Re: CPE Git Forge Decision

Przemek Klosowski via devel <devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 31 Mar 2020 15:39:43 -0400



    On 3/31/20 1:40 PM, Bruno Wolff III
      wrote:

    
    On
      Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 13:08:05 -0400,
      

       Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
      wrote:
      

        We did communicate as the very top line of our gathered
        requirements that
        

        open source is essential to our community and central to our
        feedback. I'm
        

        not trying to be soft on that. Let's just not do purity-test
        level
        

        assessments and instead focus on our goals.
        

      The response from CPE made it sound like they just counted
      requirements rather than evalutating how important each
      requirement was to each group. Perhaps that was not intended, but
      that's they way it sounds. I think that being able to
      theorectically switch from hosted to self-hosted in short order
      (like in a month), should have been a deal breaking requirement
      from Fedora in case something at Gitlab changed that prevented
      using their hosted service. That implies having access to the
      source (capable of running our instance) with a free license and
      regular exports of the data in our hands. It doesn't sound like
      that is a requirement from the response provided by CPE.
      

      Because of switching costs, this is likely to prevent us from
      going back to Pagure if it does develop a vibrant independent
      community. That would be unfortunate.
    
    This particular dilemma reminds me very much of the time when the
      LInux kernel developers weren't using version control, and it
      became clear that one is needed. Linus just refused to use CVS,
      and after some controversy, the core developers decided to use
      Larry McVoy's proprietary BitKeeper distributed VCS. This solved
      the technical problem and was successfully used for few years
      (2002 to 2005, IIRC).

    
    Bitkeeper critics were pointing out that while the Linux
      community was free to use it to keep the source code, the
      Bitkeeper terms of use prohibited the non-commercial users from
      extracting the metadata (history, logs, etc). This issue kept
      causing problems, finally spurring Linus to sit down and invent
      git, and the rest is history. 

    
     It is important to remember that BitKeeper, while proprietary,
      had a very friendly and close relationship with the FOSS
      community, both when they joined forces and even when they were
      parting ways.  Still, the official Linux git log (
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?ofs=905000
      ) lacks the development history preceding 2005-04-16, and starts
      with one heck of a commit:

    
          2005-04-16
          [PATCH]
              mmtimer build fix
          Christoph
            Lameter
          1
          -1/+1
        
        
          2005-04-16
          Linux-2.6.12-rc2v2.6.12-rc2
          Linus
            Torvalds
          17291
          -0/+6718755

            
    Perhaps the relevant lesson is that the only permanent thing is
      that nothing is permanent. Decisions that seem inevitable and
      superior do not necessarily continue to be so, and it's good to
      have a contingency plan for such event----although I am pretty
      sure that Linus did NOT plan to work on git in 2002.

    
    Disclaimer: I wrote down my personal best recollections and
      opinions. Please draw your own conclusions and analogies; I ask
      for your indulgence hoping that it will be enlightening to at
      least someone.

    
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