
JIRA and text patches are anti-open-source - rjurney
http://datasyndrome.com/post/18472926718/jira-and-text-patches-are-anti-open-source
======
arohner
The standard argument here is that the project requires all contributors to
sign some form of document granting rights to the project. The project uses
JIRA's permissions to whitelist people who have signed the doc.

i.e. in Clojure's case, the Contributor Agreement grants copyright to the
submitter AND Rich Hickey, so he can change the project's license in the
future, if need be.

It seems like Github should add this feature, (open source, with whitelisted
contributors) and then the need for the JIRA mess all goes away.

~~~
dhconnelly
Why couldn't pull requests just be kept on hold until the contributor signs
the agreement?

~~~
arohner
The real issue is verifying that the person has a CA at all. You don't want to
scan a list for a person's name on every merge.

In JIRA, it's easier for the committer, because only contributors have the
correct permissions to submit a patch at all. GitHub currently has no
analogue.

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Lazare
I would complain that JIRA itself is closed-source...but the author is
recomending Github as an alternative, which is _also_ closed-source. Ah well.
:)

~~~
FfejL
Certainly true that JIRA is neither Gratis nor Libre, nor does Atlassian
accepted patches from the public. But it's Open Source in the sense that every
license holder can download and build it:
[http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Building+JIRA+f...](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Building+JIRA+from+Source)

(disclosure: I am a former Atlassian employee)

~~~
aaronblohowiak
it doesn't fit the OSI definition, but it is what microsoft calls "shared
source".

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xbryanx
Maybe I'm not familiar with the background, but I'm not sure why JIRA
specifically is getting singled out here, instead of just saying "bugtracker."
Please help me understand further.

~~~
vineet
Yeah, all his arguments are true for most bugtrackers.

By Jira he seems to really mean 'Jira at Apache' - which is their bugtracker
for most projects.

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nirvdrum
I'm a fan of GitHub and use that and git as my primary development tools these
days. I generally prefer them to SVN, although SVN has a much a richer
ecosystem of tools and handles some use cases better. What I don't get is how
people constantly post things like this. It's not like open source didn't
exist until GitHub graced us with its presence. You might not like it because
it's not your toolchain, but that's true of everything. I can't stand GitHub
Issues, bugzilla, or Lighthouse and choose not to use them where I can; that
doesn't make them anti-Open Source.

At the end of the day, the ASF has done more for open source than most
organizations and has produced a large amount of open source code, regardless
of its evolving toolchain. FWIW, I did come into the ASF through SVN & JIRA. I
did prefer darcs, bzr, and AccuRev to SVN (this was back in 2004). But, I
wanted to contribute, so I did.

~~~
rjurney
I'm not complaining on principle. I'm complaining because of the EXTREME pain
text patches cause me.

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viraptor
Not sure I understand the issue here. JIRA doesn't force you to do anything
with the source. "a monolithic subversion database" depends only on the
project, not on the bugtracker.

Set up a custom field where you put a url and/or git hash... and problem
solved. Probably not as nice as Github which integrates both, but on the other
hand Github's issue tracking capabilities are far behind JIRA's (no proper
workflow, no structure for custom information, etc.) You'll have to figure out
what's more important to you.

~~~
wmf
It reads like he's going out of his way to not mention Apache or Hadoop, but
then at the end he says it's Apache. So maybe it could have been expressed
better.

~~~
rjurney
Thanks, updated it to say Apache in the first sentence.

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vacri
If you're arguing for improved communication, please ensure your typeface and
contrasting colours are well selected.

~~~
rjurney
CSS updates welcome. Put them in comments.

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user2634
Github is complicated. I tried to make account one time. I registered and an
email address was required which they promised not to share with anyone. But
then I found that that email address is shared to the whole world in git
commit summary! Later I had bigger problem, with setting up public key in
TortoiseGit. Instructions at <http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/> didn't
work for me.

Github website also feels alien and weird, like Macintosh.

It's much easier to pass around git .patch files. Anyone can post anonymously
(no email or account required) a .patch file on project's phpBB forum. Because
it's usual phpBB, anyone can review anonymously and it's possible to post
screenshots. It takes just 1-2 minutes to post a patch. Just select your
commits in TortoiseGit and click "Create Patch Serial". There are graphical
instructions for TortoiseGit in sticky thread on patches forum.

~~~
tikhonj
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think GitHub gets the email address it
displays in the commit messages from _Git_ rather than your account. (That is,
it gets it from whatever you set with git-config.)

~~~
getsat
This is correct. You can use whatever email you want in your commits. Your
Github email is not shared by Github to any other party.

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Noxwizard
JIRA's patch form lets you submit patch URLs as well as attachments. So if the
project wanted to allow users to provide github pull request URLs, they could.
It sounds more like the project simply doesn't want to work that way.

