Github != Freedom?

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Wed, 2018-03-21 at 11:56 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 07:48:03AM +1300, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > On Wed, 2018-03-21 at 11:22 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> > > On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 06:55:57AM +1300, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Or push to github and have travis-ci chew it over (make a pull request
> > > > or set it up on the source repo).  Andreas did that (made a pull
> > > 
> > > Yes, but that would mean pushing to a proprietary software-as-a-service
> > > provider, which is something we're trying to avoid.
> > 
> > Except for Coverity of course. 
> 
> No, there is a difference. Coverity and Codenomicon are *extras*.
> Nice to have but not an essential part of our workflow.
> 
> Github is trying to become an essential part of our workflow.

I'm not proposing that, and it isn't.  A while back we agreed to
welcome contributions via GitHub.  As discussed elsewhere it helps a
lot because the CI is pre-done and so avoids round-trips with new
contributors who can't run our full 5 hour autobuild locally.

The only change I see in the future is that I would like it to become
socially unacceptable to proposed changes to Samba that don't pass CI. 

I don't really mind which CI is used, GitHub for those in that
ecosystem, GitLab if I get help to get that going, Catalyst Cloud for
Catalyst staff or sn-devel for team members like Metze and Volker who
use that religiously. 

If, like the introduction of autobuild itself, CI is easy to do and it
becomes unacceptable to propose breaking changes, we will *all* spend
less time on admin and e-mail and more time reviewing and writing great
patches. 

> > > github != Free Software.
> > 
> > Sure.  And to be clear, as someone who actively avoids having Google
> > accounts I really do get that. 
> > 

> github could get bought out/go away/add privacy issues/add service
> charges *tomorrow*, and when they do (it's a when, not an if), then
> a lot of projects are going to be *screwed*. I don't want to be one
> of them.

I credit the Open Source and Free Software communities with far more
agility than that.  We have survived the loss of sourceforge, Google
Code, berlios, Fedora Hosted and many others without major pain.  

And all our pull requests are mailed as patches, so we won't even loose
those. 

> > There are alternatives, but also precious as our freedom is our time,
> > and time I spend manually compile-testing patches is time I can't spend
> > on developing more Free Software. 
> 
> I understand convenience. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. But
> I don't want to *depend* on github such that it's not possible
> to build Samba without it.

I'm not proposing that, and wouldn't.  As a good example we need a way
to do security releases in private regardless.  

But what I will do is ask folks for the CI status before I do reviews,
because my time is valuable too.

Thanks,

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett
https://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team         https://samba.org
Samba Development and Support, Catalyst IT   
https://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba