Re: Git mirrors

[Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 06:50, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:

> No, he's exaggerating.

With a purpose.

> For sure.  And GNU now has two.  GNU Arch (since 2003), a definitely
> freedom-loving project.  And GNU Bazaar (just in time to be adopted by
> Emacs; coincidence?)  For heaven's sake, even the name "Bazaar" evokes
> open source ideals!

And?

> I don't understand what you're trying to say.  Óscar is precisely
> arguing that there should be *no* "official" GNU VCS, because there
> are too many good ones out there.

I'm trying to say the same thing that Jambunathan K just said: that
the project's choice of a DVCS over another will only stop from
participating to those who weren't really inclined to do so in the
first place.

> If users are choosing
> something other than GNU, and it's clear that GNU makes choices based
> on favoritism toward GNU-labeled projects, that makes the GNU
> recommendation meaningless as a signal of quality.

*Technical* quality, perhaps. But the recommendations are not just
technical, and someone who choses GNU software should know it. And the
technical aspect will in most cases improve over time.

> It's already
> meaningless as a signal of the freedom of the software, since that is
> determined quite precisely by the license; no need for a GNU label.

That's not an argument against having a GNU DVCS, it is an argument
against having GNU in the first place.

> While I understand it's not a *contradiction* in this
> context, the justaposition of emphasizing political correctness while
> advocating freedom is, uh, unattractive.

I don't think so, as long as political correctness is a choice.

> It would be (economically) better if GNU developers making (currently)
> inferior software were encouraged to abandon their effort, and devote
> some of that time to improving the free rival(s)

Isn't that a recipe for monocultures? Or are you suggesting that all
XEmacs developers should abandon it, sign papers and start hacking
Emacs?

> and most of it to
> developing software that currently has no attractive free
> implementation.

By and large, people develops what they are interested in. There's
nobody in charge to order or suggest them to tackle other software
that would be useful.

> Richard has already announced here that he thinks Savannah made a
> mistake.  He has clearly stated the policy: GNU does not reject git,
> but it does favor Bazaar.

Yes, that's what Richard said. But still, he does not order around the
Savannah hackers (or we would have had an upgrade to the bazaar server
almost two years before). The fact is that currently, Savannah is not
favoring bazaar.

> But your analogy fails, because the problem here is not whether
> Óscar can *adapt* to Emacs' use of bzr.  He can, and he can use git
> (for developing Emacs) at the same time as bzr (for pushing his
> contributions) if he wants to.

Apparently, for Óscar is a problem.

> The problem is that many people are failing to *conform*.  They're
> *adapting* by using a git mirror, and annoying larsi and Glenn et al
> by reporting bugs against git revision ids.  John is trying to reduce
> or eliminate the annoyance by providing a canonical git repo with a
> publicly available git revid <-> bzr revid map.

My view of that people is that it's as if I were to use a C-to-Ada
translator to get the code of Emacs, patch it (in Ada), and complain
that it is difficult to integrate the changes back into Emacs because
they are rejected or I'm forced to convert them back into C. I'm
making my live difficult, I'm making the live of others difficult, and
I'm complaining about it. And, BTW, "failing to *conform*" is quite
loaded, don't you think?

> Richard's reluctance to express approval of this idea strikes me as
> going beyond *promoting* GNU Bazaar to *protecting* it.

And you're surprised that Richard is protective of GNU because...?

    Juanma