Dear GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear GitHub

#41

Post by minimaxir » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:01 PM UTC

diezge wrote: post #21

mplewis wrote: post #13

Bitbucket kills GitHub issues with these two features: - Multiple assignees for an issue - An "Approve" button so that maintainers can stamp a PR with the seal of approval

Surprised I didn't see my personal favourite mentioned - the unlimited free private repos!

To be fair, GitHub has to make money.

None of the complaints are about the GitHub business model, which is IMO pretty fair.

Re: Dear GitHub

#42

Post by monkmartinez » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

I do not operate a popular OSS project, but I have experienced the +1 spam and it sucks. The suggestions, in my opinion seem rational.

Interesting side note: With the exception of Selenium, most of signees are maintainers of JS/HTML OSS projects. I wonder if we could objectively compare JS to projects in terms of the problems mentioned in the document. For example, there is a strong correlation between +1'ers and JS repos vs. Python or vice versa. Perhaps, we could walk away with JS devs are more chatty than CPP developers when discussing issues... I don't know, just a thought.

Re: Dear GitHub

#43

Post by rmchugh » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

rahelzer wrote: post #20

Do the undersigned send any money to github? It might be better to phrase your demand in the form of a question, "how much can we pay you to do this work for us?"

GitHub's success is based on its community. Simple fairness says the community should be respected and listened to, simple business says if the community doesn't get something back, it will get pissed and go somewhere else.

Re: Dear GitHub

#44

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #31

rahelzer wrote: post #20

Do the undersigned send any money to github? It might be better to phrase your demand in the form of a question, "how much can we pay you to do this work for us?"

GitHub is a service, not a contracted vendor for work. There's a big difference.

[deleted]

Re: Dear GitHub

#45

Post by jasode » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

The bullet points of complaints feel like a continuation of Linus Torvald's refusal of github pull requests in May 2012.[1]

Taken all together, it seems like github is on a path of alienating their most valuable members. Github was unresponsive to Linus' feature requests and it turns out that theme continues almost 3 years later.

If github plans to evolve into a full-featured ALM[2] like MS Team Foundation or JIRA instead of being relegated to being just a "dumb" disk backup node for repositories, they have to get these UI workflow issues fixed.

[1]https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_lifecycle_manageme...

Re: Dear GitHub

#46

Post by dikaiosune » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

monkmartinez wrote: post #42

I do not operate a popular OSS project, but I have experienced the +1 spam and it sucks. The suggestions, in my opinion seem rational. Interesting side note: With the exception of Selenium, most of signees are maintainers of JS/HTML OSS projects. I wonder if we could objectively compare JS to projects in terms of the problems mentioned in the document. For example, there is a strong correlation between +1'ers and JS…

The same question about JS repos struck me. I suspect that if you write a shared letter then you just ask your network to sign it instead of , but I would be curious to know if these grievances are disproportionate in different communities.

Re: Dear GitHub

#47

Post by jcastro » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

Royalaid wrote: post #4

aesthetics1 wrote: post #2

Each and every suggestion is a sane and much needed improvement.

Especially the +1

I don't think a +1 button would help.

Google Code had stars in order to encourage people to +1 something without creating noise and then instead of +1 comments you got +1 comments AND people yelling at them for using it wrong.

Re: Dear GitHub

#48

Post by athenot » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

I have mixed feelings about these requests. Yes it would be nice to have these extra features in GitHub. Its issue handling has always been a bit light on the workflow side—but IMHO has made up for it with a pleasant way to organize conversation around issues. The simple and smooth UX is part of what makes GitHub so great.

For the opposite side of the spectrum, there's the Bitbucket+Jira combo. It is customizable to a PM's heart's content, and in the process can become a mess of a tool.

Re: Dear GitHub

#49

Post by dikaiosune » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:05 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #44

hellofunk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub is a service, not a contracted vendor for work. There's a big difference.

[deleted]

They aren't a charity, but they have positioned themselves in that direction by targeting (and capturing) so many open source projects.

Re: Dear GitHub

#50

Post by jobvandervoort » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #27

shmerl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like there is a great opportunity right now for anyone to make a Github replacement. There is GitLab, which is good and is FOSS in addition.

I'm maintaining a GitLab instance for my team at work and it's been really great for us. I am pretty disappointed that the CE version doesn't include GitLab Pages, though, as that was the one feature I missed most from GitHub and GitLab Enterprise is outside of our budget at this time.

Thanks, good to hear.

As people can use GitLab Pages on GitLab.com for free, we felt the ability to host your own static pages was more interesting for larger teams, hence our decision to bring it to GitLab Enterprise Edition.