Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#31

Post by nadams » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

bentpins wrote: post #17

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #12

Why aren't you mirroring the binaries? These are vital for people in the future who do not have the time to set up a build environment for software from a decade ago. I'd also echo the concerns of others about GitHub. Proper archivists should do for SourceForge what they did for other projects. Archive Team, maybe? Looks like they have a wiki page: http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=SourceForge

This was in progress, 830GB was downloaded before a Sourceforge guy popped onto the IRC and said he's ok with the archiving, but that the robots.txt should be respected. This would put things at a practical standstill. So the downloading was paused, I'm not really sure what's happened in the week since. Right now Xfire's videos, several URL shortners' links, and Toshiba Support material are being archived. If you hav…

Honestly I think ignoring robots.txt in this case is acceptable. Even if he programs in code to respect robots.txt - once the management at sourceforge get wind of what he is doing - what is stopping sourceforge from putting up robots.txt everywhere blocking him?

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#32

Post by scrollaway » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

> In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

So fix it in 10 years. Git makes that easy.

Point me to a good alternative to github that matches all your ideals. A free alternative to github - free as in beer, unless you're willing to fund this effort yourself, of course?

We migrated one of our projects from Sourceforge to Github, and all the stallmen came out of their rock to tell us how Github is evil, how Savannah is the only true alternative, pah. "Absolute freedom of software" is nice but it's not the only requirement. Savannah has the usability of a rusty wrench and will probably shut down without warning long before Github "turns evil".

Some people are just so far detached from reality when suggesting that stuff isn't perfect. Github is pretty damn amazing. If you want to use foss alternative like Gitlab, more power to you, but that doesn't make them ideal in every situation.

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#33

Post by estrabd » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:03 PM UTC

Sourceforge is on the radar here, but maybe it's time to step it up.

http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Fire_Drill

Update: seems others have linked to archiveteam.org, so maybe that's the best route. Is the OP part of the AT effort or do they know about each other? Maybe they should.

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#34

Post by ajkjk » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #27

joshstrange wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archive.org (while an amazing resource created lovingly by amaing people) is not a great front-end for stuff like this. Github is very easy to get started with and excels at code hosting. As for the blockchain that's a terrible idea, there are so many things wrong with it including the cost to push all of that data into the blockchain and the fact that while source code can be small it isn't always and it's magnitude…

I received a lot of downvotes but my comment was a bit ironical since in many forums (even in HN in the past) when someone talked about backups many people suggest the block chain. I said: With the current and future block size it will take sometime to make it happen .

The absurdity of that suggestion it not absolved by the fact that someone else has said it before, or by the fact that you said it will take 'some time for it to happen'. It's completely not an option for the migration we're discussing.

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

hydragit wrote: post #14

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

For now, Github is not ad-ridden as SourceForge is. Github is monetizing some repositories: https://github.com/pricing I don't know if they're sustainable, but from my naive point of view, closed-source projects on github pay for the hosting of open-source projects on github.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#36

Post by johansch » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

hydragit wrote: post #14

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

For now, Github is not ad-ridden as SourceForge is. Github is monetizing some repositories: https://github.com/pricing I don't know if they're sustainable, but from my naive point of view, closed-source projects on github pay for the hosting of open-source projects on github.

In my naive mind, I think it might be sustainable.

(During the past week I paid for the first month of private github hosting on my personal CC for the company I work for. Will get it re-imbursed and transition it to some company CC when I get the time.)

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#37

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

goldfeld wrote: post #26

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

Ten years from now for all we know we could all have so much cheap storage and bandwidth and good, open p2p software that all coders get to archive their own full copy of github's repos. So the focus should be on getting today's job done now.

Didn't we all say the same exact thing ten years ago?

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#38

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #32

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

> In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle. So fix it in 10 years. Git makes that easy. Point me to a good alternative to github that matches all your ideals. A free alternative to github - free as in beer, unless you're willing to fund this effort yourself, of course? We migrated one…

> Point me to a good alternative to github that matches all your ideals. A free alternative to github - free as in beer, unless you're willing to fund this effort yourself, of course?

Gitlab? Savannah (of the nongnu.org variety)? Bitbucket? Gitorious? A basic VPS with SSH and git?

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#39

Post by usaphp » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

I like people like you , always slashing ideas and not suggesting your own...

Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub

#40

Post by anonbanker » Sat, Jun 27, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #32

pavlov wrote: post #7

Why Github? Copying from one commercial provider to another doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Using git helps, but most of those old repos will never get cloned. In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle.

> In 10 years time, Github may be the tired old service that gets acquired by a hedge fund that decides to monetize their repos. Such things are part of the corporate lifecycle. So fix it in 10 years. Git makes that easy. Point me to a good alternative to github that matches all your ideals. A free alternative to github - free as in beer, unless you're willing to fund this effort yourself, of course? We migrated one…

This post should be used as study material for how the next generation of anti-GPL assaults will be done:

* free (as in speech) == "Stallmen", "detached from reality"

* Guerilla evangelism == "came out of their rock"

* "Freedom of software" == "nice but"

* Free Software Reliability == "probably shut down without warning"

with a cute little pull-back at the end to make it sound like you actually don't mind FOSS.

Make no mistake, this is how FOSS's adversaries will work in the future. On the bright side, this means the direct assaults are failing, and they're moving on to new tactics.