simspark-devel

[simspark-devel] Moving to a kinder project hosting service?!

[Hedayat V. <hed...@ai...>]

Hi all,

As you might know, SourceForge has recently blocked access to its 
contents (downloading released files) to Iranian users (and users of 
other countries under sanctions by USA). And Iranians should use 
workarounds to access these files.


For a long time, SourceForge has been blocking such users from logging 
in into sf.net servers and being able to contribute, and as a result we 
were forced to use workarounds to be able to contribute to it. This 
problem created difficulties for Iranian contributors (including 
myself), but since it didn't affect users, I could live with it.


But considering the large number of Iranians participating in RoboCup, 
the recent act of sf.net to block Iranians is really irritating; and is 
IMHO (notice that I'm Iranian ;) ) unacceptable specially that it is not 
a US product!


So, I would like to know your opinions about moving 
simspark/rcssserver3d to a different project hosting service (e.g. 
BerliOS, SourceForge.jp) which doesn't impose such restrictions (and 
preferably is not a USA based service provider).


As a side note, IF we decided to move to a new project hosting service 
provider, we could also consider moving from using Subversion to Git, 
which seems to be better than Subversion in many ways. But I'm not a 
hard proponent of this move, specially that it'll need contributors to 
get used to a new system. Even without moving to git, it is possible to 
use git-svn by those who prefer it. We might even consider other 
versioning systems. Anyway, this is not a priority at all! So if you are 
unsure, we could remain with SVN happily!


Thanks Anyway,

Hedayat

Re: [simspark-devel] Moving to a kinder project hosting service?!

[Simon R. <sra...@st...>]

Am Montag 08 Februar 2010 10:07:01 am schrieb Hedayat Vatankhah:

> But considering the large number of Iranians participating in RoboCup, 
> the recent act of sf.net to block Iranians is really irritating; and is 
> IMHO (notice that I'm Iranian ;) ) unacceptable specially that it is not 
> a US product!

Salam Hedayat,

sadly it's not just SourceForge, but also Google Code and Fedora Hosted. After the alleged Google attacks and recent "predictions" about cyber attacks by the USA authorities I expect the list of blocked countries to grow, maybe they'll even add China or Russia.

We had a lot of controversy about it here in Germany, and I have some very strong opinions about the whole thing, but since this is not the place for political ranting I'll just express my full support for the move to a different hosting service. 


> So, I would like to know your opinions about moving 
> simspark/rcssserver3d to a different project hosting service (e.g. 
> BerliOS, SourceForge.jp) which doesn't impose such restrictions (and 
> preferably is not a USA based service provider).

BerliOS had multiple security breaches in recent years (http://cyberinsecure.com/berlios-open-source-project-portal-hacked-and-defaced/), and their management team doesn't really seem to care.


> As a side note, IF we decided to move to a new project hosting service 
> provider, we could also consider moving from using Subversion to Git, 
> which seems to be better than Subversion in many ways.

Many open-source projects already completed the move to CMake and git, so I don't see a problem. Most users will probably just have to replace "svn checkout" with "git clone". There even is a shiny TortoiseGit GUI for Windows users.


> But I'm not a 
> hard proponent of this move, specially that it'll need contributors to 
> get used to a new system. Even without moving to git, it is possible to 
> use git-svn by those who prefer it. We might even consider other 
> versioning systems.

The only viable one that comes to mind would be Bazar, but I don't think there are many hosting providers around supporting it (besides Launchpad, which is again hosted in the USA).

-- 

mit freundlichen Grüßen/regards
Simon Raffeiner

University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Germany
Department of Computer Science, RoboCup Team

Re: [simspark-devel] Moving to a kinder project hosting service?!

[<Oli...@cs...>]

Hi all,

On 08/02/2010, at 8:07 PM, Hedayat Vatankhah wrote:

> As you might know, SourceForge has recently blocked access to its 
> contents (downloading released files) to Iranian users (and users of 
> other countries under sanctions by USA). And Iranians should use 
> workarounds to access these files.

apologies for my ignorance, I must admit I wasn't really aware of this issue.

I agree this is an issue (but as I read they are workarounds for the time being). I have checked the explanation on sourceforge, and unless there is other evidence I tend to believe SF was required to follow this step because of how lawyers would possibly interpret US law. 

Joschka and I have OK experience using Origo (http://www.origo.ethz.ch/), a service similar to SF based at the ETH at Zurich. The service is simpler than the one at SF, but I believe it would provide everything required. Also, SVN is the only system in place (i.e. no git or cvs). I we consider a move, I would anyway propose to not shift from SVN to something else at the same time if possible. Also I would be happy if the project name stayed as either spark or simspark if possible.

SF provided good and reliable service over the past years, so it would be nice trying to find out what we can expect over the next months before moving over to somewhere else (in the past, US laws also prohibited exporting strong encryption but this was relaxed eventually). I have sent the guys at SF an email to double check what their feeling about this issue is (even though I don't expect much to come out of it). I'll post the answer here if I get one.

Finally, there would also be some work / friction involved in actually moving everything, so I would propose to do this long enough before, or right after RC2010. 

cheers
Oliver

Re: [simspark-devel] SourceForge announces partial solution?

[Simon R. <sra...@st...>]

SourceForge maybe just announced a partial solution:

http://sourceforge.net/blog/some-good-news-SourceForge-removes-blanket-blocking/

Apparently the downloads can be activated again, restoring the old behaviour. Could one of the project admins check that?

I still think the whole situation is unacceptable, but if we're back to the old status this should give us the time to come up with a permanent solution after Singapore.

regards
Simon Raffeiner

-- 

mit freundlichen Grüßen/regards
Simon Raffeiner

University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Germany
Department of Computer Science, RoboCup Team

Re: [simspark-devel] SourceForge announces partial solution?

[<Oli...@cs...>]

On 09/02/2010, at 1:16 AM, Simon Raffeiner wrote:

> Apparently the downloads can be activated again, restoring the old behaviour. Could one of the project admins check that?
> 
> I still think the whole situation is unacceptable, but if we're back to the old status this should give us the time to come up with a permanent solution after Singapore.

assuming now it can be changed so that it works for everyone I think SF provides a more than acceptable service.

cheers
Oliver

--  
Oliver Obst                     form follows function (Louis Sullivan).
Adaptive Systems Team   CSIRO ICT Centre  http://research.ict.csiro.au/
+61 2 9372 4710                                  http://oliver.obst.eu/