GNU ethical repository criteria evaluations

We maintain this evaluation report presenting the compliance level of popular sites to the GNU ethical repository criteria. There are some criteria that we can’t possibly verify, in which case we accept the site maintainer’s word on the matter. This evaluation is done by volunteers and you are welcome to contribute.

GNU Savannah — A

Savannah has already acheived the highest grade for ethical hosting. These are the issues that would need to be addressed for it to earn extra credit:

• There are normal Web access/download logs which sometimes include IP addresses. (A+1)
• It follows EFF’s criteria only partially. Complying with the rest remains in progress. (A+2)
• HTML_CodeSniffer reports dozen of errors and warnings related to WCAG 2.0 compliance on every page. (A+3)
• There is no WAI-ARIA markup in its pages. (A+4)
• Currently there is no way of exporting data contributed by project owners or contributors. (A+5)

GitHub — F

Things that prevent it from moving up to the next grade, C:

• The following important site functionality doesn’t work without running nonfree or non-LibreJS compliant JavaScript: (C0)
• Change repository name;
• Change repository description;
• Delete repository;
• Add an SSH key;
• Pull request;
• Enable and disable project features;

Qualified passes for the next grade C:

• Although it doesn't deliberately discriminate any country, specific information may not be available in all countries by legal reasons. See roskomnadzor and export controls for more details. (C2)
• GitHub and choosealicense.com goes as far as possible against GPL within the bounds of plausible deniability. In other words, they do the absolute bare minimum to just arguably pass this criteria. This is the rationale supporting this conclusion: (C5)
• They relegate GPL to the third option;
• They make the wording to emphasize that Expat/MIT should be the standard default;
• They assert that the license to use for patent concerns is Apache v2 (and they fail to mention that GPLv3 deals with patents as well);
• They carefully word the explanation of GPL to avoid reference to passing on freedoms and only make it about contributing code back (which is not actually the correct interpretation of GPL);
• They push people toward GPLv2, undermining GPLv3 adoption;
• They describe GPLv3 as not an improved license but characterize it to sound like it just has some meaningless jargon most people won’t get or care about;

SourceForge — F

Things that prevent it from moving up to the next grade, C:

• The following important site functionality doesn’t work without running nonfree or non-LibreJS compliant javascript: (C0)
• Create first project; (stumbles in phone verification)
• Upload files, create a folder or use interactive file manager;
• Enable, disable or delete reviews;
• Reply to, link to, edit, delete, mark as spam or add attachments to discussion posts;
• Create, delete, revert, add attachments to, or unsubscribe from wiki pages;
• Access wiki, code, ticket, discussion and blog administration menu;
• Access RW, RO and HTTP checkout commands;
• Browse commits;
• Merge code by merge requests;
• Subscribe/unsubscribe to code commit notifications;
• Add attachments to tickets;
• Bulk edit and move of tickets;
• Column sort and selection in ticket browser;
• Add, delete and edit ticket milestones and searches;
• Moderate or label discussions;
• Administrate forums;
• View statistics graph;
• Set project status;
• Upload a project icon;
• Install tools;
• Set user permissions;
• Its term of use states: (C2)

  Users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, may not post Content to, or access Content available through, SourceForge.net.