Why the software history was not kept?

[gustavopinto]

Hi there,

I'm a researcher studying software evolution. As part of my current research, I'm studying the implications of open-sourcing a proprietary software, for instance, if the project succeed in attracting newcomers. Flight was in my list. However, I observed that the software history of when the software was developed as a proprietary software was not kept after the transition to Github.

Knowing that software history is indispensable for developers (e.g., developers need to refer to history several times a day), I would like to ask Flight developers the following four brief questions:

1. Why did you decide to not keep the software history?
2. Do the core developers faced any kind of problems, when trying to refer to the old history? If so, how did they solve these problems?
3. Do the newcomers faced any kind of problems, when trying to refer to the old history? If so, how did they solve these problems?
4. How does the lack of history impacted on software evolution? Does it placed any burden in understanding and evolving the software?

Thanks in advance for your collaboration,

Gustavo Pinto, PhD
http://www.gustavopinto.org

[gustavopinto]

Hi @angus-c, do you have any comments?

[mmoss]

The software history is available in it's entirety through both the Releases and the Commit log.