Streamlining Dev Collaboration

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.

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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.

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

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

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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.
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This is resolved. All under 1 github organisation now.

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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.

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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:

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Do you mean setting up a git server?

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How much effort is worth spending on a "perfect webserver for whonix.org"?

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Yeah this has been a big factor in not setting one up, but I could get it running in a day.

I would use gitea, which has issue tracking and the like. IMO there is little need for hosting one it if it isnt solving the phabricator deprecation issue as well (which gitea satisfies)

When I registered gitfoss.org, my thought was that we could find other projects as well to host there…perhaps graphene, onionshare, richochet, whoever.

Having a standalone server for one codebase seems silly, but having a central place for many privacy FOSS projects, with organized issue tracking, project boards, and other nice features including CI integrations…pie in the sky maybe, but it was my dream when i registered the domain :man_shrugging:

Also we have like 5 threads for this subject right now…seems like a good argument for centralized issue tracking :wink:

I would suggest a Matrix server much like GrapheneOS. I doubt this will be considered but I see more potential to foster a community there than anywhere else. I would be willing to help users with issues specific or unspecific to Whonix issues in real time.

It has been an experiment and determined failed.

There will never be a prosperous Whonix community without a place for that community. Take a look at the Qubes OS forums to see what it could resemble.

What you quoted from the Project Chat wiki page applies to the chat only.

Whonix forums exist.

I disagree, there is no general discussion on this forum where a community could prosper. The forum as of now only serves as a developer or support forum, which is fine if you want to keep it that way.

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