Re: Choice of bug tracker

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Regarding "workability", we have EMBA for people to try out. It's been 
  > there for several years. Unless Gitlab is crossed out from the list of 
  > contestants already.

gitlab.com gets a failing grade as a repository.
See https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html.
We urge GNU packages not to use gitlab.com.

Specifically limited use of gitlab.com may not encounter that
problem.  It would be necessary to check the specific case.

However, adopting a bug tracker is a decision we hope not to have to
change again for years.  That calls for using a server run by people
we can trust; which means, people who share our values.  It is hard for
a company to merit that much trust.

The Gitlab software ls a different issue.  I gather that it is all
free software, so there is no bar to our installing it on a server and
running it.  If Gitlab.com changes its policy, we could continue running
the previous version of the software, or else patch their release.

Regarding using an email responder to file submissions in a server:

  > The main limitation, however, is that this design requires people to 
  > create accounts in the system. Even just to file new reports.

If a server requires that, that is a major negative.  Aside from being
a nuisance for each person to start to use, it also infringes each
user's privacy.

Worse, if the site requires that, it may also require running nonfree
Javascript to create an account.  That would be morally unacceptable:
we can't direct users to run nonfree programs.

If the site does not do that now, will it start some years from now?
Will it start using Cloudflare, which requires nonfree Javascript for
users coming in through the Tor network?  If the developers don't
share our values, we have to treat that as a permanent danger.

I have a possible workaround for all of that.  Could we use one single
account GNU-EMAIL to file all email submissions, and record who really
sent each submission (obtained from the From field) in another data
field in the submission?

If the site developers care about us a little, they could add a
feature to use the From-field submitter, for display and search,
instead of the account name, when that latter is GNU-EMAIL.

(With a little more work they could make this feature more elegant and
general, so other projects could do likewise.  Each would make its own
account for email submissions.  We could release the email responder
program as a GNU package so they couid use it.)

  > That's what I was saying: if we encouraged the use of ELPA more, the 
  > issue of our common bug tracker (and whether it's good or not) would be 
  > a little less important.

I presume that ELPA here is short for GNU ELPA.

There are more important reasons to put a given package in GNU ELPA or
core Emacs.  It would not be wise to override them for this.

However, if we have an email responder that files submissions in
another server, it could look at the package name to decide which
server to file them in.  Or a package could specify where to forward
the email to.  This wey we could enable each package to use its choice
among our acceptable bug trackers.  This would work for core packages
just as for GNU ELPA packages.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)