Better accept nominations for projects without a GitHub URL

[chadwhitacre]

Reticketing from HN ...

Right now our project nomination form only accepts GitHub URLs, because this makes it easier for us to do automated analysis on submissions. Our hypothesis is that all projects we want as inputs for our model—i.e., that count for "critical underfunded OSS"—will have at least a GitHub mirror. If you have counterexamples please comment them here.

[chadwhitacre]

@vinogradovkonst Do you want this here or in the model repo or ... ?

[vladh]

I think we should allow non-GitHub URLs. I think the “counterexamples” angle misses the point a little bit.

There are two main reasons I think we should allow non-GitHub URLs:

1. No added value from GitHub. It's great that we accept GitHub mirrors. But if we accept GitHub mirrors, what is the point of using GitHub? For a mirror, GitHub will only give us as much information as the raw git repo itself gives us. So why not query the git repo directly, which we can do for git repos hosted anywhere? For me, saying that we accept mirrors says that GitHub itself is giving us nothing special.
2. Respect. It's great that there are technical solutions to access the data on GitHub, and elsewhere, etc. But I think saying that we accept all repo hosts also has a non-technical meaning — that we respect that people have reasons to avoid GitHub, and that we will support them in choosing the appropriate home for their code, especially when it causes us minimal or no inconvenience.

[vladh]

Supporting non-GitHub URLs was also mentioned by @dfskoll here: osendowment/foundation#25

Why is GitHub required?

Why does a nominated project have to be on GitHub?

I maintain a number of open-source projects, but I refuse to host them on GitHub. You should expand eligibility to non-GitHub-hosted projects.

[dfskoll]

If you have counterexamples please comment them here.

Remind: https://codeberg.org/dskoll/remind
MIME-tools: https://codeberg.org/dskoll/mime-tools
Mailmunge: https://codeberg.org/dskoll/mailmunge

These are also mirrored under https://salsa.debian.org/dskoll and my self-hosted Forgejo instance at https://git.skoll.ca/

[chadwhitacre]

counterexamples

• Gentoo maybe someday

[dfskoll]

I think it's reasonable to ask for a git URL so you can clone the project and look at it. I don't know if GitHub gives you any extra info beyond what's in the git repo anyway. I guess issues and PRs.

However, some projects don't use git (yes, they exist!) so this would still exclude projects using hg or svn or whatever. Though I guess quite a few hg projects also offer git mirrors, recognizing practicalities.

[chadwhitacre]

HN: "many of the mirrors are unofficial"

[vladh]

Again, I don't think this is the point, but in case it's useful…

A selection of widely-used Open Source projects that do not maintain an official GitHub mirror

• aspell
• autoconf
• automake
• binutils
• bison
• cairo
• CentOS
• Debian
• diffutils
• Emacs Lisp Package Archives
• emacs
• gcc
• gdb
• gettext
• GNU APL
• GNU awk
• GNU Common Lisp
• GNU Mailman
• gnuboot
• GoToSocial
• grub
• guix
• gzip
• libinput
• libtool
• libvdpau
• m4
• mailutils
• mesa
• musl
• nano
• OpenConnect
• postmarketOS
• screen
• sed
• smalltalk
• tar
• Ubuntu
• wayland
• wget
• wlroots
• X11, libX11, X11 drivers, X11 core protocol etc
• Zig

[chadwhitacre]

Another perspective from HN:

Concrete examples: GNU software, musl C library, everything from x.org and freedesktop.org. Just have a look at the top 1,000 projects from the Debian popularity contest and you'll find many projects outside the Github bubble. Why not use the Debian package name in your nomination form instead of a Github URL? Any project important enough to matter will have a Debian package, right?
If you're trying to come up with something like the "criticality score" based on repo metadata like the OpenSSF, you're likely to fail just like they did. Starting with Debian's popcon data makes a lot more sense, in my opinion.

Found https://popcon.debian.org/

[danyeaw]

I think this is a great idea to allow other source code hosting / forges. The open source world is also way larger than Debian, so that would be a poor choice.

[musselmandev]

As someone who uses primarily Forgejo/Codeberg, I think that they should be allowed as well. More than one project I follow has moved off of GitHub recently due to choices Microsoft/GitHub has made.

[vladh]

Mentioned by @toastal on osendowment/foundation#27:

Cognative dissonance: Form requires projects to be hosted on MS GitHub

GitHub Repo URL of the project you're nominating *
— https://endowment.dev/funding/

So you must use a closed source code forge to apply for open source funding? How do you earnestly square this circle?

Only independent free and open source software is eligible — no corporate or VC-funded projects, and no projects with associated startups

There are a ton of free software projects out there specifically avoid this platform since it is objectionably “corporate”. They (rightfully) believe that if free & open source as a philosophy is a good choice for their project, then so should they make a best attempt in their tooling as well. This also now puts an arbitrary barrier against those that can’t access this platform due to government sanctions (Microsoft is based in the US).