Streamlining Dev Collaboration

Discourse has many plugins. I don’t see through yet.

This one perhaps?

1 Like
1 Like
1 Like

Story of my life.

credits @xkcd:

2 Likes

True…maybe it is a non-issue and I am just overthinking it. We seem to chat fine here on discourse.

Git plugins are probably good for discourse :man_shrugging:

1 Like

Would like gitea over github thousand times.

Discourse chat seems best because it doesn’t involve using a different platform.

IRC can only be text, and someone needs to host the relay server for clients that disconnects.

Fan of Cwtch, but someone needs to test if it works on Whonix.

http://gitopcybr57ris5iuivfz62gdwe2qk5pinnt2wplpwzicaybw73stjqd.onion/cwtch.im/cwtch/issues/392

I get it, it may not be as productive as the forum as we need to keep things separated by thread, and easy read for every user to understand, but maybe people become more productive when they are happy they can chat with people around them.

1 Like

I registered gitfoss.org. I would love to help host FOSS code there, but I don’t want to go through the effort of setting it up until people agree it is useful.

I do think it is useful, here is why:

  1. currently, the gitflows for the whonix project leave a little to be desired. we have multiple accounts adrenalos, whonix, and derivative-maker for multiple parts of the project. A singular account would consolidate things and make it easier to gather info on the scope of the project

  2. kanban and issues could be set up. Phabricator is deprecated, but most modern software projects use project boards to implement features, catalogue issues, etc. This could help new users get engaged and pick up good-first-issue tickets

  3. privacy…I would love help creating a privacy policy/TOS on the site that legally prevents/discourages selling, brokering, or tracking data.

  4. Why are so many open source projects defaulting to microsoft as their primary place of working on code? Because it is the most feasible choice. Gitlab has an awful model that limits features for their free version

Drawbacks to this IMO is what if one day I simply disappear and shut down the server? well IMO all the FOSS repos should be mirrored to both github and gitlab. The same argument could be proposed “what if microsoft decides to delete privacy software and free software that challenges the current heirarchy of power?”…well we would have to pick up the pieces

I want to build it. I can build it. And I will build it. But only if the community wants to come along for the ride. Cloud servers are a bit expensive, and home hosting isnt a great option for me for the next year or so. I am hoping to buy a house where I can get a business fiber connection, but that is a ways out. Ultimately, it will cost a bit of money.

So many amazing projects I would love to build a home for… whonix, graphene, or anyone else who wants to use FOSS tools to build FOSS tools.

2 Likes

IMO higher level discussions should happen on the forum or in chat, but the heaviest collaboration and technical discussions should occur on issues using a remote git collab tool (github, gitlab, gitea, whatever)

Honestly I think a project board (cough cough gitea) would be more useful than chat at this point.

2 Likes

It is not only being useful, if you can’t as per the points made above, its fine. Because it would be no good to for you to keep maintaining something without the availability.

2 Likes

I have a few production sites, and running another one wouldn’t be a huge lift. I have the availability :man_shrugging:

2 Likes

I said that because of this.
It is clear for me now.

2 Likes

True. For user support chat, well see this. But for developers, if it helps, I’d give it another try.

Ok, so this one can certainly be fixed.

  • adrelanos (Patrick Schleizer) · GitHub - if you find Whonix to depend on it, and report that, then that’s a bug. That repo is supposed to be just a user mirror. Then it will be moved to Kicksecure · GitHub or Whonix · GitHub. These ones I am happy to fix quickly since easy to do and low time effort.
  • derivative-maker/derivative-maker: Yeah, that previous was Whonix/Whonix. I’ll just need a better name. Or just Whonix/derivative-maker? (Would be duplicated to Kicksecure/derivative-maker.) Also happy to get rid of the derivative-maker · GitHub github org.
1 Like

This is resolved. All under 1 github organisation now.

1 Like

Maybe. Also it wasn’t microsoft hosted forever. Could speculate a lot why.

