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GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

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Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#441

Post by flukus »

jolux wrote: post #438
flukus wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said she was responsible for it, but the same line of thinking behind that is what allowed a professional bully to get hired in the first place.

Professional bully? She's a Ruby developer, and a damned good one at that by all accounts. Even if you choose to categorize her as a "bully," it's very evident that "bullying" is a hobby of hers and not related to how well she does her job (programming). If her contributions to community management software are valuable, what does it matter her politics? I reiterate that if you are looking for a place to host your co…

> If her contributions to community management software are valuable, what does it matter her politics?

Because she has chased away other good developers by bullying them and is now in a position of authority.

> I reiterate that if you are looking for a place to host your code where a) nobody has political opinions or b) everybody agrees with you about everything, you will never find it.

What? We had exactly that for decades, code hosts that were completely neutral on politics. I don't care if people disagree with me, as long as it has nothing to do with the projects. In fact, it's what made the open source world special, no one gave a fuck who you were as long as you produced good code. Now it's been invaded by people that think meritocracy is a bad idea.

Your building up quite a straw man there.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#442

Post by cabalamat »

flukus wrote: post #384
wapz wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't follow when github started getting political. What happened?

Opalgate: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 TLDR: Some possibly transphobic person said something on the internet that got traced back to his github account. Some person not connected to the project complains and get's transphobic person removed from github. Github hires complainer to "improve diversity". That and a couple of other things like their code of conduct have indicated that github wants to be the PC…

Do we know if Gitlab has a position on Opalgate? because if Github continues to be fully SJW-converged in a heavy handed and obnoxious way, that may be an obvious place for people to migrate to.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#443

Post by flukus »

jolux wrote: post #434
flukus wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With more bullshit like the diversity hiring spree theyre going on. But the internal politics doesn't worry me as much of the fact that they hired a professional bully that can influence who is allowed to use GitHub.

So you disagree with their internal politics? So what? As meh said in the Opal thread, you can absolutely use a tool made by people whose politics you disagree with. Why are you assuming that GitHub will discriminate against you for your politics? I fully support your choice and in fact I think it's justified, but if you really didn't care about politics, you would keep using GitHub until they kick you off of it for…

> but if you really didn't care about politics, you would keep using GitHub until they kick you off of it for thoughtcrime

I do care about politics, but it is irrelevant to my projects. The time to care about losing access to your source code is before you lose access to it (like backups). Github has shown that there is a signifact risk to hosting my code there so I'm moving off it.

> It honestly just seems that you want a platform whose politics you agree with, and don't want to use a platform whose politics you disagree with.

No, it want a platform that doesn't get involved with politics. Just like I don't care about the politics of any other service I use, as long as it doesn't interfere with my using it.

> Nonetheless, it's still a politics. Politics is unavoidable, it is a consequence of being able to think and disagree.

So you'd be happy to shop somewhere that doesn't allow gay people?

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#444

Post by TeMPOraL »

Trundle wrote: post #363
hyperbovine wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this obsession with the first derivative of value. GitHub already provides loads of value. I understand they need resources to keep the lights on, but they could do that by recouping a tiny fee from their users and most everyone would be happy.

They're not without alternatives already though. In a changing environment to stay still is to fall behind.

And to move is to risk a quick death. I wished existing brands stopped innovating so much. That's e.g. what got Pebble killed.

Doubly so when a brand reaches infrastructure level - like Github, or arguably Dropbox. Just don't screw with the product that's working well. Not breaking things isn't expensive.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#445

Post by rumcajz »

hyperbovine wrote: post #419
Trundle wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not without alternatives already though. In a changing environment to stay still is to fall behind.

That's not as big an issue when there are network effects -- look at Craigslist. Plus, what killer feature is bitbucket going to add at this point to make everyone want to switch? They're practically the same product. All the major innovation happened years ago.

Clickable code view would be nice, e.g:

http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v4.9/kernel/async.c

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#446

Post by xiaoma »

jolux wrote: post #413
flukus wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't claim it's solely responsible, I don't even know if it's significant at all. But I did start moving projects over to gitlab and downgraded my account. The idea that you could lose your source code from wrongthought is worrying.

>The idea that you could lose your source code from wrongthought is worrying. Who is saying this, exactly? The conclusion of that thread was the top maintainer on Opal siding with the originator. If you're worried about him removing you from his projects for your political opinions, don't work with him. This is the argument of the other side in that debate. That this thread happened on GitHub is largely irrelevant. I…

Github does have a record of censoring speech it doesn't like (but which is not illegal). This includes removing github pages and kicking some obnoxious users off their platform while hiring other obnoxious users depending on the politics of those users.

