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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

#11

Post by ebg13 »

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?

> Do they think that they’ll get enough new contributors this way to offset the (more than slight) irony?

Absolutely yes. In another thread, someone mentioned that MediaGoblin is basically dead now. I went to look at their repo and it's hosted on Savannah. That definitely hurts involvement.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#12

Post by saagarjha »

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?

I wonder if there are plans to mirror GitHub’s supplemental content (issues, etc.)

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#13

Post by smudgymcscmudge »

joking wrote: post #7
protomyth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the Apache Software Foundation is considered a squatter themselves by some folks.

why is that?

I think they are saying that an apache tribe should have that username.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#14

Post by mises »

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?

I think it has more to do with the ethos of Apache vs., say, Gnu. Namely, Apache tends to be much more permissive and not really view commercial, proprietary software as a "bad thing" like Gnu tends to.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#15

Post by fxfan »

And the 3 dozen GitHub to Gitlab migrants are trying to find ways to come back while still saving face.

I have personally seen people who, for example, not only use powershell (on Linux of all places) but also build tooling around it and file issues on the GitHub repo. The same people left GitHub when MS acquired it.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#16

Post by nevi-me »

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?

I agree, also find it confusing. I thought this meant moving from JIRA to GH, but I suppose this announces something that users and contributors of Apache projects wouldn't have thought of; that the was an active decision to move to GitHub.

The move is confusing also because I thought Apache were migrating to their own git server, I think late last year or early this year.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#17

Post by pawelmurias »

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?

It lowers the barrier to entry by using something people are already familar with.

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#19

Post by idoubtit »

joking wrote: post #7
protomyth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the Apache Software Foundation is considered a squatter themselves by some folks.

why is that?

I suppose it is because of the feud between OpenOffice (Apache) and LibreOffice (Document Foundation).

For years, OpenOffice has been Apache's most downloaded project[1]. But it is only because of the past glory of this name when Sun promoted it, and by confusion with LibreOffice.

When Apache was given OpenOffice by Oracle, they let the code rot, with just a few dozens commits a year. IIRC, their strict access policies lead them to reject the initial cooperation offers from the Document Foundation. So the Document Foundation "dropped" OpenOffice and created the fork LibreOffice (from Go-OpenOffice). Circa 2011, there were many angry post about this.

[1]: The home page of "Apache OpenOffice" claims: "Over 3.2 million downloads of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.5 ".

Re: Apache Software Foundation joins GitHub open source community

#20

Post by dijit »

atonse wrote: post #10
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?

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 Window machines using IIS web servers then you would probably consider that the people making the software (or, certainly those hosting it) are ideologically at odds with the project and are hypocritical.

So, I mean, you get to choose, if you go the Linux way and say "we are open source for pragmatic reasons" then there's no doublethink. If you say "we believe that all software should be free" while simultaneously forcing your users to contribute using closed source software on a proprietary platform then then you're not practicing your ideology, and worse; you're forcing that non-practice on your developers and users.

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