collaboration with Gitlab (was: Debian and GitLab Open Source Partnership)
Hi
El 26/7/21 a las 23:04, Louis-Philippe Véronneau escribió:
> On 2021-07-26 01 h 50, Alexander Wirt wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 07:59:26PM +0200, Geert Stappers wrote:
>>> On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 06:19:37PM +0200, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:
>>>> Donald Norwood <donald@debian.org> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Debian and GitLab have been in discussion regarding an Open Source
>>>>> Partnership toward which we will jointly produce mutual promotions,
>>>>> shared stories, and announcements using both organizations press and/or
>>>>> publicity channels.
>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Out of the blue, without any more context and content,
>>>
>>> ???
>>>
>>> "Debian" and "Gitlab" are speaking with each other
>>> since the very start of "Salsa".
>>>
>>>
>>>> I am not sure to be happy with this news.
>>>
>>> To me is the news that "press" and "marketing" are more involved.
>>> Because I assume good faith, I allow meself to focus on other stuff
>>> in (Debian) life.
>>>
>>>
>>>> To me, such a partnership is something quite stronger than sponsorship
>>>> and I'd be a bit ill-at-ease with it being done without the whole Debian
>>>> Members being consulted.
>>>
>>> Yes, a DD is allowed to represent the project.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Last but not least, what kind of data would be shared regarding how we
>>>> use gitlab in Debian?
>>>
>>> Please give the (humble) Salsa admins time to elaborate.
>>> I have no insight information about "the data",
>>> but imagine (dull??) statistics on accounts, active accounts, projects,
>>> active projects.
>>> I do trust my fellow Debian Developers to deal wisely with it.
>>> For (gory??) details I recomment to join the Salsa admin team.
>>
>> To be honest - and to my suprise - we weren't involved in this
>> discussions. We don't share any personal data and we won't do that.
>> We share rough numbers (numbers of projects, users,
>> groups, storage used), but we also do that regulary in talks (at least
>> when there were real conferences).
>>
>> Alex - Salsa Admim
> I was under the assumption the Salsa Team would somehow benefit from
> this partnership in some way (technical help, extra resources, etc.),
> but I guess it's not the case. Thanks for clarifying.
>
> I'm not sure I understand what Debian has to gain from this "Partnership".
>
> More media exposure? I don't think we really need it: the Publicity Team
> was already doing a great job.
>
> More money? Gitlab is a silver sponsor for DebConf21, but so are ARM,
> Ubuntu, HRT, Two Sigma and Globo.
>
I think we have a misunderstanding here. It's not a partnership between Debian and Gitlab, at least not from my point of view (and I'm member of the Debian partners team).
They sponsor DebConf21 at Silver level and Debian is listed as "Open Source Partner" in GitLab Commit 2021 (their conference). From this "partnership" (we used their word, probably we shouldn't have done it), we're publishing a micronews, and we're offered a virtual booth at their conference, that will happen if people works on it, as usual.
Apart from that, but related, GitLab contacted the DPL to see if we can share some "publicity" work; they are interested in publishing an article about how Debian uses Gitlab. We'll try to learn a bit more about their specific plans, our focus is to write it together so the Debian needs and perspective are on it (how we use their free software flavour, mention things that could help us as community, etc.). The idea is to gather the info already published (on mailing list, talks) about Salsa and Salsa CI and contact these teams to get their views and requests, if any, to transmit them to GitLab (wether they appear in the article or not). This work has not started yet.
That's all. There is no formal partnership (Gitlab is not listed in www.debian.org/partners). The partners@ alias is CC'ed in the conversations to have the record of how the story started, for the case a partnership would be on the table in the future (we would need a longer collaboration record, also including other kind of support from their side at least).
Kind regards,
--
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona
> Although I'm happy Gitlab the git forge exists, Gitlab the enterprise
> (Gitlab BV) is a for-profit, venture-capital backed entity. If we're OK
> partnering with them for more exposure [1], why are we not partnering
> with other similar enterprises?
>
> DSA has been using Puppet forever to maintain their infrastructure. Why
> not strike a partnership with them?
>
> If anything, I think this muddies Debian's image more than promotes it.
> Had Gitlab BV been a non-profit, I don't think this would've been a
> problem to me.
>
> :(
>
> [1]: Clearly this is rhetorical, I'm not.
>
--
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona
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