[VOTE] Use GitHub issues instead of bugs.openwrt.org

Thu Jan 27 17:26:48 PST 2022

Dear Rich,

I often find myself agreeing with your posts, but I feel some
fact-checking is needed on this one.  I hope that's OK.

On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 03:01:33PM -0500, Rich Brown wrote:
> We all realize that we have to stop driving cars, long term, for the
> health of the planet.

Reducing CO2E emissions and other forms of pollution is more important
than the means by which it is achieved.

> Most of us have chosen not to change our livelihoods to focus on
> decreasing energy use.

I really, really hope you are mistaken about that...[1]

> We could...
> 
> - divert energies of the OpenWrt core team to move to/develop an
> open-source solution, AND find the team members to maintain it
> long-term 
>
> -OR- 
>
> - adopt a well-known, well-supported commercial package that does
> (most of) what we need today, even [though] it might (in the future)
> do something we don't like

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    (Hasn't Microsoft *already* done enough objectionable things?[2])

OR

-  adopt an existing *hosted* free software solution (SourceHut or
   Codeberg, etc), which gives the best of both worlds?

   (And perhaps divert a portion of OpenWRT donations to the host of
   that service, to help ensure its long-term viability.  And perhaps
   encourage other Free Software projects we engage with to do the same
   thing, for the same reason.)

> At some point in the future, things might "go south" so that we want
> to move away from Github.

GitHub has already "gone south".[2]

> That's the time to divert developer efforts toward moving Git repos
> and bug reports and everything.

Migrating bug reports to GitHub would require *more* developer effort
than migrating them to SourceHut or Codeberg.[3]

> In the meantime, we can be productive using the (very good) tools on
> Github.

GitHub's tools are - far from being "very good" - literally useless for
anyone connecting via IPv6[4] and for some other people besides.[5]

Best wishes,

Sam

[1]: From a pure energy perspective:

    "By 2050, global energy use needs to be as low as 27 gigajoules (GJ)
    of final energy per person to reach the aspirations of the Paris
    Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without relying on
    speculative future technologies, according to the Intergovernmental
    Panel on Climate Change.

    That means ... affluent countries like the UK (81 GJ per person) or
    Spain (77 GJ per person) need to reduce their average energy use by
    as much as 65%, France (95 GJ per person) by more than 70%, and the
    most energy-hungry countries like the USA (204 GJ per person) or
    Canada (232 GJ per person) need to cut by as much as 90%."

    - University of Leeds.  "Securing decent living standards for all
      while reducing global energy use", 5 Jul 2021.
      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629191733.htm

>From CO2E, public health, and tax burden perspectives (re: housing
rather than transport, but the situation is parallel):

    "About one-third of the UK's carbon emissions - and ... about the
    same throughout Europe - is caused by the domestic sector ... by
    energy use in dwellings.

    [From] a carbon and an energy point of view, it's crucial [to]
    upgrade [existing buildings] to deep retrofit standards ... 80%
    carbon reduction ... by 2050.  That's in the UK Climate Change Act.

    [Co-benefits of energy efficiency upgrades include] improved thermal
    comfort...  [The UK] has 4.5m households in fuel poverty because it
    costs so much to heat these dwellings... It affects their health ...
    asthma, bronchitis, heart and lung disease, kidney desease and
    mental [illness]...  [For] each £1 [not] spent on keeping homes
    warm, the [National Health Service effectively loses an additional
    £0.42].

    [Across the EU, domestic energy efficiency retrofits would avoid]
    €80bn-€150bn of [otherwise unnecessary public expenditure on power
    generation and distrubution infrastructure].

    [Going back to the UK], we need to upgrade about 1 dwelling every
    minute of the day over the next 35 years to achieve [climate change
    mitigation commitments]."

    -  Dr Sofie Pelsmakers, University of Sheffield, "Necessity of
       Housing Retrofit", 9 Nov 2016.  https://youtu.be/s-1bDhFDg-8

>From oceanographic, atmospheric, biodiversity and econmic perspectives:

    "[Our research, published in] Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, ...
    shows that the Earth broke yet another heat record last year...  The
    measurements ... spread across the globe, paint a clear picture: the
    Earth is warming, humans are the culprit, and the warming will
    continue indefinitely until we collectively take action to reduce
    greenhouse gas emissions.

    We used measurements from the oceans because ... more than 90% of
    global warming heat ends up in the oceans...

    [This] has tremendous consequences to society and biodiversity... As
    oceans warm, they threaten sea life and the many food chains that
    originate in the sea.  Warmer ocean waters make storms more severe.
    Cyclones and hurricanes become more powerful; rains fall harder,
    which increases flooding; storms surges are more dangerous; and sea
    levels rise (one of the major causes of rising sea levels is the
    expansion of water as it heats).

    How much did the world's oceans warm in 2021 compared with the
    previous year?  Well, our data shows that oceans heated by about 14
    zettajoules (a zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of
    energy)... This is the equivalent of ... seven Hiroshima atomic
    bombs detonating each second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

    [There has been a] clear, persistent rise over the past three to
    four decades [attributable] to human emissions of industrial
    pollution and greenhouse gases...

    My new year's resolution is to help the planet cool down...
    Collectively, we certainly have the technology to reduce greenhouse
    gases..."

    - Prof John Abraham, University of St Thomas.  "We study ocean
      temperatures.  The Earth just broke a heat increase record."  11
      Jan 2022.  https://gu.com/p/k92bg

[2]:
https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-adm/2022-January/002192.html

[3]:

    >> issue numbering on GitHub might not remain coordinated with the
    >> issue numbering on bugs.openwrt.org .  For instance, there might
    >> end up being two bug reports with the same number.
    >> 
    >> That would be like the ambiguity of "#4206", which could
    >> currently ... refer to either
    >>
    >> https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=4206
    >> 
    >> or
    >> 
    >> https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/4206
    >> 
    >> but worse.
    > 
    > Yes that's indeed a _flaw_ ...

    Allowing bug reports via GitHub is going to create even more
    auto-link ambiguity/breakage.

    *Migration* of bug reports to SourceHut or Codeberg, on the other
    hand, allows existing internal links (within bugs.openwrt.org) to be
    straightforwardly transformed into internal links at the chosen host
    (e.g. either todo.sr.ht/~openwrt/openwrt or
    codeberg.org/openwrt/openwrt/issues ).  That isn't possible with
    GitHub, because the existing PRs on OpenWRT's GitHub repo will cause
    collisions, as with #4206 above.

    > Sourcehut requires users to post the full address which seems the
    > [...] It's not possible to disable PRs on GitHub and a massive
    > chunk of contributions come via the GitHub, I'd estimate more than
    > from the mailing list at this point. [...]

    This leaves OpenWRT with a headache: how to outsource issue-hosting,
    without all those GitHub PRs causing some link-breakage in the
    process?

    As I say, your best option there is probably *migration* of bug
    reports to SourceHut or Codeberg...

https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2022-January/037736.html

[4]: https://github.com/github/feedback/discussions/10539

https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-adm/2021-June/002017.html

https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-adm/2022-January/002170.html

[5]:
https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2022-January/037546.html

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