GitHub's reign over public open source programming is a bit terrifying. But, it's been mostly benevolent so far, but I do find it troubling to trust a private company to keep dev's in mind, and not profit.
I'm not sure why it's a problem though. If they decide to go down that path, it's not that hard to move off. They don't have the lock-in that would scare me like having terabytes of data in an oracle database.
Python moves to GitHub
91–100 of 119 posts
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Centralizing the "hub" pretty much negates the distributed aspect of a dvcs, and github has no incentive to invest in extending git to be even more distributed ala fossil or bittorent, to mention two not quite fitting but conveying the point examples. Maybe git-appraisal will grow into something good.
This gets brought up pretty much every time GitHub is mentioned on here, and I've never understood it. Using a hosted service like GitHub as a remote for your git repo doesn't "negate" the distributed aspect, any more than parking your car somewhere negates its ability to drive around. I can use GitHub as a remote and take advantage of the social and UX aspects they offer, and if GitHub vanishes (or has downtime), I…
Something similar to git-lfs:
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's absurd that so many open-source and / or free software projects are happy to host their public-facing development infrastructure with a private company running proprietary software.
Why?
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why it's a problem though. If they decide to go down that path, it's not that hard to move off. They don't have the lock-in that would scare me like having terabytes of data in an oracle database.
The problem is with people's mindset that everything has to be on github. Large projects that dare to use self-hosted more fitting infrastructure like Phabricator tend to be punished socially.
I'm looking at projects like nginx that had to setup Github mirrors basically out of pressure.
It serves no value for the project because they use a different system for version control, code review and ticketing, yet someone had to go setup a Github mirror because.... people expect to see you on Github?
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#95GitHub's reign over public open source programming is a bit terrifying. But, it's been mostly benevolent so far, but I do find it troubling to trust a private company to keep dev's in mind, and not profit.
especially given some of their behavior in the last couple of years...
well I don't know if I agree with that. I haven't seen an instance where their behavior has been amoral.
I have seen instances where they have been cowards, regarding DMCA's and acquiescing to threats, but that is a minor sin. I don't expect every organization to fight every fight worth fighting.
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why it's a problem though. If they decide to go down that path, it's not that hard to move off. They don't have the lock-in that would scare me like having terabytes of data in an oracle database.
There are some things you simply can't do on GitHub: * block trolls from interacting with an organization, short of filing a support ticket * install pre-receive hooks without using the pull request infrastructure * set up status checks (the PR equivalent of pre-receive hooks) for pull requests that require force pushes, allowing some external check to replace git's usual fast-forward check * have status checks apply…
Something else that's IMO more important than any of those items is this:
You can't submit patches. Submitting/accepting a patch is something that straight up cannot be done on GitHub. Unless you use a sidechannel like sending a message containing a link to a patch that you threw up on some host somewhere (in which case, have fun rooting out that information on a case-by-case basis), the only way to ever get any changes upstream is via pull request. Mildly obnoxious, but then you get hit with this zinger:
You can't submit a pull request if your branch isn't already hosted on GitHub.
So if you want to make a one line fix, there need to exist no fewer than 3 copies of the repo: the upstream, your local copy that you made when you cloned it, and then some third copy that you have to spin up and maintain through GitHub. This is nuts.
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would a free software project leave GitHub just to run a proprietary "stack"? You could try one of the self-hostable free software alternatives listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_source_code_host...
With self-hosting you don't get the broader community... With node, for example, most modules have source on github and it's easy to fork, fix/enhance something and submit a PR... with everyone self hosting, how many logins do you have to create. I know, tracking, federation, etc... but it's much nicer only having a couple logins (google, fb, twitter, github) for most sites I access regularly.
SSO is a separately solvable problem, and even so, I'm not sure it's a solution that needs applying here. It's not clear why any form of sign-on is needed—SSO or not. Almost everybody in this space is already using public-key crypto for authentication.
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would a free software project leave GitHub just to run a proprietary "stack"? You could try one of the self-hostable free software alternatives listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_source_code_host...
self-hostable and free doesn't mean they're not proprietary. and my comment was more about the fact that github is just git (which is completely open) with some extra features. like the other comments have said, it's not really a big risk.
I don't mean free as in price. I mean free as in freedom, and I mean proprietary as in non-free:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some things you simply can't do on GitHub: * block trolls from interacting with an organization, short of filing a support ticket * install pre-receive hooks without using the pull request infrastructure * set up status checks (the PR equivalent of pre-receive hooks) for pull requests that require force pushes, allowing some external check to replace git's usual fast-forward check * have status checks apply…
Something else that's IMO more important than any of those items is this: You can't submit patches. Submitting/accepting a patch is something that straight up cannot be done on GitHub. Unless you use a sidechannel like sending a message containing a link to a patch that you threw up on some host somewhere (in which case, have fun rooting out that information on a case-by-case basis), the only way to ever get any chan…
I highly doubt GitHub maintains two copies of the same object (not counting replication). They likely copy most of the repo metadata for forks, but if two objects have the same SHA, even in completely different repos that were never even forks of each other, they can just store one copy. You can see evidence of this if you look at some of their advice for how to remove all traces of some data (say, you accidentally checked in sensitive info to a public repo and now need to make it totally inaccessible)
Re: Python moves to GitHub
#100this is pretty significant; so far the only git presence of Python was a "semi-official readonly mirror" on github: https://github.com/python/cpython now does this mean that Python will completely switch away from Mercurial? this was one of the major projects still using hg what does this mean for mercurial's global adoption vs git? also, i don't understand why the free software aspect of gitlab wasn't an important a…
Yes. It means Python is no longer using Mercurial. We knew this was a done deal a several weeks ago. Mozilla, Octave, and Hedgewars are a few remaining projects that still use hg. For them, I will continue to improve, promote, and use Mercurial. Their reasoning for using Github have nothing to do with the technical merits of git or hg or with the freedom of the software or platform. They want more contributions and t…
SDL also uses mercurial I think.