On Wed, 2019-07-31 at 08:29 -0400, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 09:44:09AM +0300, Lars Eggert wrote: > > On 2019-7-31, at 5:21, Martin Thomson <mt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > The reasons to use GitHub aren't limited to hosting of git repositories. > > > > > > Foremost is the low friction for contributions, which is made > > > possible by having a large, existing community of people with > > > accounts and knowledge of the system. > > > > +100 > > > > As someone said earlier in the thread, of course we can stand up our > > own instance of pretty much anything based on git. But we'd > > instantly loose the community already on the public platform. > > Git is a distributed system. As such, the same git repository can > be made available on multiple git servers. For example: > > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git > https://github.com/tytso/e2fsprogs.git > https://repo.or.cz/e2fsprogs.git > > Are all mirrors of each other. So even if/when github.com were to cut > off access to some country, people still have access from the other > two git repos. For the git part, yes. What's more problematic are extra things that are not replicated, e.g. issues. > > Furthermore, *nothing* says that you have to use github's pull > requests as the only way to request changes be made to a git > repository. You can just as easily send a request that a change be > made to a git repo via: > > git send-email -1 --to=ietf-example-wg@xxxxxxxx > > .... and then the document editor can use "git am" to apply e-mail > message to the repository, if she chooses. > > Cheers, > > - Ted > > P.S. This is also something individual working groups can do on their > own. The repo.or.cz site is a public service which charges no fees > (although they do accept donations) in the Czech Republic which, while > part of NATO and the EU, might have somewhat different ideas of > international relations than the Orange Haired One currently gracing > the US White House. Well, being a Czech citizen, I wouldn't be so optimistic :-) However, it is not only about political pressures. A provider of any such service can cease operation, or change its conditions, policies and pricing. I think that if such a tool is perceived as important for the IETF community, than it should be run by the IETF. Lada > > So if an IETF working group has a valued contributor which is getting > blocked by github, an ietf wg chair (or anyone on the working group, > for that matter) could establish a unofficial mirror of the wg's git > repo on repo.or.cz without needing to ask permission from the IESG, > IAB, RSE, RSOC, etc. > -- Ladislav Lhotka Head, CZ.NIC Labs PGP Key ID: 0xB8F92B08A9F76C67
