[Viking-devel] RFC: what about SourceForge?

[Guilhem Bonnefille]

Hi,

As you certainly noted, SourceForge is in bad days.

As a reminder:
- first, they started to change the strategy with ads
- then, they injected some malware in Windows installer
- worse, they kept open some projects moved elsewhere
- recently I learnt that Google is considering sites pointing to
sourceforge as dangerous
- and I discovered that uBlock completly block my attempt to go tou
*sourceforge.net/*

And finally, Sourceforge will be sold, again.

So I think it is probably time to leave this hosting for somewhere else.
What's your opinions?

Any idea for the best new hosting solution?
- Github
- Bitbucket
- GitLab
- http://savannah.gnu.org/
- some hosting solution related to GPS/Geoinformation
- auto-hosting (if someone as space or money)
- ...
--
Guilhem BONNEFILLE
-=- JID: ***@im.apinc.org MSN: ***@hotmail.com
-=- mailto:***@gmail.com
-=- http://nathguil.free.fr/

[Greg Troxel]

Guilhem Bonnefille <***@gmail.com> writes:

> So I think it is probably time to leave this hosting for somewhere else.
> What's your opinions?

Agreed it's time to go.

> Any idea for the best new hosting solution?
> - Github
> - Bitbucket
> - GitLab
> - http://savannah.gnu.org/

Of these, I prefer savannah.nongnu.org (unless viking becomes a GNU
project, which would be ok too). Generally, I think that Free Software
projects should be hosted by a charitable organization whose charter is
the advancement of Free software.

> - some hosting solution related to GPS/Geoinformation

There is osgeo.org, I think. I don't know if viking fits their mission
but it woudl be ok.

> - auto-hosting (if someone as space or money)

That's harder, and I don't think the project has critical mass for it.

[Robert Norris]

> So I think it is probably time to leave this hosting for somewhere else.
> What's your opinions?

I personally have never had a problem with SourceForge's hosting, although I'm quite aware some of their actions have been dubious.

Viking uses numerous services: code, binary distribution, email list, wiki, forum and bug+feature trackers.

Migrating the bug+feature trackers seems a tricky task, especially as various code commits make reference to such SourceForge Bug Ids.

I suppose the Viking SourceForge site, could go into a freeze state such that is still available for reference.

> Any idea for the best new hosting solution?

I don't really want to spend much time maintaining/switching to any site, however I have set up 'viking-gps' organization on Github (the name 'viking' was already taken) and transferred my code repository to that.

I will look to make a parallel 1.6.1 release on Github and have created a basic website on http://viking-gps.github.io/

Whether this will become the Viking's new home or not, we shall see.

The one downside to Github hosting (other than being a propriety service) is the lack of an email-list / forum or similar. So for code the Issue tracker is fine, but for meta discussions and thoughts such as these - there doesn't seem to be an equivalent. 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Greg Troxel]

My $0.02, and sorry if this is redundant:

- I am no longer comfortable with sourceforge.

- Free Software should be hosted by a charitable non-profit (501c3) that
has advancing Free Software as a substantial part of its mission.
That does not include github :-)

- I agree that self-hosting is too painful.

- Mailinglists are necessary, as are areas to put release tarballs. I
think it's unhelpful of github to run projects and provide neither of
these.

- I tend to recommend savannah.nongnu.org, which has repos, bugtrackers,
and lists, and is run by FSF. I've been involved with quagga that has
migrated to savannah, and it's been reasonable.

[Robert Norris]

> - Mailinglists are necessary, as are areas to put release tarballs. I
> think it's unhelpful of github to run projects and provide neither of
> these.

Github do offer release tarballs - automatically generated against tagged versions of the repository.

See https://github.com/viking-gps/viking/releases

It should be possible to guess the URL for scripted a download that follows a known pattern for new version releases.

> - I tend to recommend savannah.nongnu.org, which has repos, bugtrackers,
> and lists, and is run by FSF. I've been involved with quagga that has
> migrated to savannah, and it's been reasonable.

Well I've just toyed with the Github setup primarily because that's where I've (and lots of people) have accounts - so there is a network effect to consider.


Be Seeing You - Rob.
If at first you don't succeed,
then skydiving isn't for you.

[Greg Troxel]

Robert Norris <***@hotmail.com> writes:

>> - Mailinglists are necessary, as are areas to put release tarballs. I
>> think it's unhelpful of github to run projects and provide neither of
>> these.
>
> Github do offer release tarballs - automatically generated against
> tagged versions of the repository.

As in they run "make distcheck", which has configure from configure.ac?
I had the impression they only offered tarballs of exactly what was in
the repo. And it seemed their names and unpacking did not match the
usual open-source norm that the file viking-1.6.0.tar.gz unpacks to
viking-1.6.0/.

I see that the release tarball
- is missing configure
- is called and unpacks to viking-viking-1.6.0

compared to what "make dist" would do.

> See https://github.com/viking-gps/viking/releases
>
> It should be possible to guess the URL for scripted a download that follows a known pattern for new version releases.
>
>> - I tend to recommend savannah.nongnu.org, which has repos, bugtrackers,
>> and lists, and is run by FSF. I've been involved with quagga that has
>> migrated to savannah, and it's been reasonable.
>
> Well I've just toyed with the Github setup primarily because that's
> where I've (and lots of people) have accounts - so there is a network
> effect to consider.

True, but fsf accounts are easy, and don't require one to agree to
indemnify a for-profit company.