Gitlab? Savannah (of the nongnu.org variety)? Bitbucket? Gitorious? A basic VPS with SSH and git?
The implicit free-as-in-speech condition is adequately fulfilled by other alternatives, like (as I mentioned) Gitlab and (IIRC) GNU Savannah (along with - again - just installing git on an SSH-able server).
The reason we went to Github rather than Sourceforge is because of the community. Nethertheless, I think it's fairly foolish to focus on the platform (in the case here of archiving) - it's just a host. Stuff goes on domain 1 instead of domain 2. In either case it's still open source, the archives are all there, git is decentralized and perfect for the job.
Is it just an archive or isn't it? If it is, what's so important about the community, then?
It's fine that you chose what you did, of course. It's just that that in your defending it, you can't seem to decide whether you want to have your cake or eat it.
If you wanted, this would have been a perfectly fine reason to give: "We went with GitHub because it's just what we use mostly, and other stuff not so much."
1. The meat of which remains: if it's just an archive and the host is only being used as dumb storage, how is the "community" aspect of it a plus?
So I'm going to repeat myself here:
- Savannah is shit. Zero UX effort. Atrocious home page, branding, atrocious everything. - Unfunded efforts are unreliable. Get a grip on reality, man. This isn't afound foss or proprietary or whatever - it's about having a business model. - If you think it's OK to recommend shit products as alternative to good products because of ideology, you are a detriment to the cause you claim to promote.
BTW, I'm the LXQt project lead and a huge proponent of free software. Some advice next time you attack someone, look them up.
Oh and here's another piece of advice: Don't attack people.
As a tangible example, imagine yourself working in a dank, contaminated 6' diameter sewer pipe with spotty pirated electricity, vs. a well-designed, large interior space with plenty of natural light and reliable utilities. Regardless of how irrelevant appearances are to you, I'd wager you'd get more work done in the second environment than in the first.
To the point of Savannah vs. SF, I'm inclined to agree. I have projects from the early 2000s still on SF and I need to move them off.
At the same time, if we're the ones generating our own bad press, we at least control the overall narrative. I guess that's a net win.
What do you think will happen, exactly, when an unfunded host can't keep running? Maybe their gnu website will receive some donation from Facebook or Google or something, but there is no incentive to keep the nongnu part running. It's just volunteer work.
That model can work (cf wikipedia), but it's extremely rare, requires a lot of effort, a lot of bootstrapping and a lot of luck. It also requires $1 to pay for more than itself, so there are extra requirements regarding efficiency of spending, and diminishing returns of donations.
Gitlab has a good model. In fact, I'd be curious to see what their CEO makes of what I'm saying here - I always find him scouring HN comments about github, git, hosting, sourceforge, all of these. This is the sort of effort you have to put into to get your product out there into the ears and minds of people.
As I said earlier, yes there is a risk Github will turn evil. If they do, there will be warning signs (there have been warning signs about SF for 5 years). If such is the case, there will be alternatives by then (ever heard "if there aren't, I'll build one and get rich"?).
If Savannah runs out of money and has to turn off the lights, how much of a warning sign will there be? A few weeks maybe? Maybe there just won't be any. And this is a very real situation, which you absolutely need to be ready to confront. Putting your fingers in your ears and calling everything "an assault" won't help.
> if we're the ones generating our own bad press, we at least control the overall narrative
It's a very bad sign that you care so much about the "overall narrative". It's reminiscent of your approach to flag criticism as assault again. You care about what people say, not why they say it.
I'm not paid by an anti-FOSS group or just felt like shitting on the work of random people. There's a reason behind everything I wrote here and above; it's backed by experience. And you'll be hard pressed to find people disagreeing that Savannah is pretty terrible... you can't just go around "controlling the narrative" like you own the media. You have to fix the problem at the root.
So fix it in 10 years. Git makes that easy.
Point me to a good alternative to github that matches all your ideals. A free alternative to github - free as in beer, unless you're willing to fund this effort yourself, of course?
We migrated one of our projects from Sourceforge to Github, and all the stallmen came out of their rock to tell us how Github is evil, how Savannah is the only true alternative, pah. "Absolute freedom of software" is nice but it's not the only requirement. Savannah has the usability of a rusty wrench and will probably shut down without warning long before Github "turns evil".
Some people are just so far detached from reality when suggesting that stuff isn't perfect. Github is pretty damn amazing. If you want to use foss alternative like Gitlab, more power to you, but that doesn't make them ideal in every situation.