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azymohliad / watchmate

PineTime smart watch companion app for Linux phone and desktop
GNU General Public License v3.0
142 stars 5 forks source link

Why the move to GitHub? #2

Open TheOPtimal opened 1 year ago

TheOPtimal commented 1 year ago

I don't understand the reasoning. Why move to GitHub?

azymohliad commented 1 year ago

I plan to move all my repos here. My personal reason is that I just like Github increasingly more lately. Both, for purely practical things (UX and features), and also for small user-care things (like recently added mastodon links support). Plus, last autumn Gitlab greatly reduced their free tier, so e.g. now Github gives 5x more CI minutes for free.

Now, as for an opensource project used by others, I understand that I've been given some trust and have a certain responsibility to keep up to expectations. But since this is still largely a solo project (besides your recent contribution tweaking the icon), I thought this move shouldn't really negatively affect anybody. Sorry if it affects you. And for non-contributors end-users it shouldn't matter much. If anything, I think it would be even more convenient for them, e.g. to fill bug reports, because likely more of them have Github accounts than Gitlab. Also, Github seems more suitable for community-oriented projects, e.g. having features like discussion forum. Also, since InfiniTime itself is on Github, I think most of its community wouldn't mind other projects in the ecosystem to be on Github too.

Sorry if that was too spontaneous to you or anybody having the same question. I've been thinking about moving to Github for a while, and the more I'd wait the harder it would become, so a new release became a trigger.

TheOPtimal commented 1 year ago

Honestly, I agree with a lot of your reasons. GitLab's official instance has become increasingly more restrictive. However, I just don't think GitHub is the right answer. It's owned by Microsoft and will bow to any other corporate overlord when it comes to repositories (see youtube-dl and RCA). I think GNOME's Official GitLab would be a much nicer home project - It's hosted by the GNOME foundation and will happily host this app. You can also apply to get CI minutes there, if that's desirable.

Plus, being on GNOME GitLab would make it much easier to apply to GNOME Circle, which could bring a lot of benefit to your app.

azymohliad commented 1 year ago

It is a valid concern that Github is owned by a corporation, and I might underestimate the importance of it. But over these years it's been only improving IMO (whether it's due to being under Microsoft or despite of it). The situation with youtube-dl was concerning, but who knows if other code hostings would protect it under the pressure from Google. I'm not familiar with the RCA story (there seems to be many different projects under that name, so I can't find the relevant one that easily).

I'd still like to give Github a shot as my primary code hosting platform, and to this project for now too.

I didn't really consider applying to GNOME Circle (yet)

WhyNotHugo commented 1 year ago

I'm sorry to hear that no open source forge was good enough for you and that a proprietary one feels like a better home for the project. It's always sad to hear that the open source ecosystem is so lacking that people have to move away from it onto proprietary platforms.

Are you planning to maintain the project open source too, or would do you feel that open source in general has failed you?

Thanks for your work on this so far!

azymohliad commented 1 year ago

No, of course the project will always remain open source! Of course open source has not failed me!

I just don't think that Github is a bad home for open source projects, even if it's not completely open source itself. The main risk is that if things take an unpleasant turn, and I'd have to move, then I won't be able to migrate issues & PR comments history to another instance, as with Gitlab. But the project would survive that. And I consider that a very unlikely turn of events.