[TYPO3-doc] Encouraging people to contribute with Github

[Michael]

On 2013-02-23 04:48, Robert Lemke wrote:

[...]
> From today's view I see many advantages in moving to Github.

I don't have a problem with Git in general - in fact, I love it! I 
don't have a problem with GitHub either and I am sure GitHub provides 
some great features, gives us the infrastructure, is (also) web-based 
and would be great to use for TYPO3 docs and maybe extension codes, etc.

However, let me express my main concern. Maybe someone can convince me 
that this is not an issue - and will not become an issue in the future 
:-)

GitHub is not a community-driven, open and free-for-everything/everyone 
project. There is a company [1] behind GitHub and there are commercial 
interests behind the services and offers. I understand, it is "free for 
open-source projects" and you can have "unlimited public repositories 
and unlimited public collaborators" [2] but the whole thing is 
controlled by GitHub Inc.

The risks are for example, they change their plans/price policy, 
someone else buys the company, they introduce restrictions/limitations, 
they charge for services in the future, which are "free" at this point 
in time, they implement something that we (the TYPO3 community) don't 
like (e.g. advertisements), etc.

Maybe I am too pessimistic, but we have seen this in the past... Google 
Maps API and Instagram are just two examples.

So, whatever GitHub offers now, we can not predict what will happen in 
the future. We can not vote for or against a change and we would 
not control the direction of the code repository system used by TYPO3 
documentations. We can not even discuss pros and cons of a change or 
express concerns if we think this could be an issue (what I am doing 
right now), because at the end, it's GitHub's decision what they do, 
anyway, even if the entire TYPO3 community would be against it :-)

The benefits are tempting and other open source projects switched to 
GitHub, too - but keep in mind, this would be a step of the TYPO3 
project to depend on a company and their directions/decisions. I know, 
that this topic has been discussed in other areas, e.g. the typo3-dev 
and typo3-ect mailing lists as far as I can remember.

Do not get me wrong: I am not totally against the GitHub idea but I 
hesitate to be excited about it and I am looking forward reading your 
comments and opinions about my concerns - maybe I am totally wrong :-)


Cheers
Michael