Re: [PATCH] Updating homepage to point people to pagure for development.

[bill-auger]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 08:55:14 -0600 Colby wrote:
> You can shoot the messenger after taking issue with something they've
> shed light on, as is happening here, or you could just... not.

sry i am only trying to understand your perspective, or the
nature of that "something" under illumination

are you suggesting that it would benefit the project, to
designate the github or pagure replicas as primary? (or to where
the web page directs users, for code, bug reports, and/or
discussions)

the corollary of that being, that it is harmful to a project, to
use only savannah - is this your perspective? - if so, then our
perspectives are probably in close agreement - for years, i have
been suggesting the adoption of some "modern-web" forge to GNU
people - ie: i am that: "the messenger"; and the proposal has
been shot down several times - i found that most GNU projects
prefer VCS+email; and that most GNU projects do not actually use
or pay attention to savannah's "web-forge" features (only it's
auxiliary services VCS, FTP, and email)

that is the reason why savannah may be seen as unpopular or
hosting "dead" projects - most savannah projects simply do not
use the savannah web GUI - all the activity is evident in the
email archives, the VCS, etc, but perhaps not so evident when
using only a web browser

the primary reason to keep savannah as primary/canonical, is
because FSF/GNU operates the host (self-reliance) - IMHO, all
project should strive for self-reliance WRT critical
infrastructure - of course, this does not obviate the use of
third-party forges as secondary, for people who prefer the webby
workflow

FWIW, the proposed FSF forge may be a pagure instance (or sh.ht,
or gitlab) - i would suggest directing users to that
enthusiastically, if it existed (the plan has languished a long
time)

but again (my original reply to this thread), active team members
would need to agree to watch that forge (or new people would
need to volunteer) - the key term is: "active" (not: "team
members") - merely displaying it on the website is not enough
- as of today, all discussion and patches have been on the
mailing lists; and i have been relaying bug reports to and from
those unofficial forges and the mailing lists - i do not need to
be a "team member", in order to accomplish that - any "active"
member of the community could

from my perspective, this patch affected me alone, and was
potentially an extra burden; so i was somewhat compelled to
raise some objection - i have nothing against pagure - in 2016,
we (the peers community) evaluated it as the most libre-friendly
forge, of the dozen or so we evaluated; and i have commits in its
VCS - it was my initiative to establish the pagure.io/librejs
repo, for an urgent special purpose

the librejs project is in a peculiar state of limbo currently -
it is not quite clear who is "at the wheel", or which
acknowledged team members are participating, or even reading the
discussions - so over-all, this patch ignited a productive
conversation

unfortunately, the conclusion of the conversation seems to be,
that no other team members have volunteered to watch third-party
forges, or agreed to recognize them as "official" - perhaps
opinions would change when/if the FSF decides to host a forge