[RFC] doc: start reproducibility document

[RFC] doc: start reproducibility document

[Eric Wong]

Not new ideas, just gathering thoughts.
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 Documentation/reproducibility.txt | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 create mode 100644 Documentation/reproducibility.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/reproducibility.txt b/Documentation/reproducibility.txt
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+reproducibility => forkability
+------------------------------
+
+The ability to fork a project is a checks and balances
+system for free software projects.  Reproducibility is key
+to forkability since every mirror is potential fork.
+
+git makes the code history of projects fully reproducible.
+public-inbox uses git to make the email history of projects
+reproducible.
+
+Keeping all communications as email ensures the full history
+of the entire project can be mirrored by anyone with the
+resources to do so.  Compact, low-complexity data requires
+less resources to mirror, so sticking with plain-text
+ensures more parties can mirror and potentially fork the
+project with all its data.
+
+Any private or irreproducible data is a barrier to forking.
+These include mailing list subscriber information and
+non-federated user identities.  The "pull" subscriber model
+of NNTP and Atom feeds combined with open-to-all posting
+means there's no need for private data.
+
+If these things make power hungry project leaders and admins
+uncomfortable, good.  That was the point.  It's how checks
+and balances ought to work.
+
+Comments, corrections, etc welcome: meta@public-inbox.org

Re: [RFC] doc: start reproducibility document

[Kyle Meyer]

Eric Wong <e@yhbt.net> writes:

> Not new ideas, just gathering thoughts.

Thanks.  Ideas will are always be new to some :)  It's nice to make them
easy to discover for someone exploring the project tree.

It reads well to me.

> +The ability to fork a project is a checks and balances
> +system for free software projects.  Reproducibility is key
> +to forkability since every mirror is potential fork.

Missing an "a" in front of "potential".