[Python-Dev] Move selected documentation repos to PSF BitBucket account?

[Barry Warsaw]

On Nov 21, 2014, at 10:36 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

>I'd been taking "must be hosted in PSF infrastructure" as a hard
>requirement, but MAL pointed out earlier this evening that in the age
>of DVCS's, that requirement may not make sense: if you avoid tightly
>coupling your automation to a particular DVCS host's infrastructure,
>then reverting back to self-hosting (if that becomes necessary for
>some reason) is mostly just a matter of "hg push".
>
>If that "must be self-hosted" constraint is removed, then the obvious
>candidate for Mercurial hosting that supports online editing + pull
>requests is the PSF's BitBucket account.

For the record, I object to moving *official* PSF resources to proprietary,
closed-source infrastructure that we do not control or have access to[*].

As nice and friendly as BitBucket or any other code hosting source is today,
there are many reasons why I think this is a bad idea for *official*
branches.  We are beholden to their policies and operations, which may not
align with PSF policies or principles today or in the future.  We will not be
able to customize the experience for our own needs.  We will not have access
to the underlying resources should we need them for any purpose.  We cannot
take action ourselves if some problem occurs, e.g. banning an offensive user.

You're right that in a world of dvcs, branches can be mirrored anywhere.  For
that reason, I have no problem allowing developers to use non-PSF controlled
resources *unofficially* if it makes their work easier and doesn't conflict
with their own principles.  However, in such cases, I still believe that the
official, master, blessed repositories remain on PSF controlled
infrastructure.  Surely that too is possible in the world of dvcs, right?

Cheers,
-Barry

[*] Please note that I am not objecting to our use of lower-level resources
donated by our generous sponsors.  It's a fine line perhaps, but I have no
problem with a wiki running on a VM hosted on some donated hardware, since we
still have full access to the machine, the OS, and the application software.