On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 08:58:58PM +0100, Fabio Valentini wrote: > interview, but it doesn't hurt to ask. > I actually briefly mentioned this topic in my last interview for > FESCo, one year ago (last paragraph, the "open question"): > https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/fesco-election-interview-with-fabio-valentini-decathorpe-4/ To be clear -- this isn't what Michael was asking. But since you went in the direction I als did in the previous message I sent, I'm going to go ahead and respond. > And since nothing has happened in this space, and my opinion has not > changed, I didn't want to just provide the same answer in this year's > interview again, but I can reiterate my opinion here, with a freshly > typed version: > > I think switching from a well-integrated, fully open-source solution > (pagure + pagure-dist-git) that was developed under the Fedora Project > umbrella to a proprietary solution from a vendor with an "open core" > business model is a bad idea, sends the wrong message to the FOSS > community, and should be avoided, if at all possible. Philosophical > issues aside, I also fear that switching out the "forge" would mean > losing integration with other Fedora services again. Some features > were lost when pkgdb2 was retired, but almost everything is now > available again in the pagure/pagure-dist-git UI or other places, and > switching to GitLab would mean reimplementing all those integrations > from scratch, using the GitLab API - and if I remember correctly, at > least some of the necessary features or APIs are only available in the > proprietary "Ultimate" tier of GitLab - which means either losing > features, or giving up on a FOSS solution, and neither should be > acceptable. I agree that switching would require a large effort, and I definitely agree that were we to do such a switch (to _anything_), we'd need to do it better and not lose integration. We should learn from the last time. And I absolutely am not _happy_ to be presented with a choice between features we need and open source. But, I increasingly do not see other good options. I am, however, not very sympathetic to the "send the wrong message to the FOSS community" argument. That's not fair. We make an all free and open source software distro and we build it as a community — _that's_ our message. But we're also pragmatic (for example: binary firmware to make your hardware work). We don't exist to just be a symbol, but to get free and open source software actually running in the hands of people. I don't want us to be "well, you should use *other distro*, but I sure do admire what Fedora is doing over there". More than that, though, if what we do sends a message... the message we are sending right now isn't working. People _aren't_ showing up in droves to help build Pagure. People aren't even showing up in significant numbers to _use_ Pagure outside of the Fedora space. And, again, that's not because Pagure isn't good — it is, with a great fundamental design where it's git all the way down. But our use of it hasn't changed the world, I don't see that improving. It doesn't _actually_ advance our mission and vision at all for us to be symbolically right if it doesn't change people's behavior, and... it doesn't. Whenever this topic has come up, I've see lots of this, except people don't say the first part out loud: "Of course _I_ use GitHub for most of my stuff, because of all of the advantages — but Fedora, Fedora should never." We can't let ourselves be held by that. I don't think Gitlab open core is ideal. But I think it's closer than GitHub. And I deeply believe that free software and real open source is _just plain better_ as a model, and I think they'll eventually realize that too. I think we could have a LOT more impact working WITH GitLab to move towards an all-open model than we will continuing on the current path. > TL;DR: I do not support switching to proprietary software, especially if > there's already a well-integrated FOSS alternative deployed to production. Deployment isn't a static thing. Software doesn't work that way. It's an ongoing, living process that requires continual maintenance. So, that can't be the whole story. We need something sustainable, and the current situation is not. See other message. We can't possibly solve everything. We use computers with microcode that isn't open. We run stuff in cloud infrastructure. We already have a _lot_ of important infrastructure where upstream is in a proprietary gitforge. Even upstreams that belong to Fedora as a project. I _know_ this is painful. But we've gotta focus our effort on where _we_ can make the most impact. And we're not going to win the git wars. -- Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
