to git or not to git

[Andreas Nilsson]

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Hello Bernhard.

> > Personally, I don't think we need to dive down into completely
> > different
> > VCS software just because a VCS repository provider decided to go
> > evil.
> 
> The argument is about how to counter the network-effect that will
> makes it 
> easier and easier for a leading provider to get more ahead of others.
> And it is about what is a more sustainable choice.

By the phrasing "leading provider" I assume that it means a company
that won't share the software innovations with the rest of the
community so that all can benefit. The company gets an upper hand and
can impose deals like what you write about Github that helps
proprietary software companies in their business.

If this is the case then I would suggest to seperate out the parts that
makes Github and others to have an upper hand and then see how the
parts can be countered using free software and free innovation.

Github seem to take the inter-connectedness that would be lacking in
many of the other alternatives. You can click a button to fork a
project, you can start "watching" certain projects and get email
notifications, you can download the sources without needing Git, you
have an interface of markdown that every project adapts and the README
is presented as if it were a web page.

I am at a loss right now of suggestions or methods or ideas to counter
Github but it sounds easy enough to be able to get going using a few
people. It might just take a discussion during a week for a good
project to spring up later.

> The money that Github is earning with helping to develop proprietary
> software, allows it to innovate fast and turn a user experience of
> git into a 
> user experience of git-hub. If many people are socialised with it,
> they want 
> that user experience whereever they go. This is why even using
> Bitbucket
> as a proprietary competitor does something good to keep the
> competition open.
> And using hg or services that allow hg also help weakening the
> network-effect 
> cycle a bit, while strengthening chances of competition.

It's really bad that a company thrives on a thing like "open source"
while using that income to fund "closed source". I wonder if even the
open source camp would approve of that as a thing to further
improvements.

> > GNU Savannah provides Git repository hosting too, and is powered by
> > GNU
> > Savane, a host software that you can use on your own[2]. 
> 
> It is very good that these Free Software product and services exist.
> The problem is that many developers now believe them to be too far
> behind (in 
> features, available add-ons and user experiences) compared to 
> github/bitbucket/gitlab.
> 
> Even Allura (which is the Free Software that runs Sourceforge) is
> considered 
> by many to not play in the same league.
> 
> For instance Savane is an continuation of the old sourceforge code
> variant,
> a newer one is http://fusionforge.org/
> which was used by Debian and others (see list at
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GForge#FusionForge)
> But Debian is moving off Fusionforge.
> The listed organisations (which includes my company) have failed to
> finance 
> and organise a steady development of Fusionforge so it could keep up.
> Think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gna! which shutdown a while
> ago.

I thought I would add up the list with two more Git providers that I
use in parallell:

https://www.tuxfamily.org/
https://pagure.io/

They seem to be alright. I'm not sure about how Pagure is doing with
their stance on proprietary software but Red Hat is usually a nice
company in that regard and would prefer the repos to contain free
software projects only.

> If we (as Free Software people) want a first class Free Software
> product
> and a number of service providers offering to run it for us, we need
> to make 
> sure professionals can earn serious money with it. 

I could share an idea I have had about the financing and the "poor free
software developer not getting paid". It's not a very complicated idea
and it would work if enough people have the initiative to do so.

The idea is to make an economical funding platform. The platform itself
only communicates between the two parties users and developers,
economically.
If the developer is signed up and ready to develop, users are signed up
and leaving opinions, bug reports, requests and other issues - the
process is a matter of transmitting funds.
What would be possible right away is to transfer funds using
traditional means such as physical transportation or digital
transmission using anonymous payments.
I see a problem with the platform being popular right away, the
platform is going to slowly gain traction if implemented right and
developed further. The starting position needs to calmly work out
means. I have a few means that I thought about, such as a service to
come home to a user and take the discussion as well as payment from
them which will be transfered to the developer of said software
including all the demands that that funding has.

Work it out good and it will work good.

Kind regards,
Andreas
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