Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Libtiff goes offline

madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 121 posts

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#31

Post by themartorana »

Mizza wrote: post #13
noobermin wrote: post #11

For important projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors. What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever thi…

GitHub will rot some day as well. (I think we're already seeing it start to decline.) This is simply a permanent problem. Archive.org and to a lesser extent IPFS are viable solutions for archiving, but _contingency_ plans are I think the missing component here. Pray for the best but prepare for the worst.

I don't think we're seeing a Github decline. Yes they've had some internal strife not all that connected to business, but Google just moved a lot of its OSS there, Microsoft just moved a bunch of stuff there. Git repos take a single command line statement to move, but Github is only slowing if by the force of not having much left to hoover up.

Gitlab et al are growing, and now AWS has its own integrated solution, but I don't see Github going anywhere for a very, very long time. (Barring catastrophic happenings, of course.)

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#32

Post by flukus »

alrs wrote: post #16
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #2

Seems like it's time to host it on a DVCS service so the problem won't be so disruptive again.

Remember sunsite.unc.edu? Sourceforge? Both were the gonna-be-around-forever source code distribution points of their day.

Which is why a DVCS is important, the history goes with every copy.

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#33

Post by lfam »

noobermin wrote: post #11

For important projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors. What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever thi…

There is a new project, Software Heritage [0], that specifically addresses the problem of long-term code availability.

https://www.softwareheritage.org/

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#34

Post by kasey_junk »

flukus wrote: post #32
alrs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember sunsite.unc.edu? Sourceforge? Both were the gonna-be-around-forever source code distribution points of their day.

Which is why a DVCS is important, the history goes with every copy.

A history goes with every copy. You still need a protocol for determining the history.

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#35

Post by mary_fortran »

noobermin wrote: post #11

For important projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors. What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever thi…

I won't use github for my own projects because I don't agree with their politics. (If you're ok with them, good for you. I won't stop you.)

Mandating github for everybody is a Bad Idea.

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#36

Post by sedachv »

alrs wrote: post #16
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #2

Seems like it's time to host it on a DVCS service so the problem won't be so disruptive again.

Remember sunsite.unc.edu? Sourceforge? Both were the gonna-be-around-forever source code distribution points of their day.

> Remember sunsite.unc.edu?

That's a throwback. I looked it up and apparently UNC's Sunsite turned into http://www.ibiblio.org/about/

There are a couple of other Sunsites still up. This one looks like it has not been updated since 1997: http://sunsite.ubc.ca/

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#37

Post by dustinmr »

Seems like we've had organizations that house ideas for the public good for centuries now.

Why not involve libraries in the effort? They could keep a "master" copy and github.com, gitlab.org, SF.com, or whoever else comes next can host development versions.

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#38

Post by _RPM »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #28
noobermin wrote: post #11

For important projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors. What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever thi…

I'm no Stallman, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with how readily everyone is accepting (and encouraging) GitHub as the complete overlord of open-source software. As already pointed out, Sourceforge is a cautionary tale of how these services can go very wrong due to business issues. There's also a much larger philosophical issue with basing the open-source economy on a proprietary platform with no particular intent of o…

Git is decentralized. GitHub provides free hosting for Git repositories. It's not like if GitHub dies tomorrow, you would lose all your source code.

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#39

Post by [deleted] »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #28
noobermin wrote: post #11

For important projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors. What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever thi…

I'm no Stallman, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with how readily everyone is accepting (and encouraging) GitHub as the complete overlord of open-source software. As already pointed out, Sourceforge is a cautionary tale of how these services can go very wrong due to business issues. There's also a much larger philosophical issue with basing the open-source economy on a proprietary platform with no particular intent of o…

[deleted]

Re: Libtiff goes offline

#40

Post by ocschwar »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #28
noobermin wrote: post #11

For important projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors. What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever thi…

I'm no Stallman, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with how readily everyone is accepting (and encouraging) GitHub as the complete overlord of open-source software. As already pointed out, Sourceforge is a cautionary tale of how these services can go very wrong due to business issues. There's also a much larger philosophical issue with basing the open-source economy on a proprietary platform with no particular intent of o…

Github is a lot easier to migrate out of, come that day.
Post reply on HN