Earlier quoted context omitted.
No problem, that for your kind comment. And feel free to update your post :)
I would, but edits are time-limited on HN.
Ahh, good point, no problem. <3
Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thanks? You completely missed the point of my post if you are taking this as an assault instead of criticism of the alternatives. So I'm going to repeat myself here: - Savannah is shit. Zero UX effort. Atrocious home page, branding, atrocious everything. - Unfunded efforts are unreliable. Get a grip on reality, man. This isn't afound foss or proprietary or whatever - it's about having a business model. - If you think…
I'm simultaneously honored to have been flamed by the lead of a project I'm interested in, and saddened to learn that the best source of attacks against us will be words our project leaders used first.
At the same time, if we're the ones generating our own bad press, we at least control the overall narrative. I guess that's a net win.
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#63Note 1: Moving things to GitHub or elsewhere does not remove them from SourceForge. So SF can continue to host and enjoy links on unmaintained websites, search engines etc.
Note 2: If their business model is offering popular binaries and source, they can just copy these from other sites and repackage them. Open source software allows you to do this. If no one else is interesting in bundling and monetizing, then they can buy traffic and still succeed.
Note 3: Remember that academy award winning movie from 1943? Not so great it today's light. While perhaps one of the goals of the Internet and cheap storage is to keep a copy of everything, and its often better to not re-invent the wheel, if something fall by the wayside, and its needed, it will be created.
Note 4: There are plenty of websites which catalog useful abandonware, that someone had to find a physical disk drive from. If the software has value, chances are someone will eventually repost it somewhere without a massive organized effort.
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There is clearly value in moving over some project to GitHub or elsewhere, but if some things are not migrated or moved life will go on.
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thanks? You completely missed the point of my post if you are taking this as an assault instead of criticism of the alternatives. So I'm going to repeat myself here: - Savannah is shit. Zero UX effort. Atrocious home page, branding, atrocious everything. - Unfunded efforts are unreliable. Get a grip on reality, man. This isn't afound foss or proprietary or whatever - it's about having a business model. - If you think…
All of your criticisms of Savannah seem oriented around aesthetics rather than its actual functionality. Personally I don't need much eye-candy for a git host because 99% of my work is done from the command line, but even if I cared about that I'd still pick Savannah over SF any day of the week.
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#65Why 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.
Github may be a commercial provider, but at least it's a commercial provider based on an open protocol. If things do start going wrong at Github, escape is a "git clone" and a "git push" away.
Except issues :(
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
At GitLab you are very welcome. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Props guys, I think you do an incredible job. GitLab is in fact a reasonable alternative, I should have mentioned it in my post. The reason we went to Github rather than Sourceforge is because of the community. Nethertheless, I think it's fairly foolish to focus on the platform (in the case here of archiving) - it's just a host. Stuff goes on domain 1 instead of domain 2. In either case it's still open source, the ar…
Contradictory signals in your rationale here. It comes off as if you're filling in a post-hoc justification.
Is it just an archive or isn't it? If it is, what's so important about the community, then?
It's fine that you chose what you did, of course. It's just that that in your defending it, you can't seem to decide whether you want to have your cake or eat it.
If you wanted, this would have been a perfectly fine reason to give: "We went with GitHub because it's just what we use mostly, and other stuff not so much."
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#67Why 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.
> open p2p software that all coders get to archive their own full copy of github's repos
Do you mean git?
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Now we have SSD which means a small one-step-backward for storage. However, we will supposedly have 10TB SSD and beyond within a couple of years which should give some breathing room.
Even with all this development, I doubt we will be able to have everything on Github locally on our computers. I imagine the typical Github project to be tiny -- probably tens of megabytes at the most so I'd say we can have all the projects that we care about available locally. One can only care about so much.
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks? You completely missed the point of my post if you are taking this as an assault instead of criticism of the alternatives. So I'm going to repeat myself here: - Savannah is shit. Zero UX effort. Atrocious home page, branding, atrocious everything. - Unfunded efforts are unreliable. Get a grip on reality, man. This isn't afound foss or proprietary or whatever - it's about having a business model. - If you think…
I'm simultaneously honored to have been flamed by the lead of a project I'm interested in, and saddened to learn that the best source of attacks against us will be words our project leaders used first. At the same time, if we're the ones generating our own bad press, we at least control the overall narrative. I guess that's a net win.
To answer your comment and dbbolton's simultaneously: My criticism of Savannah is based on aesthetics, but also on their model. Savannah has virtually zero funding.
What do you think will happen, exactly, when an unfunded host can't keep running? Maybe their gnu website will receive some donation from Facebook or Google or something, but there is no incentive to keep the nongnu part running. It's just volunteer work.
That model can work (cf wikipedia), but it's extremely rare, requires a lot of effort, a lot of bootstrapping and a lot of luck. It also requires $1 to pay for more than itself, so there are extra requirements regarding efficiency of spending, and diminishing returns of donations.
Gitlab has a good model. In fact, I'd be curious to see what their CEO makes of what I'm saying here - I always find him scouring HN comments about github, git, hosting, sourceforge, all of these. This is the sort of effort you have to put into to get your product out there into the ears and minds of people.
As I said earlier, yes there is a risk Github will turn evil. If they do, there will be warning signs (there have been warning signs about SF for 5 years). If such is the case, there will be alternatives by then (ever heard "if there aren't, I'll build one and get rich"?).
If Savannah runs out of money and has to turn off the lights, how much of a warning sign will there be? A few weeks maybe? Maybe there just won't be any. And this is a very real situation, which you absolutely need to be ready to confront. Putting your fingers in your ears and calling everything "an assault" won't help.
> if we're the ones generating our own bad press, we at least control the overall narrative
It's a very bad sign that you care so much about the "overall narrative". It's reminiscent of your approach to flag criticism as assault again. You care about what people say, not why they say it.
I'm not paid by an anti-FOSS group or just felt like shitting on the work of random people. There's a reason behind everything I wrote here and above; it's backed by experience. And you'll be hard pressed to find people disagreeing that Savannah is pretty terrible... you can't just go around "controlling the narrative" like you own the media. You have to fix the problem at the root.
Re: Show HN: Effort to clone unmaintained SourceForge projects to GitHub
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm simultaneously honored to have been flamed by the lead of a project I'm interested in, and saddened to learn that the best source of attacks against us will be words our project leaders used first. At the same time, if we're the ones generating our own bad press, we at least control the overall narrative. I guess that's a net win.
To answer your comment and dbbolton's simultaneously: My criticism of Savannah is based on aesthetics, but also on their model. Savannah has virtually zero funding. What do you think will happen, exactly, when an unfunded host can't keep running? Maybe their gnu website will receive some donation from Facebook or Google or something, but there is no incentive to keep the nongnu part running. It's just volunteer work.…
Scouring GitLab CEO here, as requested :) You asked for feedback on your negative comments on Savannah. We love free software and the ideals of the FSF, so I hope you understand I'll refrain from commenting. I do want to share something interesting with the caveat that it is a 'GNU projects for network services' server, not an official one, but we're happy to host https://git.gnu.io/explore/projects