[core-workflow] We will be moving to GitHub

[Brett Cannon]

On Fri, 1 Jan 2016 at 13:37 R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 20:25:11 +0000, Stefan Krah <
> skrah.temporarily at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Brett Cannon <brett at ...> writes:
> > > I don't think this will be a shock to anyone who has followed the
> > discussion on this list. The decision is essentially based on:
> >
> > We must have been reading different discussions: On *this* list more
> > people were in favor of GitLab! Except for Guido, Donald and Senthil
> > (on python-committers) no one has even bothered to post an explicit
> > +1 for GitHub.
> >
> > It's very disappointing that GitHub proponents apparently felt the
> > need to contact you privately instead of stating their opinions in
> > the open.
>
> The impression I got here was Barry advocating GitLab (of course), and
> you arguing against GitHub (but not, particularly, in favor of GitLab).
> Everything else was down at the noise level :)
>

That's the impression I got as well.

The reason I didn't think it would be surprising was my constant prodding
for GitLab features that made it stand out. I wouldn't have bothered
pushing for that if I had already chosen GitLab or thought it was on track
to win out. The fact that I persistently tried to make the open source
solution somehow shine was because I was trying to grasp on to something
for GitLab because I was trying to avoid the stress of dealing with people
being unhappy with selecting GitHub by making my decision glaringly obvious
(and in all honesty it would have been nice if an open source solution
could have won out; maybe in the future). In the end, though, I decided
dealing with people upset from going with GitHub was worth it compared to
the positives of selecting GitHub, hence my decision.


>
> Me, I don't care one way or the other, as long as we aren't locking
> ourselves in to either.
>
> Now, the fact that people felt it better to contact Brett privately to
> advocate for GitHub is indeed interesting, and yes, disappointing.  The
> interesting question is, why is that?  Perhaps it is what was alluded to
> earlier, that favoring the "commercial alternative" is seen as "bad" in
> terms of what we might label as "virtue signalling"?  Which would be
> weird, because GitLab isn't non-commercial.  So maybe there's some other
> reason (because GitHub is the big gorilla and people think it is
> "better" to favor the underdog?), but I wonder if it still comes down to
> virtue signalling (or, rather, not wanting to signal non-virtue, in this
> case).
>
> So I agree with you, it would be great if people would openly speak
> their minds, as Guido did :)
>
> On the other hand, it might just be a matter of the "usenet nod", and
> not wanting to "clutter up the list" with a "me too".  You did get some
> pushback against your arguments, to which people may have been nodding.
>

The comments came of two forms. Some were of "yay for GitHub" so basically
a one sentence head nod. The other was a few private messages that were a
bit longer and explaining their view on the options (including not
switching). The vast majority of these emails, though, were in reaction to
my email to python-committers asking for people to tell me if they would
walk away if we chose GitHub. Most said they were emailing me privately to
avoid adding any unnecessary noise to that email thread, but I suspect it
also had to do with them not being subscribers to core-workflow and not
caring enough to join this list to wade into the discussion.

But also realize that this process has been going on for over a year now. I
have had multiple conversations at conferences at this point with people
who expressed various opinions on the matter and I didn't report those
face-to-face conversations either and which are no different than a private
email. There was never going to be a chance where anyone but me was going
to have complete knowledge of people's various positions, nor was I about
to report a tally of those conversations based on preferences. I'm sorry if
people feel like I did a disservice by not doing a regular "general
sentiment of the Python community" report based on what private feedback I
received, but I just didn't think about it nor did I think it would be an
issue for anyone that people chose to speak with me privately.
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