[Proj] Migrate to github?

[Charles Karney]

On 03/15/2015 06:59 AM, Roger Bivand wrote:
> Greg Troxel <gdt <at> ir.bbn.com> writes:
>
>> I am unclear on osgeo hosting, but I think that in general Free Software
>> projects should be hosted at Free Software-supporting nonprofits.
>> (But you're the one doing the work, so I'll just say this once and be
>> done.)
>
> This is a contentious but vital point, which other Free Software foundations
> have found troubling. It means that someone must have an actively maintained
> plan for withdrawal from github.com should the company fold, or its domain
> be blocked in jurisdictions where users and developers need access to code
> and documentation.
>
> Use of cloudy-CDN for software distribution is another very controversial
> topic for similar reasons.
>
> If PROJ closes SVN read access, I will stop tracking trunk for uses in R,
> and consequently not provide reports on changes in PROJ that break other
> stuff. Life is too short to use only fashionable tools (and git is not
> uniformly accepted as being superior to svn).
>
> Roger
>

I'm not a purist about hosting sites provided that the software license
isn't affected.  github seems fine to me.  The software can't just
disappear with a git repository since every contributor will have a
copy.  I suppose that the metadata (bug tracking information) can vanish
-- but that's probably true (more likely?) with the current setup.

I'm also fine using either svn or git (with a preference for git).

What I think is unacceptable is a 3-year interval between releases for
proj4.  (4.8.0 was released on 2012-03-13; 4.9.0 was never released;
4.9.1 was released on 2015-03-04.)

Howard Butler stepped up after a long period of inactivity to make the
latest release of proj4 happen.  I'm strongly inclined to defer to his
wishes going forward in the hope that we can see more timely releases.

   --Charles