Re: [gentoo-nfp] Gentoo Social Contract and potential liabilities

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 7:14 PM, Anthony G. Basile
<basile@××××××××××××××.edu> wrote:
> I really hate it when we banter back and forth about what our opinions are
> and really just become an echo chamber.

Sure, but I don't think adding more voices is really going to change
much.  Those who advocate for github aren't going to stop just because
a pillar of the FOSS community tells them they shouldn't use it.
Those who advocate against it aren't going to stop because some other
pillar of the FOSS community tells them they should use it.

Neither side is going to change their opinion much if a lawyer says
that the Foundation will/won't get sued over it either.  Those who are
against using github probably aren't concerned primarily with
lawsuits, and those who are for using it would just suggest that if
the Foundation gets sued the simple solution is to just move
everything to github so that we're not so dependent on bank accounts -
lawsuits won't impact the functioning of the stuff on github.

> Several dev have now stated that
> they are concerned about github.  Some of their concerns are the fact we
> don't control it, others are just technical/taste, other are the increased
> work with more contributions.

I think the latter is a problem we can afford.  More contributions is
likely to lead to more volunteers.

I think the real issue isn't github, but weakness in our own
offerings.  Honestly, the thought of github closing its doors doesn't
keep me up at night as much as the thought that one day we'll hear
that some of our servers were hacked into and since everybody is busy
with other things it will take a month or two to get them back online.
I think the infra team does great work and appreciate it greatly, but
I think the reality is that we're running a major project on the labor
of just a few volunteers.  If our infra were more scalable (not just
in hardware, but in the bodies needed to support it) then we could at
least have some FOSS alternatives to github deployed.  Necessity is
the mother of invention, and if you don't address the need people will
find clever ways to work around the roadblocks they see in front of
them.

As with many things around FOSS I think we need to be able to operate
in an even more distributed fashion, less dependent on central points
of failure.  Easier said than done though.

-- 
Rich