I understand that given the licensing, LLM training may be permissible. That wasn't the point. As an org, and personally, I do not want to contribute to a technology largely designed to destroy my profession. Unfortunately, a number of projects I care about are still hosted on platform owned by one of the biggest developers of LLM tech.

You mentioned before that contributors are free to mirror XSF/XMPP repos on other platforms. This sounds like a good first contribution for our org. I'm willing to put in the work to mirror the repos, and try to coordinate any issue triage that gets submitted on the mirrors.


Apologies if this sounded like sidelining, that wasn't my intention. I was giving voice from my perspective on why I​​ am demotivated from contributing to projects hosted on Github, and offered some viable alternatives.


Right, because FOSS, decentralized communication platforms are completely apolitical, and detached from society. There's obviously no ethical considerations, either. Mind backdooring OMEMO for any government that asks?

On Wednesday, August 27th, 2025 at 8:51 PM, Ralph Meijer <ralphm@ik.nu> wrote:
Hi Elle,

My main point remains that I'd rather have the XSF spend time on improving XMPP itself rather than bikeshed on tooling every once in a while. It is very demotivating for people working on this to get side line opinions without actual ongoing involvement.

IANAL, but the use of any of the XSF materials is covered by our IPR statement and I believe that explicitly allows any such use as training LLMs. I don't see this as a negative for the XSF. This doesn't negate concerns for *other* organizations or projects.

I will not go into my personal opinions on political, societal, or ethical choices or opinions, by anyone or any corporation, here. I do have them, as many here can attest, and they usually go with a beverage in a private, in-person setting. I also do not believe that the XSF should take positions or make statements and will make every effort to keep it that way.

Cheers,

ralphm



On 27 August 2025 22:32:10 CEST, Elle <elle+xmpp-standards@weathered-steel.dev> wrote:
Hi Ralph,

I'm not sure to what extent you're using Github's tooling, but the CI config for Woodpecker is very close to Github's CI.

I understand the effort in retooling is non-trivial, but Github is becoming increasingly hostile to FOSS projects. They are very close to forcing use of AI on hosted projects, and of course their AI already scrapes all existing hosted projects. With no way to reasonably opt-out.

Plus you know, Microsoft actively supporting the genocide in Gaza.



On Wednesday, August 27th, 2025 at 8:16 PM, Ralph Meijer <ralphm@ik.nu> wrote:



On 27/08/2025 12.55, Florian Schmaus wrote:

[CC'ing standards@, as I'd like to engage the community regarding our
usage of Github]

On 07/08/2025 18.50, E.M. wrote:

[..]

* XEP-0001 and 0143 changes need approval from Board
** Call to provide you input to the changes and place a comment or
review.
Link 1: https://github.com/xsf/xeps/pull/1412

This contains some good changes, like the advise to read, understand,
and agree to our IPR. However, I find the the strong emphasis on
Github PRs very problematic. Especially the part where we tell people
that if they don't have a github account and are not willing to sign
up for one, they should find someone who has one.

The XSF should not require the usage of a propriety service for
contributions.

On the other side, I do acknowledge that using a CI-based system for
contributions has its advantage. Therefore, a change which mentions
that we also accept contributions via Github, outlining the existence
of a CI there, would be acceptable to me.

But it is my strong believe that we should always accept contributions
via mail.

Therefore -1, as is.

On a side note: We may also want to point out that it is possible to
validate changes locally. And we probably should look into codeforge
alternatives. But that is outside of the scope of this PR.


We have discussed this at various occasions in the past. The outcome was
that we need to make technology choices and create and maintain tooling
to maintain the processes of the XSF. A choice was made, after
consulting the Infrastructure Team and the XMPP Council, to (continue
to) use GitHub and associated tooling. Reasons for doing it this way is
familiarity with the tooling, minimizing maintenance, and low appetite
for retooling.

The XSF is an organization that entirely depends on volunteers to do
anything. It is already hard to get our core functions staffed and
actually have work done. The effort required for retooling and
subsequent maintenance is better spent on progressing on our core
functions.

I also do not agree the XSF cannot use proprietary services. The XSF is
an open standards organization for the entire XMPP community which
includes projects and contributors in the Free Software and/or Open
Source Software communities (take your preferred one), as well as closed
source and everything in between. Commercial companies and
non-commercial entities alike. There is no inherent or implied leaning
to any choice made here, nor is there a need for a preference.

The changes (including the one below) simply outline the current
process, with XEP-0001 deferring to XEP-0143 for the details. XEP-0143
clearly provides a way to provide changes or initial contributions
without using GitHub, and people are free to clone our repos to
facilitate people to interact more directly with Git without GitHub.


+1, thanks for writing this.



I reviewed and approved both PRs.

Kind regards,

Ralph Meijer
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