As of now, Gerrit is mandatory in Software Factory for a COUPLE of reasons:

1. Managesf access control policies are BASED on Gerrit groups.
2. The config repository is hosted on Gerrit with an integrated CI/CD workflow.

Gerrit will be made optional in a future release [1] of Software Factory
Note: that it is possible to use Software Factory as a third party CI for an external Gerrit or a GitHub organization. In this case, the gerrit server is only used to host the config repository, and operators can bypass it entirely by PUSHING config repository changes with the “git push” command instead of “git review”.

As of now, Gerrit is mandatory in Software Factory for a couple of reasons:

Gerrit will be made optional in a future release [1] of Software Factory
Note: that it is possible to use Software Factory as a third party CI for an external Gerrit or a GitHub organization. In this case, the gerrit server is only used to host the config repository, and operators can bypass it entirely by pushing config repository changes with the “git push” command instead of “git review”.