Constitution violation with the use of GitHub

[Paul Boddie]

On Monday, 9 August 2021 12:39:37 CEST André Ockers wrote:
> 
> Jacob Hrbek schreef op za 07-08-2021 om 13:44 [+0000]:
> > As mentioned in https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-tool/issues/361 the use
> > of GitHub for REUSE is to my understanding an obvious violation of
> > the constitution of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
> > 
> > Thus i elevate the issue here to be discussed for an appropriate
> > action taken by the FSFE or juridistical authority if sufficient
> > action is not taken by the FSFE.
> 
> Taking FSFE's mission seriously, a migration to a platform in the Free
> Software-friendly ecosystem would indeed look to be an appropriate step
> to me.

And it's not as if FSFE doesn't have its own hosting platform for 
repositories:

https://git.fsfe.org/

But then again, here are the REUSE repositories:

https://git.fsfe.org/reuse

Although I understand the motivation for mirroring repositories on other 
hosting platforms, care has to be taken not to drive people onto those 
platforms, making them feel obliged to sign up.

I have actually interacted with the REUSE project on GitHub because I 
previously had to sign up for GitHub at my employer, and since I was going to 
file or comment on issues, it was "convenient" to do things that way. (The 
hassle of setting up interaction with GitHub and similar platforms like 
Bitbucket means that it is never truly convenient.) But I refuse to create a 
personal GitHub account just to interact with projects, and when I last 
checked, I was not even allowed to have another account alongside my existing 
work account.

The FSFE actually has a reasonable foundation for empowering its supporters 
with infrastructure around identity and other services. When I joined the 
Fellowship when it was still around, we got smartcards for potential public 
key cryptography applications, and one could envisage more being made of such 
technologies to help things like secure e-mail proliferate, as well as making 
any services more secure and more convenient to use.

Then again, maybe I am just not up-to-date with what people are doing or are 
able to do with FSFE infrastructure these days, although this might also mean 
that opportunities are being missed to communicate with people likely to be 
interested in such matters.

Paul