Re: [Openbts-discuss] P2.8 release and USRP / UHD device support

[David B. <da...@ra...>]

OK, Boys -

On Oct 22, 2011, at 12:24 AM, Alexander Chemeris wrote:

> Moving off-list is a bad idea is 99% of cases.
> People have more similar thoughts and problems then it may seem :)

I agree.

> 
> Ok, I see the point. But why not to continue maintain OpenBTS-UHD in
> git? I see no reason to maintain an svn repository for this. I don't
> see any developers here who hate git except David, and for users it
> just doesn't matter. I think everyone where happy when OpenBTS-IHD was
> on github, it's very convenient.

It's not just that I hate git.  I believe that SVN's forced centralization is better suited to commercial development.  OpenBTS is a commercial product.  The public release is a derivative of that commercial product.  If the commercial developers (who still write the majority of the code, BTW) are going to participate in the public side of the project, it is much easier for them to do so if it is all in the same SVN repo.  So it's not just that *I* won't use git; it's that the other developers inside Range Networks won't use git either.  One of the reasons that KSP/Range developers stopped contributing even the simplest bug fixes to the public release was that is was in a different repo from their "real work".  The purpose of moving the public release back to SVN was to break that mental barrier and make the public release more accessible to our commercial developers, myself included, but not myself alone.  The community wants more participation and feature releases from the commercial developers.  The community wants to fracture the project into unofficial forks not controlled by a commercial interest.  The community wants it both ways and I don't know how well that will work.

To address a point in an earlier email, quoted below, I would like it very much if every developer could use the official Range repo, CLA or not, so that all development can be collected into a central place.  I would think that the CLA is only needed for features that are to be rolled into the official trunk, and even then there are exceptions.  For example, we don't need a CLA for Thomas' Ettus device support because we will never use that or anything like it in a commercial product.  I do not know the legal risks associated with allowing non-CLA developers to have write access to the repo, though.  It is likely that they will at least need to sign some kind of certification that the code they are contributing was not copied from a source that would be incompatible with GPL and that all appropriate copyright notices are being preserved.  (Note to whoever is running OpenBTS-UHD: Without that minimum level of protection, you are taking a risk that would probably be unacceptable in a prudently-run business.)  "We are consulting our lawyers."  I cringe when I see myself type that, but Harvind and I have wasted too much precious time and money on IP lawsuits already, so we are careful to avoid the possibility of future problems.

> 
> PS I should admit, I personally like Mercurial more then git, but I
> work with git as well and don't have pet peeve for it.

Oh boy.  Just what the world needs.  Yet another SCCS.  Yawn.

-- David

> 
> On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 11:15, Kurtis Heimerl <khe...@cs...> wrote:
>> Thomas and I moved this off-list, but your response was EXACTLY the
>> same as mine, so I suppose that may have been a mistake.
>> 
>> I'll try to paraphrase Thomas: The short hand is that a second repo
>> allows users to have a repo with stuff not covered (or not yet
>> covered) by the CLA.
>> 
>> I think that's a fair point, but not one I'd personally support. I'm
>> mostly inclined to make sure that the repo setup encourages us all
>> sharing (and working on) the same code base, CLA or not.
>> 
>> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 11:57 PM, Alexander Chemeris
>> <ale...@gm...> wrote:
>>> But why do you need a second svn repo? I used svn a lot and never had a need
>>> for a second repo. I'm quite surprised.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Alexander Chemeris
>>> Sent from my Android device. Sorry for my brevity.
>>> 
>>> On Oct 22, 2011 4:55 AM, "Thomas Tsou" <tt...@vt...> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Kurtis Heimerl
>>> <khe...@cs...> wrote:
>>>> You can't push a...
>>> 
>>> No, you can definitely do that.
>>> 
>>> You can't easily go from one svn repo to a git repo and then to
>>> another, different svn repo. Actually, you can't simply go from one
>>> svn repo to another svn repo to begin with. That's just the nature of
>>> centralized version control; you're only supposed to have one main
>>> repo that everyone uses.
>>> 
>>>  Thomas
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Alexander Chemeris.
> 
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David A. Burgess
Founder, CEO
Range Networks, Inc.
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