Is it currently advisable for a free software project to move to GitLab?
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We know who owns GitHub, but GitLab does not seem to be in much wiser hands. It says here:
"In May 2018, GNOME moved to GitLab with over 400 projects and 900 contributors."
"On 18 September 2019, GitLab raised $268 million in Series E-round funding led by Goldman Sachs and ICONIQ Capital."
Why not sourcehut instead?
"Is it currently advisable for a free software project to move to GitLab?"
And move from one nonfree program to another? This does not seems like a solution. (The software running gitlab.com is the nonfree Enterprise Edition.)
Agreed. Self-hosting a fully freed version sounds like a much better idea.
I am a member!
GNOME runs its own instance of GitLab, which according to its about page uses the Community Edition. https://gitlab.gnome.org/help
(However, even the Community Edition does not seem to be completely free, as it seems to use the Google Recaptcha library)
Could they not do without that library?
Or did they simply consider it to be open enough for their standards?
gitlab needs javascript?
"Why not sourcehut instead?"
Perhaps some are too used to stuff like github? Other possible reasons may be found at https://sourcehut.org/alpha-details/
Trisquel also uses its own instance of Gitlab (free version), but it looks like automatic user registration is disabled so there is no recaptcha. It is unfortunate that GNOME is using Recaptcha though. GNOME left GNU over some old and out-of-context RMS quotes, so I'm not sure if they will do anything about this.
One reason people may not be willing to switch to Sourcehut is that is has no actual pull requests, but rather some workflow based on email.
>"GNOME left GNU over some old and out-of-context RMS quotes"
Allegedly.
I'm sure we all know the real reason though - Canonical $$$$ won the day over Canonical's sharpest critic.
> Trisquel also uses its own instance of Gitlab (free version), but it looks like automatic user registration is disabled so there is no recaptcha.
I see, that seems to be a reasonable option for large projects that cannot deal with the current limitations of sourcehut.
> over some old and out-of-context RMS quotes.
Some vague and deprecated stuff about software freedom, IIRC.
I would be looking at Codeberg myself.
> Codeberg
Ah thanks, I knew there was some other option but could not remember the name.
For the record, Codeberg is built on Gitea, which is itself hosted on Github, which is...
Trisquel is based on Ubuntu, by that logic shouldn't we distrust it ?
That would be the logical conclusion. However, I suspect the infamous |anun was simply sharpening his wit on the razor-thin edge of detectable trolling, and is not seriously objecting to Codeberg.
(Or maybe not- only a fool deigns to spreak for a master.)
Well, it's not a reason not to use Codeberg but it is kind of ironic.
True! However, it does raise an interesting question: is there any website that doesn't ultimately, through some chain of software and development dependencies, rely on GitHub?
Many homemade HTML+CSS (no JavaScript) websites do. My page is a basic (no HTML 5) example: https://dcc.ufmg.br/~lcerf/
There is actually little reason for websites only publishing content to use anything else than HTML and CSS, i.e., to include software.
> There is actually little reason for websites only publishing content to use anything else than HTML and CSS, i.e., to include software.
Definitely! Browsing with JS off, it's quite depressing to see how many websites that shouldn't break do so- especially when I can't just "find another one" (e.g. with universities, governments, banks). Thank you for designing your website ethically and sensibly!
However, the "chain of dependencies" should arguably include server-side code as well- Gitea, in my (limited) experience, is usable without loading any code for client-side execution. In that case JS-free websites might still connect back to Github.
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