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