From: Dragan Simic Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2024 17:00:54 GMT Subject: Re: Migrate away from vger to GitHub or (on-premise) GitLab? Message-ID: <5d796ab27f4575ded4807e08618c9249@manjaro.org> In-Reply-To: <7e395301c5ff46a69d8aca71eb0bb766@manjaro.org> On 2024-02-01 17:54, Dragan Simic wrote: > Hello Konstantin, > > On 2024-02-01 16:39, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote: >> On Thu, Feb 01, 2024 at 12:10:11PM +0000, Hans Meiser wrote: >>> is there any current discussion about moving Git development away >>> from using >>> a mailing list to some modern form of collaboration? >>> >>> I'd like to be able to follow a structured discussion in issues and >>> to >>> contribute to the Git documentation, but the mailing list currently >>> just >>> bloats my personal inbox with loads of uninteresting e-mails in an >>> unstructured waterfall of messy discussion that I am not able to >>> follow >>> professionally. >> >> Here's a perspective from the world of Linux kernel, where this >> discussion is >> continuously raging. Funny enough, the main objection a lot of kernel >> maintainers have to forges is that it makes it really hard to find >> relevant >> discussions once the volume goes above a certain threshold. These >> folks have >> become *extremely* efficient at querying and filtering the mailing >> list >> traffic, to the point where all they ever see are just those >> discussions >> relevant to their work. They love the fact that it all arrives into >> the same >> place (their inbox) without having to go and click on various >> websites, each >> with their own login information, UI, and preferred workflow. >> >> The kernel maintainers are able to review tens of thousands of patches >> monthly >> with only about a hundred or so top maintainers. To them, this system >> is >> working great, especially now that some tools allow easy ways to >> query, >> retrieve, verify, and apply patches (shameless plug for lore, lei, and >> b4 >> here). >> >> The obvious problem, of course, is that these folks are FOSS's >> "marathon >> runners" who got really good at their workflow, but the situation is >> different >> for anyone else who is just starting out. Any new kernel maintainer >> stepping >> up obviously finds this overwhelming, because they aren't yet so good >> at >> filtering the huge volume of the mailing list traffic and to them it's >> just a >> torrent of mostly irrelevant patches. >> >>> Are you consideration for migrating? >> >> Yes, of course, this is constantly under consideration. There isn't >> some sort >> of anti-forge cabal that is preventing things from going forward, but >> there >> are some serious hurdles and considerations to consider: >> >> - How to avoid a vendor lock-in? Those of us who have been around for >> a while >> have seen forges bloom, and then shrink into irrelevance (e.g. >> bitkeeper) >> or slowly ensh*ttify to the point of unusability (sourceforge). >> GitHub is a >> proprietary service owned by a single company who are currently >> FOSS-friendly, but have certainly been extremely FOSS-hostile in the >> past. >> GitLab is open-core, and the current record for open-core projects >> isn't >> very encouraging (Puppet open-cored themselves into irrelevance, >> Terraform >> has gone full-proprietary, among most recent examples). Full-FOSS >> alternatives exist, but people aren't really that enthused about >> using >> less-popular solutions like Forgejo, because they hate unfamiliar >> UIs almost >> as much, or even more than they hate unfiltered mailing lists. >> >> - How to avoid centralization and single points of failure? If Linux >> or Git >> move to a self-hosted forge, how do we ensure that an adversary >> can't stop >> all development on a project by knocking it offline for weeks? This >> has >> literally just happened to Sourcehut and Codeberg -- and as far as >> anyone >> can tell, the attacker was just bored and knocked them out just >> because they >> could. Yes, you can knock out vger, but this will only impact the >> mailing >> list -- people can still send around patches and hold discussions by >> temporarily moving to alternative hosts. With the distributed nature >> of the >> mailing list archives, this can even be largely transparent to >> anyone using >> lei-queries. >> >> - How to avoid alienating these hundreds of key maintainers who are >> now >> extremely proficient at their query-based workflows? We're talking >> about an >> extremely finely-tuned engine that is performing remarkably well -- >> we don't >> want to disrupt development for months just to try things out with a >> forge >> and find that it isn't working out. >> >> Finally, there's also the consideration of current trends. One upside >> of "AI" >> (LLM, really) technologies is that they are extremely good at taking >> in a huge >> source of data and finding relevant information based on natural >> language >> queries. I can very easily see a mechanism spring up in the next year >> or less >> where you can issue a query like "send me any threads about reftables >> or >> promissory remotes if they contain follow-ups from Junio" and >> reasonaly expect >> this to work and work great -- all while keeping things decentralized >> in >> addition to distributed. >> >> Above all, this isn't a "forges are terrible and shouldn't be used" >> response >> -- they are clearly useful, especially when it comes to CI >> integrations. A >> large part of my work is bridging forges with mailing lists and >> vice-versa, >> which I hope I'll be able to do in the near future (GitGitGadget >> already does >> it with GitHub, but my goal is to have a pluggable multi-forge >> solution). I >> just wanted to highlight the aspects that aren't necessarily obvious >> or >> visible from the outside. > > Thank you very much for taking your time to write this down! > Much appreciated. s/your time/the time/ Sorry for the noise.