[Python-Dev] PEP 481 - Migrate Some Supporting Repositories to Git and Github

[Barry Warsaw]

On Nov 30, 2014, at 09:54 AM, Ian Cordasco wrote:

>- Migrating "data" from GitHub is easy. There are free-as-in-freedom
>tools to do it and the only cost is the time it would take to monitor
>the process

*Extracting* data may be easy, but migrating it is a different story.  As the
Mailman project has seen in trying to migrate from Confluence to Moin, there
is a ton of very difficult work involved after extracting the data.  Parsing
the data, ensuring that you have all the bits you need, fitting it into the
new system's schema, working out the edge cases, adapting to semantic
differences and gaps, ensuring that all the old links are redirected, and so
on, were all exceedingly difficult[*].

Even converting between two FLOSS tools is an amazing amount of work.  Look at
what Eric Raymond did with reposurgeon to convert from Bazaar to git.

It's a good thing that your data isn't locked behind a proprietary door, for
now.  That's only part of the story.  But also, because github is a closed
system, there's no guarantee that today's data-freeing APIs will still exist,
continue to be functional for practical purposes, remain complete, or stay at
parity with new features.

Cheers,
-Barry

[*] And our huge gratitude goes to Paul Boddie for his amazing amount of work
on the project.