Le 28 août 2025 10:21:38 GMT+02:00, Guus der Kinderen 
<[email protected]> a écrit :
>Moving away from GitHub will take a not-to-be-underestimated amount of
>effort and dedication. A couple of years ago, there was an experiment with
>moving away from GitHub to GitLab. Quite some effort has been put into
>that, but in the end, it didn't take off. The remnants are still accessible
>at https://gitlab.com/xsf
>
>My estimation is that we have less volunteer-resources available today. As
>such, I don't see how we would realistically pull off a migration, let
>alone start to maintain that new infrastructure. I'm happy to be proven
>wrong.
>
>As I am skeptical that this will ever successfully happen, I urge Board to
>find a compromise (with regards to Florian's -1 vote) to let the item under
>vote pass. Please decouple the effort to improve the workload in existing
>processes (which is taxing people that have been and still are volunteering
>today) from a migration effort. One should not need to block the other.
>
> - Guus
>
>On Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 8:51 AM Ralph Meijer <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 28 August 2025 02:35:04 CEST, Elle <
>> [email protected]> wrote:
>> >- The communications platform *is* apolitical. It does not distinguish
>> between "bad" things (like enabling C&C systems for malware) and "good"
>> things (like rapid triage of pressure sores). So people use it for both.
>> >
>> >We'll just have to agree to disagree here. My point about OMEMO is that
>> the UK and a number of other countries have just passed legislation that
>> aims to backdoor all E2EE communication platforms. Like it or not, refusing
>> to backdoor OMEMO will become an explicitly political position, along with
>> its current technical and ethical underpinnings.
>> >
>> >Regardless of its applied usage, the point is like you said for the
>> server operators / protocol to be ignorant of the contents of E2EE
>> messages. While there may be attacks outside the protocol, the XSF is
>> entering into an ethical stance that it will not knowingly compromise the
>> security of OMEMO. At least, I hope XSF makes this commitment.""
>> >
>> >The "Four Horseman of the Cryptocalypse" is a classic line of argument,
>> I'm sure you're aware, used to strip people of their civil
>> liberties/rights, in the name of the "good" guys protecting from the "bad"
>> guys.
>> >
>> >My point is, XSF may be apolitical regarding the usage of the protocol
>> (and I really question that), but the choices around infrastructure, Code
>> of Conduct, Bylaws, software license, etc are all political-social-ethical
>> choices at some level. Maybe not primarily, but at some level these choices
>> have implications in those realms.
>>
>> First off, while the XSF is currently the major focus point of concerted
>> protocol development for, and promoting the use of, XMPP, it is not the end
>> all and be all of all things XMPP. The core protocols are defined over at
>> the IETF, and you'll find it has a similar approach to try and keep its
>> workings as neutral as possible. Also, the protocol *and* the community are
>> intentionally distributedly extensible. That means that stuff can, and
>> does, happen outside of the XSF.
>>
>> Second you are correct that nothing is absolute, including views on
>> political, social, or ethical topics. My job as a director, and chair, is
>> finding the delicate balance between the personal views of individuals in
>> the XSF Membership and the XMPP community in general, and the stated goals
>> of the XSF. Our mission statement (<https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/mission/>)
>> is quite clear on the position the XSF takes. We also expanded this in our
>> procedures (e.g. <https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0001.html>) and design
>> guidelines (<https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0134.html>).
>>
>> Your concern with regard to OMEMO can be held to all those documents, just
>> as I use them to guide my work as a director. Also note that we have
>> already been the target of related pressure, and will continue to push back.
>>
>> Again I want to stress that the XMPP community includes people not just
>> rooted in FOSS and its varied(!) political leanings, but equally from
>> corporations, non-profits, education, government, supranational
>> organisations, and military organizations.
>>
>> This all is why trying to elicit a specific response with the casual
>> mentioning of a major geopolitical event is not helpful to me, and why I
>> made the general stance on my approach.
>>
>> --
>> ralphm
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As someone who sees moving from github as an action that would make the XSF 
process more robust, and less dependent on a corporate entity that I personally 
consider malignant at best, I believe we could only shift the process onto 
another service if:

* someone (or several people) volunteers to migrate the tooling 1:1 to the new 
platform
* board preemptively accepts that if those conditions are met and no new 
blocker is found, process can be moved
* the platform is free to use for our use case, and for contributors as well
* we have confidence the platform will continue to operate for a long time 
(OR/AND it is FOSS software that has several identical offerings on the web 
that we can move to effortlessy)

As a middle ground for people who do not want to interact with github at all, 
something I can certainly understand, maybe a more reasonable task for a 
volunteer would be to build a bridge that replicates the xep repo and merge 
requests to allow them to contribute and -crucially- without giving more work 
to the editor.


Mathieu




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