On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 10:09 AM Samuel Lelièvre <samuel.lelie...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Friday, 09 Sep 2022, 09:54 UTC, Dima Pasechnik wrote: > > > > I am resurrecting this thread, as in addition of trac continuing to eat up > > funds > > (at a rate of over US$ 10 per day at the moment), it has gotten increasingly > > broken. In particular, in the last 2 weeks no new developers can really join > > the project, as there is no normal* way to add new ssh keys into trac > > accounts, > > and it's not possible to push/pull with "new" github ssh keys, i.e. keys > > that > > were not already "known" to trac, i.e. added to the trac store of ssh keys > > before the last breakage happened. > > > > As far as funding is concerned, attempts to bring trac to a "free" hosting > > stalled (see earlier messages in this thread). > > > > A further longer term issue is that trac software is basically on life > > support, > > and it's only matter of time it will become totally obsolete. > > > > Such a move will allow a considerable simplification of our devops, > > and free up quite a bit of developer time > > to do interesting work rather than messing around with semi-obsolete > > stuff such as trac, gitolite, etc. > > > > Importantly, Volker, the release manager, is willing to proceed with the > > move. > > > > Also, various Sage upstream (and downstream) projects have moved > > away from trac to github, e.g. Cython, or away from another system > > to github, e.g. CPython, GAP, jupyter, etc... > > > > There is a trac ticket to manage the proposed move, > > https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/30363 tentatively set for Sage 9.8. > > > > I've conducted few experiments with a tool to import trac sites to github: > > https://github.com/svigerske/trac-to-github, which in particular allows > > to import trac tickets as github issues; a result of running it on few > > tickets > > may be inspected here: > > https://github.com/dimpase/trac_to_gh/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed > > (Here issues 1-10 correspond to trac tickets one to one :-)) > > Further work on trac-to-github will be needed, in particular to properly > > link branches in our git tree, but it's doable, > > and we have volunteers to do it. > > > > We'd like to hear about serious objections to the move, if any. > > I would like to voice serious objections to this move.
Samuel, What you describe are all purely imaginary for us problems, and surely much bigger open source projects such as Python, llvm, etc., which moved to GitHub, thought long and hard about moving (or not). Yet they did. By association you accuse them of being non-inclusive, etc. Maybe we shoud move away from Python and stop using llvm/clang too? You have no issue with us paying real money to Google, which is much more evil than GitHub, no doubt about it. And you are a long term macOS/Apple user, paying money to a company which blocks developers, users, etc all the time, in much more aggressive than GitHub way - it's basically leeching on independent macOS developers, charging rudiclous percentage for transactions on their AppStore, or whatever it's called ... No, really, let's stop pretending we're so inclusive and open and not relying in any way on big commercial companies - which sometimes need to adhere to legalisations (apart from them acting out of self interest). > > To me, moving to a GitHub-centric development contradicts > the inclusiveness and openness of the SageMath project. > > a. The company operating GitHub can block access to GitHub, > block account creation, or terminate accounts for individuals, > companies or countries without prior notice on discriminatory > grounds, see links below. I spend some time reading [GitHub controversies] link. I must say, worrying about a single, and settled, employee harassment case, and other links actually show that while they sometimes overreact (who doesn't), they normally quickly correct themselves. Strikes me as very, very unimpressive, if you compare this e.g. with Google's rasist ML models scandal... > > b. Relying on free software tools for essential infrastructure > is something I value a lot in the Sage project. Trac is that, > GitHub is not. Google cloud is not free software, either, yet you keep using it... > > c. Several people refuse to open a GitHub account and are > much more comfortable contributing to Sage using a Trac > account on our Trac server. It reminds me of people who refuse to use bank cards, and only use cash... Objections against opening a GitHub account are mosly pure paranoia (or pure politics), because all you need is an email address. Get a dedicated email for this task only, if you must. > > d. Moving to GitHub because a lot of software development > has moved there does not seem a relevant argument to me. How it's not relevant? Surery in your permanent employment ivory tower you might not care about getting useful, in real non-academic life, skills. > > e. Today GitHub exists. Tomorrow it might shut down. > Gitorious, Google Code, Gna!, CodePlex and many others did. Yes, they did, in part because GitHub did better than them. > > f. Today GitHub charges no fee to free software projects. > Tomorrow that might change. Remember how Travis CI > was once free for free software projects, then no longer. GitLab, with which you apparently have no issue, also had all but shut down its free CI runners, so what? GitHub is not going to do so, for a variety of reasons. > > My experience is that using Trac as our main public repository > and issue tracker works well, and does not prevent us from > using other tools in addition. what works well for your particular ivory tower might be a nightmare for others. Surely trac and other shabby tools we use are a serious turnoff for newcomers, especially for them already exposed to GitHub and other modern tools. Not being able to use very nice GitHub tools for core reviews, for instance, must be quite a shock. > > - Merge requests against the SageMath repository at GitLab > are turned into Trac tickets automatically. As far as I know > this works well and developers of p-adic functionality use it > quite a lot. they however don't even bother to have it documented. Besides, GitLab is not having very good record of being consistent, not breaking people setup, having bad docs, etc. (I wasted days trying to make their repo mirroring and their CI work, all in vain, and other Sage people sure have similar experiences too). And why do you think it's much different from GitHub regarding its account policies? > > - There used to be a similar mechanism to turn pull requests > against the SageMath repository on GitHub into Trac tickets. > From what I understand it was not extremely complex and > someone with the right skills could hopefully revive it. See > > https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/30406# SOMEONE, yes! Nobody wants to do this, and for a good reason. Stop doing research and go instead working on Sage infrastructure, if you're so keen on preserving the status quo. > > - We are able to use GitHub Actions and to integrate them > with our Trac server, with badges displaying the result of > these automated actions displayed on each ticket. Yet, it's very far from the convenience of doing all this on GitHub. > > Hosting our Trac server at Google seems to be a problem. > I can ask my department about hosting Trac. Can someone > summarize the requirements (disk space, RAM, etc.)? Ask your department about giving root access to one of its VMs to individuals based abroad. Try Iran, Somalia, or Russia as possible locations, if you're so keen on being truly inclusive and non-discriminatory. Several requests like this in the past (even without dodgy countries involved), at several French places, went nowhere. Why do you think you'd have any luck with it in your case? Seriously, though, the main issue with trac is that it's old legacy software, it's user base is shrinking every year, it's basically on life support. And we are wasting human resources we don't really have on keeping it alive. Dima > > Kind regards, --Samuel > > > --- Some links about GitHub policies and controversies --- > > GitHub and US trade controls > https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/github-and-trade-controls > > GitHub controversies > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub#Controversies > > GitHub has suspended my account for no reason > https://padida-ali.medium.com/github-has-suspended-my-account-for-no-reason-99ebbcad98cc > > GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25644056 > > Microsoft enters: GitHub banned Iranian developers! > https://medium.com/@devengine/microsoft-enters-github-banned-iranian-developers-843f7c60a146 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CAEcArF1L_cPC4Dh%3DxOExsxZdpiiTS1cLBwrrPrmZxcwG8Pzpbg%40mail.gmail.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. 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