The parent's point is not that they want a source code platform to agree with them in all political issues. They simply don't want a platform that kicks people off for political reasons. I agree with this. Perhaps an analogy will help you understand:

I don't know or care what the political leanings of my local water and utilities companies are. But I will never willingly be a customer of a water company that occasionally shuts off the tap based on a few tweets they disagree with.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#447

Post by bartread »

flukus wrote: post #384
wapz wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't follow when github started getting political. What happened?

Opalgate: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 TLDR: Some possibly transphobic person said something on the internet that got traced back to his github account. Some person not connected to the project complains and get's transphobic person removed from github. Github hires complainer to "improve diversity". That and a couple of other things like their code of conduct have indicated that github wants to be the PC…

Whoa. I didn't know about that either. I'm not going to comment on the content or arguments because, pretty much whatever one says, is going to result in a flamewar.

What I do find unsettling is the fallout, including GitHub's behaviour. I like GitHub as a product, and I use it all the time, but it seems at least moderately prudent to migrate repositories to Gitlab (or somewhere else) and keep them up to date, if only to have a backup other than my local copies if GitHub decided to close my account(1).

Looking at the wider context in the developer community, and across society, I am concerned by the number of people who want to immediately resort to the metaphorical thermonuclear option in the event of a disagreement. I mean this in terms of unyielding aggression, complete disengagement and exclusion.

I'm not specifically talking about gender issues either: Brexit and the US election are other prime examples. There's a complete lack of empathy from all sides in many online debates. It's starting to make me think psychopathy isn't so much a disorder as a spectrum on which we all sit.

On that cheerful thought, back to work...

(1) There's no reason they should that I'm aware of, but who knows what might happen in the future? Old chestnut about all eggs in one basket, etc.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#448

Post by rootlocus »

jolux wrote: post #410
madawan wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they lost /our/ business over it. For us it was a clear signal we're better of just hosting our own damn repositories.

GitHub is a corporation. The Opal open source project is not. The maintainers in that thread who side against the "SJWs" still readily acknowledge that corporations have different obligations to political correctness than open source projects do. Lest we forget that even if you disagree with this, the maintainers also agree that somebody's personal beliefs are not relevant to whether their contributions are acceptabl…

> the maintainers also agree that somebody's personal beliefs are not relevant to whether their contributions are acceptable. So, why should it matter that they hired Coraline, exactly?

I think you argued the wrong way. The maintainer states it's skill not political views that give merit. If github hired Coraline for her political views, then github stated it's political views not skills that give merit.

> Either they have an obligation to be politically correct as a VC-funded startup that needs to ensure its public face is immaculate

Immaculate? There's no black and white here.

> or Coraline is a fantastic Ruby developer who is good at building community management tools and her politics are irrelevant.

Yes but Coraline will never be satisfied with just being a fantastic ruby developer. It was pretty clear from her comments she cares more (or at least as much) about people than software.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#449

Post by pjc50 »

StreamBright wrote: post #409
flukus wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But github has a monetization strategy, they're a paid service. This is more about their headcount expanding and possibly losing paying customers because they decided to get political.

Similar to Twitter. I do not understand why the hell they get political.

The mountain does not go to Mohammed, Mohammed goes to the mountain.

That is, politics is not something you can opt out of. Choosing to do or not do certain things impacts certain individuals and groups. The result is politics. It comes to you. If you operate any system by which humans can communicate, politics is inevitable.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#450

Post by gizmo »

cyphar wrote: post #296
gizmo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible test, really. It presumes that all races/ethnicities are treated equally by society, when they fact they aren't. A test like that only works when you swap like for like, and you don't. For instance, many ethnic jokes (racist jokes) only work because they exploit racial stereotypes. Those jokes cease to work when you swap in a different race. Does that mean the original jokes were not racist? Of cour…

> A test like that only works when you swap like for like, and you don't. Maybe I'm odd for thinking that black people and white people should be treated equally. But sure, let's pretend that racism is only possible to be inflicted on minorities. > Saying "there are too many black guys in the senate" on the other hand is racist No. It would be racist to say "there are too many black guys in the senate -- let's get ri…

1. Equal treatment would be correct in a counterfactual society that is not racist. Acting as though society is not racist, when it fact it is, will just preserve the status quo. Racism needs to be actively counteracted for society to get better.

2. No, just stating that "2 out of a 100 black senators is too many" is racist by itself. To get proportional representation for all minorities the number of white people in congress would -- necessarily -- have to go down. So saying "fewer white people in congress" is not racist because that's just how arithmetic works.

3. I don't know where you got the idea that diversity efforts are about hiring one group of people, but you're mistaken. Diversity efforts are about becoming more inclusive towards different races/ethnicities, religions, LGBTQ folks and so on. White men comprise only 31% of society and business and government should reflect that. I think you're just confused about the purpose of diversity efforts.

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