Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: Move Bitcoin Dev List to a Neutral Competent Entity

[Davide Cavion <davide@cedivad.com>]

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Hi,

I just wanted to let everyone know that every email is also archived at bitcoin-development.narkive.com <http://bitcoin-development.narkive.com/>, where you can find everything since the beginning of the list (June 2011). That should answer to Andy’s concern about the older messages not being archived anywhere but on sourceforge.

Davide


> On 14 Jun 2015, at 23:59, Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org> wrote:
> 
> It might be as well to keep the archive but disable new posts as
> otherwise we create bit-rot for people who linked to posts on
> sourceforge.
> 
> The list is also archived on mail-archive though.
> https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Adam
> 
> On 14 June 2015 at 22:55, Andy Schroder <info@andyschroder.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I'd support moving to a Linux Foundation e-mail list. I am also against
>> google groups. I agree that the gesture of moving indicates that SourceForge
>> is not playing nice on other issues and that moving this list shows their
>> behavior is being acknowledged.
>> 
>> I understand your reason for wanting to delete the Source Forge account
>> (after reading the links). However, the only problem with that is that the
>> SourceForge archive is the oldest one I've found with some early messages
>> from Satoshi. Myself finding Bitcoin after its inception, as well as this
>> mailing list even later on, it's nice to be able to review the archives.
>> SourceForge's interface to those archives is pretty bad though. I'm not sure
>> if there is any way to get older messages archived on sites like gmane or
>> mail-archive? Does anyone know? You mentioned importing the list archive as
>> part of the migration plan, but I guess is this easy to do from SourceForge?
>> 
>> 
>> Andy Schroder
>> 
>> On 06/14/2015 06:12 AM, Warren Togami Jr. wrote:
>> 
>> Discomfort with Sourceforge
>> 
>> For a while now people have been expressing concern about Sourceforge's
>> continued hosting of the bitcoin-dev mailing list.  Downloads were moved
>> completely to bitcoin.org after the Sept 2014 hacking incident of the SF
>> project account.  The company's behavior and perceived stability have been
>> growing to be increasingly questionable.
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/gimp_dumps_sourceforge_over_dodgy_ads_and_installer
>> 
>> November 2013: GIMP flees SourceForge over dodgy ads and installer
>> 
>> https://lwn.net/Articles/646118/
>> 
>> May 28th, 2015: SourceForge replacing GIMP Windows downloads
>> 
>> http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2015/q2/194
>> 
>> June 3rd, 2015: Sourceforge hijacked nmap's old site and downloads.
>> 
>> 
>> When this topic came up over the past two years, it seemed that most people
>> agreed it would be a good idea to move.  Someone always suggests Google
>> Groups as the replacement host.  Google is quickly shot down as too
>> controversial in this community, and it becomes an even more difficult
>> question as to who else should host it.  Realizing this is not so simple,
>> discussion then dies off until the next time somebody brings it up.
>> 
>> 
>> http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/bitcoin-development/thread/1943127.DBnVxmfOIh%401337h4x0r/#msg34192607
>> 
>> Somebody brought it up again this past week.
>> 
>> 
>> It seems logical that an open discussion list is not a big deal to continue
>> to be hosted on Sourceforge, as there isn’t much they could do to screw it
>> up.  I personally think moving it away now would be seen as a gesture that
>> we do not consider their behavior to be acceptable.  There are also some
>> benefits in being hosted elsewhere, at an entity able to professionally
>> maintain their infrastructure while also being neutral to the content.
>> 
>> 
>> Proposal: Move Bitcoin Dev List to a Neutral Competent Entity
>> 
>> 
>> Bitcoin is a global infrastructure development project where it would be
>> politically awkward for any of the existing Bitcoin companies or orgs to
>> host due to questions it would raise about perceived political control.Â
>> For example, consider a bizarro parallel universe where MtGox was the
>> inventor of Bitcoin, where they hosted its development infrastructure and
>> dev list under their own name.  Even if what they published was 100%
>> technically and ideologically equivalent to the Bitcoin we know in our
>> dimension, most people wouldn't have trusted it merely due to appearances
>> and it would have easily gone nowhere.
>> 
>> 
>> I had a similar thought process last week when sidechains code was
>> approaching release. Sidechains, like Bitcoin itself, are intended to be a
>> generic piece of infrastructure (like ethernet?) that anyone can build upon
>> and use.  We thought about Google Groups or existing orgs that already host
>> various open source infrastructure discussion lists like the IETF or the
>> Linux Foundation.  Google is too controversial in this community, and the
>> IETF is seen as possibly too politically fractured.  The Linux Foundation
>> hosts a bunch of infrastructure lists and it seems that nobody in the Open
>> Source industry considers them to be particularly objectionable.  I talked
>> with LF about the idea of hosting generic Bitcoin-related infrastructure
>> development lists.  They agreed as OSS infrastructure dev is already within
>> their charter, so early this week sidechains-dev list began hosting there.
>> 
>> 
>> From the perspective of our community, for bitcoin-dev it seems like a great
>> fit.  Why?  While they are interested in supporting general open source
>> development, the LF has literally zero stake in this.  In addition to
>> neutrality, they seem to be suitable as a competent host.  They have
>> full-time sysadmins maintaining their infrastructure including the Mailman
>> server. They are soon upgrading to Mailman 3, which means mailing lists
>> would benefit from the improved archive browser.  I am not personally
>> familiar with HyperKitty, but the point here is they are a stable non-profit
>> entity who will competently maintain and improve things like their Mailman
>> deployment (a huge improvement over the stagnant Sourceforge).  It seems
>> that LF would be competent, neutral place to host dev lists for the
>> long-term.
>> 
>> 
>> To be clear, this proposal is only about hosting the discussion list.  The
>> LF would have no control over the Bitcoin Project, as no single entity
>> should.
>> 
>> 
>> Proposed Action Plan
>> 
>> 
>> Discuss this openly within this community.  Above is one example of a great
>> neutral and competent host.  If the technical leaders here can agree to
>> move to a particular neutral host then we do it.
>> 
>> Migration: The current list admins become the new list admins.  We import
>> the entire list archive into the new host's archives for user convenience.
>> 
>> http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/ Â Kill bitcoin-list and
>> bitcoin-test.  Very few people actually use it.  Actually, let's delete
>> the entire Bitcoin Sourceforge project as its continued existence serves no
>> purpose and it only confuses people who find it.  By deletion, nobody has
>> to monitor it for a repeat of the Sept 2014 hacking incident or GIMP-type
>> hijacking?
>> 
>> The toughest question would be the appropriateness of auto-importing the
>> subscriber list to another list server, as mass imports have a tendency to
>> upset people.
>> 
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> 
>> Warren Togami
>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
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