I am +1 on adopting GitHub Issues. I'm not aware of any significant difficulties faced by the ASF projects that I have seen use it. I think it would make issue tracking a lot easier.
Thanks, Jeff On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 8:47 AM Martin Wiesner <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > I’m also +1 for that "move“. > Atl. Jira has it strengths, yet I agree it poses barriers to (new) > contributors, as adds in extra complexity for the workflow of bringing in > contributions. > > Given Richard’s experience with the actual migration steps and ASF’s support, > I see no reasons why the project shouldn’t try Github as primary platform. > I think, we could thus reach a much broader audience. > > @Richard: Do you think that should be done before a final 3.0.0 is out? > > Best > Martin > > > > Am 25.03.2026 um 10:04 schrieb Atita Arora <[email protected]>: > > > > Thanks for putting this together so clearly, Richard. > > I'm in favor of the move and the migration path being well-established > > makes this a low-risk change. > > The GitHub Discussions idea for the user list is interesting too. Worth > > trying! > > > > +1 from me. > > Best, > > Atita > > > > On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 9:16 AM Richard Zowalla <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> > >> Hi all, > >> I'd like to start a discussion about migrating our issue tracker from Jira > >> to GitHub Issues, as several other ASF projects have already done > >> successfully (Maven, Storm, Arrow, Lucene, and others). > >> The main benefits I see: > >> Contributors no longer need to create a Jira account to file a bug or > >> feature request, which alone can make a noticeable difference in > >> participation. GitHub's "good first issue" labelling is widely used and > >> well-known, making it easier to attract new contributors and widen our > >> community. > >> On top of that, enabling GitHub Discussions could replace our current user > >> mailing list, which has been fairly quiet for a while. Mailing lists are > >> showing their age as a communication channel, and many people today are > >> simply more comfortable engaging in a web-based forum style. GitHub > >> Discussions would meet users where they already are, potentially breathing > >> new life into community interaction around OpenNLP. > >> The migration path is well established: INFRA can migrate all existing and > >> closed Jira issues automatically to GitHub, as has been done for Maven, > >> Storm, Arrow, Lucene, and others, so we would not lose any history. > >> Regarding ASF compliance: archiving requirements are fully covered, as > >> everything can be mirrored to the appropriate mailing lists via .asf.yml > >> One thing worth acknowledging: moving to GitHub Issues does mean leaving > >> ASF-controlled infrastructure and depending on Microsoft. However, given > >> that ASF is already planning to migrate Jira to Atlassian Cloud, we would > >> be leaving ASF's own infra (for issue tracking) either way, so this concern > >> seems largely moot. > >> I'm not aware of any blockers, but I'd love to hear thoughts, concerns, or > >> prior experiences and start a discussion on it. > >> Gruß > >> Richard > >> >
