Should we host the coops.tech source code on GitHub or GitLab?
Chris Roos PublicSeen by 57The source code should be open so that any of us can make changes/improvements.
Host the source code of coops.tech on GitHub
proposal by Chris Roos Closed Mon 20 Feb 2017 12:01PM
The source code should be open so that any of us can make changes/improvements.
Results
| Results | Option | Votes | % of votes cast | % of eligible voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agree | 8 | 73 | 8 |        | |
| Abstain | 3 | 27 | 3 |    | |
| Disagree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Not voted | 86 | 89 |                |
For the purposes of outreach to wider tech community I think it would be useful to host on GitHub for the moment.
We can self-host with mirroring there at some future point.
I've used abstain to represent a vote for gitlab.com with the code mirrored to guthub.com with a goal to move it to a co-op hosted site (while retaining mirroring to GitHub) when one is available. Of course I'd like the code to be open ASAP 😃
Agree with sentiment on self hosted gitlab mirrored to github but happy to just be on github for the now.
I'm in favour of Chris Chrome co-op gitlab idea but think Github is a good interim solution
Simply, I don't know enough to give an opinion. Happy to go with the flow.
A self hosted co-operative GitLab in the future would be good. gitlab.coop ? We could probably manage our data and backups better than https://gitlab.com !
@finnlewis This is in the works but we need a for now solution.
My preference would be to host it on a co-op run GitLab CE site as suggested by Finn above, but this doesn't exist yet -- if the code is to be moved in the next few days then it would have to moved to an existing site. If it can wait a week or so then this might be an option...
Alex's outreach argument for GitHub is compelling, but wherever the code is we can, and I'd suggest we should, mirror the repo to GitHub.
If the code is going to be moved this weekend then my preference would be for GitLab.com because a very large amount of their source code is free (as in freedom), the GitHub code isn't.
I'm going to go-ahead and action this by creating a github organisation. Please ask me in #general in slack to be added as an admin.
Hi Chris, just seen the message - have you actioned this? We have just created the coop-tech github organisation and pushed the project to https://github.com/coop-tech/website.git, if you've already created one then we can undo that and push to your organisation instead
We now have a Cooperative Technologists organisation on GitHub, the website code is on GitHub we have closed our first issue and have 17 open issues that people can start to work on!
Both the dev site and live site are now running the code from the GitHub project.
Slightly at a tangent...
I would be keen to contribute to the overall code, but my coding is very amateur and limited in range. And I'm keenly aware that handholding and mentoring take time. So I'm wondering if others would like to talk over how we could effectively bring in amateur volunteer coders into this work, improving their skills, without the short term effects being negative? As I'm sure that in the longer term there would be many benefits from this.
If we can, that really starts to open things up. It's also a chance to think about how to do the open culture in a way that is inclusive, welcoming and encouraging without (I repeat, for emphasis) it being a burden on those who are very skilled, productive and busy.
I'm sure we can find a way of doing this if we think it through with care. If there is anyone here who would like to support this, then perhaps we can decide to open another thread?
So I'm wondering if others would like to talk over how we could effectively bring in amateur volunteer coders into this work, improving their skills, without the short term effects being negative?
I'm interested in this idea. I have no experience/idea about how to do it but am happy to be involved to see if we can work something out.
Great, thanks for the response @chrisroos
If anyone else is interested, it would be great to start talking and writing -- or even without anyone else -- when we have some time and clear heads.
We should wait to see what, if anything the Free Software Foundation has to say on this but as of today, 1st March 2017, some people are of the view that the new GitHub terms of service mean that:
any and all content under copyleft licences is... no longer welcome on GitHub
I don't know if The MirOS Project blog is correct in their understanding of the implications, there is a thread on this on Hacker News.
@chriscroome
This seems overheated nonsense to me regarding GitHub. Its the largest repository of open source software probably ever? They aren't about to ban a whole group of major licenses.
In particular the following clause explicitly says the opposite: https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#6-contributions-under-repository-license
According to this blog post, "The Free Software Foundation was also talking with them about it. " so I'd suggest waiting to see what the FSF has to say.
We shall see! I'm not convinced. Specifically the clause "reproduce your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality" doesn't seem at all problematic, just a grant to GitHub so you can use GitHub. The key clause is "solely on GitHub".
It is simply not in GitHub's interest to mess this up. If they have by stupidity rather than malice, I am pretty convinced they will correct it.
I had intended to have a proposal for either GitHub or GitLab but then realised that they don't work like that. The proposal is currently to host the code on GitHub. If we don't collectively agree then we can start a new proposal to see whether there's more interest in hosting it on GitLab.