Loomio
Thu 12 Jan 2017 9:31AM

Git hosting for co-operators

CCC Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Public Seen by 477

Currently the code for https://dev.coops.tech/ is hosted on the Outlandish GitLab server, which is great, but means it isn't as open it would ideally be (it would be nice if others could open tickets and contribute etc).

It occurred to me the other day (I mentioned it in Slack) that Webarchitects could provide a VM (4GB RAM and 2 CPUs is suggested) for a GitLab for Co-operative Technologists, eg gitlab.coops.tech and that could be used to host the code, however that might be overkill -- it is possible to setup too much infrastructure for projects and when this is done it can then create an unneeded burden on a project (I know this from bitter experience and could share some examples...).

So, I had another idea I'd like to float if that is OK...

How about Webarchitects register git.coop and host a GitLab CE server on this domain and give accounts to any member of our co-op who wants one -- to join Webarchitects you just need to buy one of more share (£1, this is on one-off payment) and agree to the rules, so everybody involved with Co-operative Technologists could join if they wish.

If we did this would other co-operators be willing to use this service and would it be an appropriate place to host the code for dev.coops.tech?

JMF

James Mead (Go Free Range) Thu 23 Mar 2017 9:12AM

Congratulations! Looks great :smiley:

CR

Chris Roos Thu 23 Mar 2017 10:07AM

This is great, @chriscroome. I'll chat to my colleagues at Go Free Range and see whether we can join your co-op and help out with testing.

CCC

Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Thu 23 Mar 2017 10:36PM

That's great @chrisroos :smiley:

Since organisations as well as individuals can join our co-op and git.coop account registration is based on email domains, it might make sense to do things like this (this is just a suggestion):

  • When an individual joins we either give them a @ webarchitects.coop email alias or email account and people could sign up with that, or if they have a personal email domain we could whitelist that.
  • When an organisation joins we whitelist the domain the organisation uses for email (assuming the organisation has a email domain only used by members of the organisation, if they don't we can create aliases for a @ webarchitects.coop address and people could sign up with those) -- then people from the organisation could create accounts as they wish.

I can't think of a reason not to let users set up groups for projects and if needs be make them private etc, but nothing is set in stone -- perhaps we should create a git.coop project on the server for documenting the terms and conditions and also use that for issues relating to documenting how it'll work?

We haven't had a chance to give any thought to what a suggested number of shares an organisation should buy, and this should probably be a sliding scale, all we have at the moment is a suggestion that individuals buy £10 worth of share as a minimum (but you can just buy one). The plan is to give unlimited git.coop use to members, indefinitely.

To join all you need to do is agree to the rules, complete this pdf and email it to support @ webarch.net and say how many shares you would like and we would then send you an invoice, which you could pay by bank transfer, PayPal, cheque or cash, and then we would set everything up.