  • Network effect. People have accounts at github and the hurdle to create just another account is just too high.
  • git is decentralized, real Open Source. But the extra github features such as issues, pages, CI are proprietary. High effort for projects to migrate these from github to another platform.
  • Search engine ranking.
  • Unaware of github having been acquired by microsoft.
    • Unaware why this is a big deal.
  • Microsoft hasn’t messed up github yet (too much) for people to look for alternatives.

Are there any features that actually matter for most Open Source projects missing on gitlab free? There’s also:

Not sure that makes it any better. I didn’t compare the features much. Didn’t run into any features yet that I need (or know that I could have use for) that github or someone else offers but gitlab doesn’t offer.

Phabricator was a big surprise. I thought if facebook and wikimedia are using it for their issue tracking, the longevity of the project should be more or less guaranteed. Now Phabricator is a liability (since deprecated) and a lingering question what do with it. How to turn it into a static html archive and/or how to migrate the existing tickets elsewhere. Help would also be welcome to fully deprecated use of phabricator on whonix.org.

Contributions, web apps are tricky in Open Source anyhow. First, TorBOX (previous project name) was hosted in the Tor Project wiki. Next it was hosted on sourceforge. Because that was also non-ideal, a webmaster contributor set up the domain whonix.org and a web server. The contributor after many years the contributor retired. Now I was left having to maintain both Whonix and its webserver. Linux distribution maintenance and server sysadmin skills are quite different skills and not an automatic given that can be easily done on the side with no time effort.

Meanwhile, started using this forum as issue tracker:
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Reporting_Bugs#Issue_Tracker

Then we’re at least down to only 2 webapps. MediaWiki and discourse. That was my thinking.

What do you think?

Regarding these issues, the only one that would be problematic moving to gitea would be pages. Everything else works pretty easily with gitea. Not saying this is reason enough to make a swap, simply that it isn’t an insurmountable hurdle by any stretch.

mirror the organization repos on both github/gitlab and you still get search index :man_shrugging:

To me it is an issue of power. Power is consolidated to a few tech giants. Microsoft is making lots of moves on the AI front, and of course we all know how companies like Google and Amazon violate human’s right to privacy. As plutocratic governments merge with tech giants, humans are greatly in danger of slipping in to a deeply problematic Orwellian survellience state. I think any conversations about redistributing power is worth having. The principle may be more important than the convenience of using the super shiny low maintenance tools provided by these giants

Mostly just project organization and management features. Maybe it is a non-issue. I think setting up gitfoss.org as a non profit could be a good move to prevent it from turning in to something designed to benefit corporations and the wealthy.

I would be happy to migrate all the issues in to github or somewhere else. Probably a script we could set up to use API keys and automate the movement of the stuff. Then close out issues that are non-important.

Ultimately, I am not sure the best solutions for anything. Just proposing ideas, I see all of your points as valid and making a lot of sense.

Ultimately, I want to build things to make your life easier so the project can move faster. I personally believe that issue tracking and project boards are very important. Of course we could simply leverage what github already has to offer, but ultimately having some sort of framework where people can jump in and contribute valuable things is important IMO.

Maybe I am too focused on the color of the bikeshed. But I want more people to be able use and contribute to our our bikeshed. That is a big upside of CI and automated testing IMO. Currently it seems like in many ways you are the person who helps make sure nothing breaks. In some ways, you are a dependency (I do not mean this offensively btw. It is a compliment to the great thing you have built ). But I want to reduce the reliance on you as a dependency so things can grow reliably for many years to come.

Again, maybe I am overthinking all of it, and I should just build more things and not worry about it.

1 Like
1 Like

A post was split to a new topic: Whonix source code in self-hosted git

Want me to do it @Patrick ? Just waiting for you to be onboard before going forward with it. You are the captain :saluting_face:

1 Like

Do you mean setting up a git server?

1 Like