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An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
101–110 of 113 posts
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#102If you want to thank them, just be a customer. This is unnecessary and seems like it devalues any criticism, especially considering the other recent letter. They are not some sacred thing to be protected.
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The GitHub issue tracker does need to change. Does anyone like any bugtracker? That's a serious question. I've never used one that was a joy to use as a submitter (GH's issue tracker is one of the better ones, as it's so simple) or as a maintainer. As a maintainer I've found them really frustrating in general; JIRA has been one of the better ones for me. Any consensus on 'decent' trackers?
> I've never used [a bug tracker] that was a joy to use as a submitter [...] And it shouldn't be. If it is, people submit stupid bugs. When you get a notification of a bug, and you go read the bug, and try to reproduce it, you'll spend at least about five-ten minutes. The submitter then is obliged to spend at least about that much to report a proper bug report to an open source project where even the licence revokes…
> And it shouldn't be. If it is, people submit stupid bugs.
I strongly disagree. You're conflating easy to enter a bug with a pleasure to use. There's no reason to throw both out.
Also, you're thinking of a public tracker. Where it's used within a team, having it easy and a joy to report issues is hugely beneficial, so they get logged without nagging and moaning.
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The recovery process would be as simple You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. It's like suggesting that it's not so bad if a massive forum shuts down by pointing out how easy it is to install phpbb and run an import script.
> You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. That's a straw man. I said it would take a few months to resolve the logistical issues surrounding migration. Instead of caricaturing my thought process, could you please specify some of the "disastrious" difficulties you and the GP are concerned about?
You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely secondary to that.
If you lose github you lose the community and a user / contributer to say 'apache spark' will not automatically be a user / contributor of all the other open source projects hosted on github. Single sign on for contribution to any open source project and a consistent user interface are also big pluses (but those are technical), and would be hard to achieve as well.
So in my opinion github (and several other services) are now really too big to fail.
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they've managed to work their way into almost being beyond reproach Yep. It's annoying as hell when I tell someone I use Bitbucket and they try to get me to change to Github. And I'm not talking about for FOSS repos, they want me to convert my free Bitbucket repos to paid Github repos, because Github. > A (by all indications), very profitable product that wants to make money off you. That is its goal and purpose in…
Also remember about Sourceforge. I guess some people could have been in the mood to write gratitude letters to them at some point in the past. (Does not mean that GitHub is "bad" or be useful for some free software projects right now, just that from where I am I don't think there should be a special reason to thank such a company in the name of "Open Source" -- at least also thank Linus Torvalds to begin with!...)
There is PR to thank Linus Torvalds. I hope they merge it https://github.com/thank-you-github/thank-you-github/pull/19...
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#106Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. That's a straw man. I said it would take a few months to resolve the logistical issues surrounding migration. Instead of caricaturing my thought process, could you please specify some of the "disastrious" difficulties you and the GP are concerned about?
You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely se…
Thank you for the substantive reply. I love github and I do appreciate the macro level of community it provides. If no other community platform sprung up it's demise would certainly be a regression for open source. In that sense, I agree with what your saying.
The last line is where we fundamentally disagree, but that's ok. I think open source would be able to recover from the death of github without much long-term difficulty. It would be a painful transition, like all transitions, but I don't think it would be an overwhelming problem or disaster. Maybe I'm just optimistic.
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely se…
Thank you for the substantive reply. I love github and I do appreciate the macro level of community it provides. If no other community platform sprung up it's demise would certainly be a regression for open source. In that sense, I agree with what your saying. The last line is where we fundamentally disagree, but that's ok. I think open source would be able to recover from the death of github without much long-term d…
Let's hope we won't find out and that if we do find out that you're right and I'm wrong.
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. That's a straw man. I said it would take a few months to resolve the logistical issues surrounding migration. Instead of caricaturing my thought process, could you please specify some of the "disastrious" difficulties you and the GP are concerned about?
You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely se…
The "community" model of github is like that of an online strategy game, it's based on bragging about numbers. Stars, commits, followers. It is the illness that all modern things have... So, while I hold that a demise of Github would have a huge impact on the community, I am not holding that such impact would end up bad for it. In fact, if the communities switched away from such technology, it'd be better for the open source. We'd focus better on developing our projects and wouldn't be distracted by the stargazing etc.
Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely se…
The "community" model of github is like that of an online strategy game, it's based on bragging about numbers. Stars, commits, followers. It is the illness that all modern things have... So, while I hold that a demise of Github would have a huge impact on the community, I am not holding that such impact would end up bad for it. In fact, if the communities switched away from such technology, it'd be better for the ope…
> The "community" model of github is like that of an online strategy game, it's based on bragging about numbers. Stars, commits, followers.
I don't care about any of those things and I think that that goes for the majority of contributors to github open source projects. What does matter is the number of contributors to a project and how involved they are, that's a useful metric.