Hosting REUSE tools on Github (Re: Constitution violation with the use of GitHub)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,

another comment:

Am Montag 09 August 2021 12:39:37 schrieb André Ockers:
> 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.

Our mission with FSFE is to further Free Software, spread knowledge about it 
and its usage. When hosting the REUSE tools there is a conflict between

 * We want contributions wide and spread of the tool to be very easy.
   Thus more people use it to mark their FS source code better.
   Github is (unfortunately) a leading place for people that need
   knowledge about how to mark Free Software files well.
   And who get into contributing to other people's code bases and software
   development at all.

 * We want to promote Free Software tools (and fair platforms).
   Where Github is bad (Grade F in the 2015 FSF evaluation) 
   https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html
   
So going to https://foss.heptapod.net/public would be good for the tool 
promotion goal, but suboptimal for the spread of REUSE. One of the goals has 
to give.

On a higher level: As the reuse tools mainly target people that do not know
about Free Software licensing that well and its use will promote more Free 
Software usage (because licensing and rights ownership becomes easier),
the wider spread would probably have the higher effect on the whole Free 
Software ecosystem than one more repository on a fair platform does for this 
platform. At least this is what I believe the FSFE group doing this, was 
considering, and it is a reasonable choice within the constitution of the 
FSFE in my view.

Today, using https://foss.heptapod.net/ or gitlab maybe be compromises
with a different balance and maybe better. Selbsthosting maybe another,
if we have enough help it maintaining the software and platform to keep it 
uptodate. (Savannah for instance could not keep up over the years.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

-- 
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