On Saturday, September 14, 2019 7:16:26 PM EDT Thomas Goirand wrote: > On 9/15/19 12:06 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote: > > On Saturday, September 14, 2019 6:01:24 PM EDT Thomas Goirand wrote: > >> On 9/14/19 6:59 AM, Balasankar "Balu" C wrote: > >>> So will the GR be > >>> "You must not do any sort of contribution to Debian using non-free > >>> software/hardware" > >>> > >>> or > >>> > >>> "You can use anything you want to contribute to Debian, but there should > >>> be a way for other people to contribute to your work in Debian without > >>> compromising on their freedom" ? (This translates to my words in the > >>> beginning of this reply - patches over BTS must not be rejected by a > >>> maintainer) > >> > >> Of course, the later. I don't care if a contributor is using Debian in a > >> VM running on Windows, as long as he/she doesn't force me to do the > >> same. That's the same spirit with using a non-free Git platform. > > > > What you proposed sounded a lot like the former to me and apparently > > others. > Indeed. Sorry for this (to you, and to all others that wrongly > understood what I meant). > > >> It is a real life experience that I had to touch horribly maintained > >> packages by unknown contributors, with Vcs-Git: > >> https://github.com/<foo>/<bar>, missing commits not matching the > >> archive, and no response from the maintainer to the BTS (even for RC > >> bugs). The last occurrence of this was pyroute2, which I pushed into the > >> DPMT (and still no reply from that past maintainer). I hate seeing this, > >> and don't want this anymore, though it happens again, and again, and > >> again. So, the only way to get out of this is enforcement, like it or > >> not. > > > > The Vcs-foo is there as an aid to finding additional information about the > > package. There's no requirement to deal with it when you are NMUing. NMU > > diffs go to the BTS. End of story. > > Respectfully: this sounds like a non-sense to me. I completely fail to > understand the logic behind what you just wrote. As, seemingly, you're > not the only one with that point or argumentation, I need more > enlightenment. > > If we aren't supposed to use the VCS fields, why do we even have them at > all? Shouldn't we just get rid of them completely in Debian then? What's > the point to advertise about some kind of Git repository, if we're not > supposed to use them? If you're using Git alone, for yourself only, why > at all publish the repository then? > > > There's nothing that requires you to interact with a VCS repository that > > you don't care to. > > But I do care about using Git, and interacting with other DDs using it. > However, basically, what you're saying is that, for those who care about > not using non-free platforms, we should just not do that anymore, as > it's not required anyway. That's simply not fair: I care more about > software freedom, and therefore, I'd be left aside, not being able to > use Git when interacting with others. > > Besides this, there's something else I don't understand. How much effort > is it to use a free software based platform? It's not as if Github was > so much nicer than Gitlab (at least not anymore). What is it that people > hate about Gitlab so much, that they feel like they must use some > non-free platform, even if they know some of us will hate it?
I don't know. I don't use GitHub except as needed to support collaboration with others that use it. I think that 7% is too large a number just to assume there's not a reason. Also, consider that if we prohibit Vcs-foo that point at non-free services like GitHub what the likely result will be. I suspect that people who are using such services are doing it for a reason they consider sufficient (or they woulnd't be doint it). Given that, I'd expect that the rational response to such a rule would be to delet the Vcs-foo from the package and carry on using the non-free service. How does that help make Debian better? Scott K