Public SourceMage Discussion List

[David Kowis <dkowis AT shlrm.org>]

On 09/17/2014 07:20 PM, David Kowis wrote:
> Given a recent revival of interest in SourceMage, I brought up on IRC
> that we could move our primary repositories, wiki, and issue tracking to
> Github.

Sounds like there's not a whole lot of interest in doing this.

Also sounds like there's not a lot of interest in issue tracking in
general.

From an administrative perspective, keeping the wiki spam-free was a
huge pain in the arse. Same with keeping spam accounts out of the issue
tracker. I'd have liked github to do this for us.

I will make no changes to existing infrastructure (except maybe faster
boxes, if we get around to that.) I might update chiliproject, just to
keep it up to date.

If there are any suggestions to handle a wiki better with less spam,
that'd be great. Ideally it'd work where it's super easy to allow people
to edit, but keeps the spam down.

Finally, I might set up mirroring of our git repos on github anyway,
since that doesn't really cost us anything, and it might be handy.
Especially since chiliproject is super terrible at rendering our
largeish git repo (large as in lots of files).

--
David

> 
> No decisions have been made at this point. Self-hosting is ancillary,
> cutting down on server costs would be a good thing.
> 
> Github allows open source hosting of up to 1GB in repo size. Our
> grimoire size is only 280MB, so we're good there for quite a while. I've
> already created the sourcemage[0] organization there, so we have a
> single hat to group any number of repos under.
> 
> It has been brought up that Github isn't OSS, and that we could be
> locked into a vendor. My opinion in the matter is that Github is just
> fluff on top of Git that makes it easy to view things and easier to
> perform some actions.
> 
> The underlying repository is git, and nothing but git, via ssh or https,
> the hooks are all achievable via regular scripted hooks if we wanted to
> do that. The Wiki technology is actually open source, based on Jekyll.
> The only non-open source bits are the webUI.
> 
> As an example, Open Source alternatives include Gitlab or gitorious.
> 
> The way I see it there are advantages to being on Github:
> * Github is arguably the go-to place for Open Source software
> * Pull requests are stupid easy
> * Pull requests for our wiki will be stupid easy (also no spam!)
> * Issue tracking is robust and capable without being overcomplicated
> * It's still git, with all the power git has
> * Basically infinite bandwidth
> * Probably better uptime
> * Something we can just use, without having to maintain
> 
> There are also a few disadvantages:
> * It's a vendor, we're subject to their whims
> * Github itself is not open source
> * Not directly under our control
> * Customization is a bit more difficult (although there are web hooks)[1]
> 
> IIRC in the past we had something like this happen, we bailed from
> perforce for two reasons:
> 1. It was under someone's desk at their office, and so when it went
> down, it was hard down for quite a while
> 2. Perforce was not Open Source (but it was free for open source to use)
> 
> Personally, I don't feel that using Github would lock us into any vendor
> specific things. As things stand right now, we can very easily take our
> repo and walk, going to *anything* else. The only "proprietary" bits
> would be the issue tracking, and there is currently an API to access
> that data, so we could export that and walk away also.
> 
> I'm sure you all have opinions on this, and since we haven't had any
> elections in forever (like two years?) and at least one person has
> expressed that "PL can't just do this, we need to have a vote" I'm not
> exactly sure how I can proceed without pissing anyone off heh.
> 
> Technically the people who want to do good work could fork the heck out
> of SourceMage and start doing all this right now anyway under another
> name, and we can do something else. I'm not sure exactly how much power
> I have as PL, I don't wish to abuse it, but I'm also not willing to let
> us languish in limbo, unable to form a consensus.
> 
> If we make Github our primary repo location, do we damn our future
> selves into vendor lock-in? Are we going against the principles of Open
> Source by using something that isn't Open Source? Are the benefits of
> being on Github worth the consequences? Are the benefits of being on
> Github benefits we even want?
> 
> --
> David Kowis
> 
> [0]: https://github.com/sourcemage
> [1]: https://developer.github.com/webhooks/
> 
> 
> 
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