposed
changes" but hardly a "vision". It becomes mediated by the proprietary
platform, so anyone not willing to _use_ proprietary software
(a minority ? maybe, but it built the many free software packages
we use today) will have to decide whether to stop contributing or
find another way to do so, falling off the official workflow.

> I think most of the hurdles to transitioning to Github are addressable by
> reviewing and updating our processes. Yes, we will lose the degree of
> control we have now. But I would state that by letting go with a clear set
> of checks and balances, we are allowing the community to move at its own
> pace but with us guiding it (like bumpers in bowling).

Asking contributors to use proprietary software is what I don't want to do.

--strk;