Sharing free code in 2015 (and 2016, 2017, ...)

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Christian Kalkhoff <softmetz at fsfe.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm currently in the early stages of starting a new Free Software initiative
> for knowledge workers. One thing that bothers me is where to host the
> development infrastructure. I would like to avoid self hosting at the moment
> for time reasons.
> Until a while ago there was Gitorious, which seemed to fulfill my
> requirements for a Free Software hosting site since it was built on Free
> Software. Since its acquisition through Gitlab, that just provides an open
> core model, I think of it no better than of Github.

There is certainly difference between software which is 90% free and
software which is 0% free software.

> Github did a fine job in providing reliable hosting but its non-free from
> its base up.

That's pretty much the same as all the software you use "as a
service". That is from the routers involved to transfer packets, to
the actual software running the service.

> I want to create 100% Free Software but not force its users to rely 100% on
> Free Software to run it (I would wish for that, but I also like freedom of
> choice for end users that are not yet ready to switch).

I am not sure whether the same principles should be applied to
services. When I download (free software) files from the internet, I
don't have the requirement for all the components involved in the
process (routers, screens, ...) to consist only of free software. I
don't see why free software hosting should be different.


regards,
Nikos