Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

[Martin v. Löwis]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Ben Finney schrieb:

I would be greatly dismayed to see the PSF choosing to move critical
Python development data into a non-free system.

Then volunteer to help operating the Roundup installation. It will
become reality if there are enough volunteers to keep it running.

I hope this
recommendation from the "PSF infrastructure committee" is rejected.

That is very very unlikely. Who would reject it, and why?

Regards,
Martin

[Martin v. Löwis]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Ben Finney schrieb:

I would be greatly dismayed to see the PSF choosing to move critical
Python development data into a non-free system.

Then volunteer to help operating the Roundup installation. It will
become reality if there are enough volunteers to keep it running.

I hope this
recommendation from the "PSF infrastructure committee" is rejected.

That is very very unlikely. Who would reject it, and why?

Regards,
Martin

[Robert Kern]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

Robert Kern wrote:
>

>>Does this smell "Bitkeeper fiasco" to anyone else than me?

>No.

>
that's just not true. lots of people have voiced concerns over using
closed-sourced stuff originally designed for enterprise-level Java users
for an application domain where Python has several widely used agile
alternatives to chose from.
>
if they hadn't done so, there probably wouldn't have been an evaluation
period in the first place.

Sure. But what's the similarity to the fiasco part of the BitKeeper fiasco?
There's no silly non-compete agreement. The client is a generic web browser so
everyone can play. One of the charges of the committee was to make sure that the
data could be extracted easily (something the semi-open Sourceforge didn't do so
well) such that moving would be reasonable should the JIRA folks decided to take
their ball away.

I didn't mean to trivialize concerns about about JIRA in particular or
proprietary systems in general, but using poor analogies as a rhetorical club
seems ill-advised.

--
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco

[Fredrik Lundh]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Robert Kern wrote:

Sure. But what's the similarity to the fiasco part of the BitKeeper fiasco?

depends on what you consider being the cause of that fiasco. I'm not
sure it was quite as simple as people are trying to make it sound...

(and your assertion that nobody but giovanni has made that connection is
simply wrong)

</F>

[Robert Kern]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

Robert Kern wrote:
>

>Sure. But what's the similarity to the fiasco part of the BitKeeper fiasco?

>
depends on what you consider being the cause of that fiasco. I'm not
sure it was quite as simple as people are trying to make it sound...
>
(and your assertion that nobody but giovanni has made that connection is
simply wrong)

You're right. It was. I was intentionally flip; partly to goad people into
making an actual case for Giovanni's fears, partly because I was tired and
wanted to go to bed, and partly for my own entertainment.

I promise to contain my flipness if anyone will make a real case that the two
situations are comparable. Surely, "this smells like the BitKeeper fiasco," is
rather more simplistic than how others are trying to make it sound. My Googling
brings up no argument more robust than that, either for the PSF or the ASF, and
the infrastructure list's archives are closed.

--
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco

[Martin v. Löwis]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Paul Rubin schrieb:

Ben Finney <bignose+hate s-spam@benfinney. id.auwrites:

>The existing SourceForge system runs on non-free software, which is a
>significant differentiator from Bugzilla.

>
The SourceForge software, at least in some versions, is free software.
See for example http://savannah.gnu.org for an instantiation, which
may be a fork. I never followed the saga much.

It is a fork of an old version. Existence of this version hasn't helped
a bit when we tried to get our data out of sf.net.

It would have been different if we had used the open source version
*and* hosted that ourselves. You only have a 100% guarantee that
you get the data out of the tracker if the data live on your own
disks (and you have good backup of these disks).

Regards,
Martin

[Istvan Albert]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Giovanni Bajo wrote:

Does this smell "Bitkeeper fiasco" to anyone else than me?

well, no company will spend money/effort/resources unless it benefits
them some way. Once that benefit (or the perception of it) disappears
the company will cut the lifeline. It's just common business sense.

But this will definitely not happen over a short period of time and
even in the worst case scenario there will be a few years in which the
development can take place in an awesome environment. I've looked at
the JIRA demo, and wow, it really seems like an amazingly cool way to
do software development.

So what if in three years (again worst case scenario) they need to
change trackers? It is not such a big deal and the benefits over these
two years might have balanced out the troubles of switching.

I.

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@python ware.comwrites:

Sure. But what's the similarity to the fiasco part of the BitKeeper fiasco?

>
depends on what you consider being the cause of that fiasco. I'm not
sure it was quite as simple as people are trying to make it sound...

I remember there being some urgency to move away from BitKeeper
because some counter (like a 16-bit file version number that got
incremented on every check-in of the file, or something like that) was
about to overflow, and only the non-free version allocated more bits
for the counter. That was why Git had to be thrown together in just a
few weeks.

