Hi Assaf, 1. Hacking on the GNU Savannah code itself will be easier, and more inviting. 2. Bringing the current Savannah code up-to-date. 3. Examining the current databases as preparation for migration to a new platform.
All those are unquestionably (IMO) valid arguments, but don't speak to making a database dump *publicly* available. Available on the Savannah machines would be enough for those purposes. 4. Allowing interested people to explore the GNU Savannah public data (which is already public), develop new useful features, and finding new interesting statistics. Ok, that could be persuasive. As I've written in the previous email, I consider "public" only information that's available to non-logged users. That sounds very sensible to me. I agree that there is a technical differences between making an interested user jump through web-parsing hoops, and between providing an SQL-based database which allows simple queries. But there is no conceptual difference. The information is already out there. I agree there is no conceptual difference, and I also agree there is an important technical difference. Are the SQL commands I've listed in the previous emails adequate for removing private information? As Sylvain said, it still seems much better to me, in principle, to extract only the public information than delete the private. Better to err on the side of less being included. select from bugs where privacy=0 or whatever ... thanks, k