On 17 November 2011 10:16, Brian LeRoux <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Ross, answers inline. > >> However, don't let this divert the community here from making a case >> for sticking with GitHub whilst being in the incubator. So far no-one >> has answered my questions. >> >> Why is Callback different from all the other projects in the ASF? > > PhoneGap has 3 years of history in Git and on Github, Its where our > community is. This is not unique. CouchDB is there as well as many > thousands of free software projects. Moving to SVN would damage our > workflow and our community involvement.
CouchDB is not on GitHub, it is on SVN here at the ASF. There are forks on GitHub of CouchDB and many other projects. However, they are forks. The canonical source from which releases are made are here at the ASF. This is different to the model you are proposing. As for your three years of history OpenOffice had 15 years of history on Mercurial before coming to the ASF and Subversion. My point is that in a foundation the size of the ASF I can almost guarantee you that any argument you make can be countered with a larger, more experienced project elsewhere. LIfe in the ASF is much more than life in a single project. >> The fact is Git is better at some things >> and worse at others. > > What is it worst at? I think it might help to enumerate some benefits: These arguments have been had over and over again. You need to step out of your camp and look at the bigger picture if we are to proceed. ... > I have not heard any reasoning yet other than its current policy which > I view with optimism. We will work with you to change that policy. If > our path to doing that is getting docs written from the Couch project > then we will immediately begin doing that / participate there. Let me > know if we can do anything else to expedite things. Excellent. I concur with Christians comments in reply to this. > (Thank you again for staying tough on us Ross: we appreciate the help > in mentorship, and keeping us honest with ourselves and our > reasoning.) Thanks for recognising my goal here. It's hard enforcing ASF policies that I feel need to change. However, I'm not going to push for that change until we are well equipped, there is simply too much riding on it. Much as I want Callback to succeed here at the ASF I am not willing to put other projects and even the foundation itself at risk for a single incubating projects desire to break the mould. I've been watching the Git at the ASF thing unfold for over three years now. The arguments you put have been made many times over. The situation is simply not as clear as you seem to think. For me an insistence on GitHub based entirely on process arguments that might be in conflict with The Apache Way is a warning sign. By attempting to demonstrate an understanding of open development through helping the ASF define community policy towards Git you will go a long way to discovering if the Apache Way is tight for you. However, it is not for a single incubator project who, by definition have not yet fully learned and adopted The Apache Way to dictate how the foundation should work. The foundation does need to figure out the git thing, Git is just a tool, but it does not need to change a development process that works for 150+ projects simply because Callback feels it should change. Ross -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
