Re: Git Packaging Round 2: SHOULD Not or MUSt NOT Github
On Saturday, September 14, 2019 7:16:26 PM EDT Thomas Goirand wrote:
> On 9/15/19 12:06 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > On Saturday, September 14, 2019 6:01:24 PM EDT Thomas Goirand wrote:
> >> On 9/14/19 6:59 AM, Balasankar "Balu" C wrote:
> >>> So will the GR be
> >>> "You must not do any sort of contribution to Debian using non-free
> >>> software/hardware"
> >>>
> >>> or
> >>>
> >>> "You can use anything you want to contribute to Debian, but there should
> >>> be a way for other people to contribute to your work in Debian without
> >>> compromising on their freedom" ? (This translates to my words in the
> >>> beginning of this reply - patches over BTS must not be rejected by a
> >>> maintainer)
> >>
> >> Of course, the later. I don't care if a contributor is using Debian in a
> >> VM running on Windows, as long as he/she doesn't force me to do the
> >> same. That's the same spirit with using a non-free Git platform.
> >
> > What you proposed sounded a lot like the former to me and apparently
> > others.
> Indeed. Sorry for this (to you, and to all others that wrongly
> understood what I meant).
>
> >> It is a real life experience that I had to touch horribly maintained
> >> packages by unknown contributors, with Vcs-Git:
> >> https://github.com/<foo>/<bar>, missing commits not matching the
> >> archive, and no response from the maintainer to the BTS (even for RC
> >> bugs). The last occurrence of this was pyroute2, which I pushed into the
> >> DPMT (and still no reply from that past maintainer). I hate seeing this,
> >> and don't want this anymore, though it happens again, and again, and
> >> again. So, the only way to get out of this is enforcement, like it or
> >> not.
> >
> > The Vcs-foo is there as an aid to finding additional information about the
> > package. There's no requirement to deal with it when you are NMUing. NMU
> > diffs go to the BTS. End of story.
>
> Respectfully: this sounds like a non-sense to me. I completely fail to
> understand the logic behind what you just wrote. As, seemingly, you're
> not the only one with that point or argumentation, I need more
> enlightenment.
>
> If we aren't supposed to use the VCS fields, why do we even have them at
> all? Shouldn't we just get rid of them completely in Debian then? What's
> the point to advertise about some kind of Git repository, if we're not
> supposed to use them? If you're using Git alone, for yourself only, why
> at all publish the repository then?
>
> > There's nothing that requires you to interact with a VCS repository that
> > you don't care to.
>
> But I do care about using Git, and interacting with other DDs using it.
> However, basically, what you're saying is that, for those who care about
> not using non-free platforms, we should just not do that anymore, as
> it's not required anyway. That's simply not fair: I care more about
> software freedom, and therefore, I'd be left aside, not being able to
> use Git when interacting with others.
>
> Besides this, there's something else I don't understand. How much effort
> is it to use a free software based platform? It's not as if Github was
> so much nicer than Gitlab (at least not anymore). What is it that people
> hate about Gitlab so much, that they feel like they must use some
> non-free platform, even if they know some of us will hate it?
I don't know. I don't use GitHub except as needed to support collaboration
with others that use it. I think that 7% is too large a number just to assume
there's not a reason.
Also, consider that if we prohibit Vcs-foo that point at non-free services
like GitHub what the likely result will be. I suspect that people who are
using such services are doing it for a reason they consider sufficient (or they
woulnd't be doint it).
Given that, I'd expect that the rational response to such a rule would be to
delet the Vcs-foo from the package and carry on using the non-free service.
How does that help make Debian better?
Scott K
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