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Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

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Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#41

Post by wDcBKgt66V8WDs »

im3w1l wrote: post #35
atonse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better participation. A lot more people know how to use GitHub's tools. It'll likely increase the amount of development, participation, pull requests, etc that ASF projects get. Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source?

They give up their autonomy in moderation - Github will now have the power to say "you are not allowed to contribute to Apache projects". This will lead to a) Github will have leverage over the project. b) They make themselves vulnerable to the outrage du jour. If an outrage mob forms against someone in the Apache Project, Github may kick them off their platform - they are known to have done so in the past. Apache wi…

To all you who think this idea is unfounded or dramatic, remember that this is the entire point of FOSS. Whether this idea holds water is irrelevant, it's aligned to FOSS and it's strange that they don't appear to care or have valued other things over it.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#42

Post by rocqua »

meddlepal wrote: post #34
snazz wrote: post #8

It confuses me why so many traditionally pro-FOSS projects move to a not-free-nor-open tool like GitHub. Do they think that they’ll get enough new contributors this way to offset the (more than slight) irony?

The number of hard line FOSS folks is really quite small. Personally I would be hard pressed to bother contributing to a project not on GitHub at this point. There is a certain workflow and interaction model that GitHub projects use that non-GitHub ones do not and it is simply not worth the time investment to learn those other projects. Not only that but it allows me to easily point at my work and go "I did that" whe…

What about a gitlab based project?

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#43

Post by TallGuyShort »

dijit wrote: post #20
atonse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better participation. A lot more people know how to use GitHub's tools. It'll likely increase the amount of development, participation, pull requests, etc that ASF projects get. Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source?

> Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source? It matters a lot actually; a lot of free-software/open source software are licensed that way because the projects themselves are ideologically predisposed. While that does not hold true for certain (even large) projects like Linux, it certainly holds true for Apache (historically) and GNU. To put it another way; if you found out GNU coreutils were hosted on…

I think the ASF, being non-copyleft, is much less ideological than you're thinking. They're big on having rules to foster healthy community and community based decisions, but the license is really just a laissez faire BSD-ish license with some particular edge cases addressed. It's open-source but flexible and friendly to businesses with hybrid models. Something like GitHub that promotes input from people involved with other projects to participate is not a surprising move for them at all.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#45

Post by RhodesianHunter »

dijit wrote: post #20
atonse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better participation. A lot more people know how to use GitHub's tools. It'll likely increase the amount of development, participation, pull requests, etc that ASF projects get. Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source?

> Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source? It matters a lot actually; a lot of free-software/open source software are licensed that way because the projects themselves are ideologically predisposed. While that does not hold true for certain (even large) projects like Linux, it certainly holds true for Apache (historically) and GNU. To put it another way; if you found out GNU coreutils were hosted on…

If the open source community is better served, and more free software is produced as a result of this move, then I see no hypocrisy. As in code, most things in life are a compromise.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#46

Post by sbr464 »

linuxftw wrote: post #28
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, it's not like all of Gitlab is fully open source. I think this is not a fair assessment, GitLabs community edition is fully open source and is a full product. The fact you can add proprietary elements for a licensing fee (which are also "open" in that they are readable, debuggable, etc;) is not at all the same as hosting on a platform which is entirely proprietary.

I feel the same. If Gitlab released the community edition as MIT license (not sure what the license is offhand) with no proprietary version, there's nothing stopping some 3rd party from creating proprietary versions/extensions of their own product.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce

I’m pretty sure it’s MIT. This page says it is.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#47

Post by jwilk »

atonse wrote: post #9

I found this title very confusing. I thought it was the equivalent of their non-profit being absorbed by GitHub. Meaning, the corporate structure." Why don't they just say that Apache will officially host their repositories on GitHub moving forward?

The ASF press release (https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the-apache-softwar...) title is better:

The Apache® Software Foundation Expands Infrastructure with GitHub Integration

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#48

Post by RhodesianHunter »

wDcBKgt66V8WDs wrote: post #41
im3w1l wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They give up their autonomy in moderation - Github will now have the power to say "you are not allowed to contribute to Apache projects". This will lead to a) Github will have leverage over the project. b) They make themselves vulnerable to the outrage du jour. If an outrage mob forms against someone in the Apache Project, Github may kick them off their platform - they are known to have done so in the past. Apache wi…

To all you who think this idea is unfounded or dramatic, remember that this is the entire point of FOSS. Whether this idea holds water is irrelevant, it's aligned to FOSS and it's strange that they don't appear to care or have valued other things over it.

It's likely that they care, but consider the provable improvement in contributions to open source and thus a demonstrable benefit to the community to be worth more than a theoretical possible eventuality that most would consider unlikely at best.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#49

Post by dragonwriter »

jwilk wrote: post #44

From the ASF press release: > In February 2019, the migration to GitHub was complete, and the ASF's own git service was decommissioned. I'm confused. https://git.apache.org/ doesn't look decommissioned.

> I'm confused. https://git.apache.org/ doesn't look decommissioned.

That's a read-only mirror service.

OTOH, https://gitbox.apache.org doesn't look decommissioned, either.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#50

Post by Spivak »

dijit wrote: post #20
atonse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better participation. A lot more people know how to use GitHub's tools. It'll likely increase the amount of development, participation, pull requests, etc that ASF projects get. Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source?

> Does it matter that GitHub themselves is not open source? It matters a lot actually; a lot of free-software/open source software are licensed that way because the projects themselves are ideologically predisposed. While that does not hold true for certain (even large) projects like Linux, it certainly holds true for Apache (historically) and GNU. To put it another way; if you found out GNU coreutils were hosted on…

I think the point is that for hosted services the fact that Github chooses to use non-F/OSS software only really hurts Github's freedom since they're the ones limited by restrictive software licensing.

The fact that Github itself is not F/OSS matters even less as Github is the only user of Github's source code [1]; they're the copyright holder and unencumbered by any licensing restrictions.

[1] For GH's on-prem enterprise product this does not apply and has a much stronger case to be F/OSS since now GH is using copyright to restrict the freedom of others.

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