GitHub considered harmful

[Douglas Summers]

On Thu, 2019-10-10 at 09:35 +1100, Michael Gratton wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> It has recently come to light[0] that GitHub has recently made a 
> deliberate decision to renew a US$260M contract with the U.S. 
> Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

So????

> 
> Since contributing to Flatpak and Flathub requires a GitHub account, 
> these projects are using, promoting and encouraging others to use
> the 
> services of a company that has deliberately chosen to profit from
> the 
> physical and mental abuse of certain races of people. Flatpak and 
> Flathub are by extension of using GitHub's infrastructure benefiting 
> from this abuse, also.

This might be the single dumbest thing I've ever read. How in the hell
are Flatpak/Flathub even remotely responsible for what GitHub is doing?
This sounds like a Reddit post.

> 
> My understanding of the choice of GitHub in the first place was to
> gain 
> initial traction for the projects, since the existing FDO 
> infrastructure was dated, and as a desktop-neutral development
> forum. 
> Since then, Flatpak is now very well established, and FDO has its
> own 
> GitLab instance, leaving only the third issue.
> 
> As such, and in light of the developments above, I would like to 
> propose a move from GitHub to another service. This could be the FDO 
> GitLab instance, gitlab.com, or some other suitable, desktop-neutral 
> service.

And what happens when this new service starts hosting some other entity
that people have strong feelings about, like Planned Parenthood or some
fanatical religous group? Where does it end?

> 
> Would it be possible to get an idea of what the main technical
> hurdles 
> for this would be? From my perspective the two big issues are 
> automating the migration of the repos and updating the build 
> infrastructure and integration. Does that sound about right?
> 
> Cheers,
> //Mike

While I will always back anyone who wants to speak their mind, this
list is no place for political discussion. Flatpak is software - that's
it, nothing more.

BTW, will you demand that Flatpak shuts down if some radical groups
start using it?

> 
> [0] - 
> <
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ljH74APGOTVl_dxs-H_f5M4YuvMUBfdq/view
> >
>