Codehosting was Re: Launchpad to be free

[Shawn O'Shea]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Lori Nagel <jastiv at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> I've been hosting my project on sourceforge. I don't know that it is the
> best place to host it, but at the time I was looking at project hosting, I
> saw either that or savannah, and savannah had just had extensive down time
> (I think it was a couple years ago) So I wasn't sure they would be able to
> keep the servers up reliably enough. Also, Wograld is based on the crossfire
> engine code, and since Crossfire is hosted on sourceforge, I felt it made
> the most sense to host it there. However, sourceforge documentation was
> really bad so I was never able to figure out quite a few things. I know they
> have since revamped the site, so I am not quite sure how it is now.  I
> intend to get back into it once I get all settled in from my move (I moved
> out of New Hampshire, Nashua was just too stressful for me and my husband
> after he lost his job there was no reason to be there anymore.)
>
>
Doug Hellnann, a Python blogger and author of the excellent Python Module of
the Week series, has recently been dealing with the same conundrum for where
to move the PyMoTW source.  (
http://blog.doughellmann.com/2008/12/moving-pymotw-to-public-repository.html).
He hasn't made a decision yet, but some of his decision lies in what
source control tool he ends up wanting to use.

In a later post, he points out that the Python developers are investigating
changing the Python source as well. The possible scenarios are discussed in
a Python Extension Proposal (kind of like an RFC for Python specific
changes): http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0374/ and you can follow the
discussion of this PEP on the Python-dev mailing list:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-January/085347.html

Hopefully these docs and discussions will give you some insight on what you
want to do for your code.

-Shawn


>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Bruce Dawson <jbd at codemeta.com>
> To: Greg Rundlett <greg_rundlett at harvard.edu>
> Cc: GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 11:22:21 AM
> Subject: Re: Launchpad to be free
>
> Greg Rundlett wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On 02/27/2009 08:35 PM, Jarod Wilson wrote:
> >>
> >>> Somewhere or another there was an explanation in writing... Oh, there,
> >>> found it:
> >>>
> >> Ah:
> >>
> >> "There are two components, Soyuz and Codehosting, that we're keeping
> >> internal. They're part of Canonical's "secret sauce" in business areas
> >> that we care a lot about, and for now the costs to us of opening them up
> >> outweigh the benefits."
> >>
> >>
> >
> > My simple interpretation is that Canonical sees a benefit in opening
> (most)
> > of Launchpad which should strengthen their position in the marketplace.
> > Once their leadership position is further solidified, they have less risk
> > with completing what they started (Mark Shuttleworth said he would like
> to
> > open the source to Launchpad a long time ago).  The alternate - assuming
> > they were even ready - seems like it would risk people opening dozens of
> > code hosting sites (seeking ad revenue) which serves to only fragment the
> > market for code hosting.
> >
> > An over-simplification is that they are open-sourcing to compete against
> and
> > catch up to services like GitHub.
> >
> > The skeptic would say they are opening enough to get free labor AND
> > increased market share to fuel new product development (aka Launchpad
> > Enterprise).
> >
> > The fact that Sourceforge (the code) was free a long time ago, and went
> > through free/non-free versions is an example of how money interests can
> > trump freedom.  I'd also say that the quality of the Sourceforge system
> > would be much better if it were free (e.g. it doesn't support other
> version
> > control systems).  Sourceforge's TOS basically "All your code are belong
> to
> > us" (you grant them a proprietary license [1]).   I think it's a big plus
> to
> > the community that we will once again have a free code hosting system.
> > Maybe this time they won't follow the same path as Sourceforge.  Or maybe
> > not.  Karl Fogel seems to be very much involved in this [2] and he was
> also
> > very much involved (in Subversion and) CollabNet [3], so he would know
> the
> > true intentions and dynamics at play.
> >
> > I guess what I'm saying is that either Canonical wants to be in the Code
> > Hosting business, or not.  I don't know.  I'm hoping for the latter.
>  What I
> > do know is that we have room for improvement because there really aren't
> ANY
> > free and complete code hosting systems [4].
> >
> > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourceforge#cite_note-4
> > [2] https://dev.launchpad.net/OpenSourcing#what
> > [3] http://producingoss.com/cv/
> > [4]
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_software_hosting_facilities
> >
>
> Risking being called on what "free and complete" means, I would venture
> to say that savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongnu.org are very free (at
> least in the GNU sense of free), and complete enough for me to host at
> least one project on.
>
> --Bruce
>
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