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin@v.loewi s.dewrites:

It is a fork of an old version. Existence of this version hasn't helped
a bit when we tried to get our data out of sf.net.

Yeah, I'd guessed it might be a fork. Is there stuff in sf.net that a
web robot can't retrieve?

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

"Istvan Albert" <istvan.albert@ gmail.comwrites :

But this will definitely not happen over a short period of time and
even in the worst case scenario there will be a few years in which the
development can take place in an awesome environment. I've looked at
the JIRA demo, and wow, it really seems like an amazingly cool way to
do software development.

Well, what's so cool about it? Most large free software projects seem
to use Bugzilla. I'd never looked at the Bugzilla code but from
descriptions here it now sounds like the situation with CVS as of a
few years ago. Maybe it's time for a rewrite/replacement, a la
darcs/SVN/whatever.

[Steve Holden]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Paul Rubin wrote:

"Istvan Albert" <istvan.albert@ gmail.comwrites :
>

>>But this will definitely not happen over a short period of time and
>>even in the worst case scenario there will be a few years in which the
>>development can take place in an awesome environment. I've looked at
>>the JIRA demo, and wow, it really seems like an amazingly cool way to
>>do software development.

>
>
Well, what's so cool about it? Most large free software projects seem
to use Bugzilla. I'd never looked at the Bugzilla code but from
descriptions here it now sounds like the situation with CVS as of a
few years ago. Maybe it's time for a rewrite/replacement, a la
darcs/SVN/whatever.

Please feel free to go right ahead. Should be ready n a month or twelve ...

Like others I have my doubts about using commercial products to support
open source development but the guys who did the evaluation have chosen,
and I'm not about to second guess them.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb http://holdenweb.blogspot.com
Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden

[Ben Finney]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Steve Holden <steve@holdenwe b.comwrites:

Like others I have my doubts about using commercial products to
support open source development

I'm all in favour of using commercial products to support Python
development. What I'm not in favour of is using non-free products to
do so.

If we *know* that we can always get all the data out of the product,
and so long as we're constantly aware of any trend to lock in that
data by the proprietary vendor, we can avoid the trap. It's an
additional burden of ongoing diligence that is simply not required
with a free software tool, which is why I'm hoping a free tool can be
chosen instead.

the guys who did the evaluation have chosen, and I'm not about to
second guess them.

Indeed; I'm not wanting to take away the power of those who do the
work to decide how it gets done. I don't have the resources nor the
skills to manage a bug tracker for Python, so my input on this is
merely as a passionate free software user who actually values that
freedom.

--
\ "He who laughs last, thinks slowest." -- Anonymous |
`\ |
_o__) |
Ben Finney

[Terry Reedy]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?


"Ben Finney" <bignose+hate s-spam@benfinney. id.auwrote in message
news:87ac4ciynk .fsf@benfinney. id.au...

If we *know* that we can always get all the data out of the product,

As I understood B.C.'s announcement, that was one of the judging criteria,
and the plan is for PSF to get a daily backup dump of the data.

tjr

[Martin v. Löwis]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Paul Rubin schrieb:

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin@v.loewi s.dewrites:

>It is a fork of an old version. Existence of this version hasn't helped
>a bit when we tried to get our data out of sf.net.

>
Yeah, I'd guessed it might be a fork. Is there stuff in sf.net that a
web robot can't retrieve?

We ended up getting the data with a web robot. There were two problems:
1. SF times out all the time, and fetching the data takes quite some
time (not sure how long Fredrik Lundh needed, but I recall that
Richard Jones once needed several days to get all data). There
is also the theory that SF will lock out clients that fetch data
at a too-high rate, so when you get locked out, you need to wait
some time until you can continue; what rate is acceptable is
not documented.
2. The web view gets HTML wrong in many places; things are rendered
as HTML entity references when really the character should be
displayed itself; non-ASCII characters don't work well. It might
be that having the raw data would allow for better quality.

There used to be another problem that SF was inconsistent on displaying
user names (sometimes, account names were displayed, and sometimes
real names), but that seems not to be a problem anymore.

Regards,
Martin

[Giovanni Bajo]

Re: Python to use a non open source bug tracker?

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

>I hope this
>recommendati on from the "PSF infrastructure committee" is rejected.

>
That is very very unlikely. Who would reject it, and why?

The community, and I am impressed you do not want to understand the "why". It
is an extremely bad picture for an open source flag like Python to go to a
vendor for such an easy requirement as a bug database. I am seriously concerned
that the PSF infrastructure committee EVER considered non open-source
applications for this. In fact, I thought that was an implicit requirement in
the selection.

There are many open source applications around. They might not be the best, but
at least they are yours, and not of some third party software vendors with its
own interests.
--
Giovanni Bajo