On Tuesday, July 24, 2012, Sumana Harihareswara wrote:
Basically, I'm thinking, let's not put so many of our eggs in the GitHub basket. GitHub is fine for FLOSS projects with fewer than a hundred repositories, ones that don't already have several communications channels, ones where privacy is less of a concern, or ones that don't run the sixth biggest website in the world practically right off trunk. But we have and will have so many strange, unforeseen needs that we should keep certain key operations on servers that we run and can hack at will.
We do need a GitHub strategy -- to make our projects more discoverable, make use of more contributions, and participate in the GitHub reputational economy. So we must figure out the right ways to mirror and sync. But I doubt our own long-term needs would work well with using GitHub as our main platform.
[0] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38196 [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35497 [2] https://github.com/site/terms [3] http://developer.github.com/
(Thanks to Chad and RobLa for talking through much of this with me.)
-- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation
But do we have a plan for improving Gerrit in a substantial way?
I can get behind the decision to use a currently substandard tool in order to preserve Wikimedia's long term freedom. But to stick with Gerrit, we must have a plan for fixing it that does not simply declare that the ability to make changes means that the magic FOSS fairy will make it so. I don't know what it would take -- maybe a weekend in SF where we invite every Java and Prolog expert we can find? Paying a contractor or two to make the necessary fixes?
This isn't just about attracting scores of new volunteers or having a "reputational economy". It's a push for change driven by the fact that Gerrit seriously undercuts developer productivity and happiness. When we've got so many difficult, ambitious projects under way, I think those are two things we should be prioritizing. By that measuring stick, Gerrit fails miserably and GitHub is a winner.
Steven
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