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

GitHub was down

status.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 253 posts

Re: GitHub was down

#201

Post by manigandham »

tambourine_man wrote: post #173
tambourine_man wrote: post #82

Insert remark on why we use a centralized service for a distributed source control system, etc. No one seems to care, unfortunately

Lots of answers so I'll try to address them all here. It was a rethorical question. We know what GitHub offers. I'm not a fan of its UI, particularly on mobile, but that's beside the point. The point is, why we failed, once more, to have a distributed solution, even when the underlying tech assumes it. Email was the last widely successful distributed medium. And it's dying, unfortunately. Of course centralized servic…

We didnt fail, nobody built it (probably from lack of demand).

Re: GitHub was down

#202

Post by voltagex_ »

SQLite wrote: post #128
hinkley wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep meaning to dig into Fossil (SQLite's VCS/Project Management system), but I have no faith I could convince a team to use it. Another model to look at is Trac, which had pretty extensive integration with SVN and integrated (ie, cross-linked) issue tracking and wiki, and stored all the data and change history in a svn repository.

> I keep meaning to dig into Fossil, but I have no faith I could convince a team to use it. Developer or Fossil and SQLite here: I agree. In my experience, you'd have better luck convincing the team to switch from vi to emacs. For all its many and well-documented faults, the Git/GitHub paradigm is what people want to use because it is what they are familiar with. All the same, I intend to keep right on using Fossil,…

This'd be a great idea, but I don't have the skillset.

Re: GitHub was down

#203

Post by jasode »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #199
manigandham wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backup is one thing, choosing to run a crappy manual system just in case a vendor goes down is entirely different.

It doesn't have to be a "crappy manual system" - I'm simply suggesting that given that git itself is a damned good distributed versioning database for arbitrary content, then we might as well also use it for distributed issue-tracking. A simple offline-mode browser-based editor that lives in a single HTML file within the repo would provide a nice GUI on top. Hmm, I think I might be on to something... anyone want to s…

>git itself is a damned good distributed versioning database for arbitrary content, then we might as well also use it for distributed issue-tracking.

For what it's worth, it's interesting to see that the Fossil distributed SCM includes an issue tracker but they made a deliberate architecture decision to not propagate the tickets data.[1] They had a chance to make your "distributed-issues-tracking" idea a 1st-class concept in Fossil but decided against it.

Also, the issues/tickets is just one example feature. Github will continue to evolve to add more and more sophisticatted SDL/ALM (application lifecycle management) like JIRA and Microsoft Team Foundation Server. Those features are not easy to implement in a peer-2-peer SCM with practical usability.

[1] https://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/qandc.wiki

Re: GitHub was down

#204

Post by _Marak_ »

vertex-four wrote: post #194
_Marak_ wrote: post #166

If anyone is interested, I've been working with a git host that is actually distributed across a p2p network using SSB. see: https://github.com/clehner/git-ssb https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro It's been working fairly well so far. We are using git-ssb to manage a few projects instead of putting them into Github.

Is there, at least theoretically, a way to prevent other people from pushing to my repo? That seems like it would suck re griefing for any project that might become even mildly politically sensitive for whatever reason.

Everything is key based, so only key holders push to your repo. It's all based on the SSB protocol.

I'd suggest reading https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro to get an idea.

Re: GitHub was down

#205

Post by vertex-four »

_Marak_ wrote: post #204
vertex-four wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there, at least theoretically, a way to prevent other people from pushing to my repo? That seems like it would suck re griefing for any project that might become even mildly politically sensitive for whatever reason.

Everything is key based, so only key holders push to your repo. It's all based on the SSB protocol. I'd suggest reading https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro to get an idea.

That states: "git-ssb's permissionless model has an interesting consequence: anybody can push to anybody else's git repository." The guide doesn't show any key-sharing in order to do that. Are you saying that's incorrect?

Re: GitHub was down

#206

Post by syshum »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #153
syshum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they want you to Rely on Github... if they could find away to make Git only work with Github they would in a heart bet. Github is not a open source company, it is not really even a supporter of free software IMO they are a danger to free software for this very reason. They are following the old school Microsoft model of Embrace and Extend... I am waiting to see if they can extinguish,

Contentless, illogical mince. GitHub clearly contributes a fair bit to open source - not only their own projects, but the free hosting for open source projects. You have no basis for this accusation, and frankly we are all stupider for having read it.

Well I made 2 claims..

1 Claim was that Github is not a open source company, and they are not. Their core business is not open source, yes they have some side projects that are, but so does MS, I do not believe anyone is going to say MS is a "open source company"

the second claim I made is they are a threat to free software, I used free software here for a reason, free software and open source are different.

GitHub may support some Open Source things, they do NOT support free software.

Tom Preston-Werners infamous post on open sourcing only some things (http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everyth...) Is a key piece of evidence to prove this.

Git hubs general actions over the years show they do not support free software at all, and have limited support for Open Source software.

They are classic Free Software leaches, using and abusing free software not for the ethical reasons around free software but to advance their profit center

See I am support free software for ethical reasons, not monetary reasons.

That is with out even getting into the MASSIVE issue that is having all of these open source projects on a SINGLE platform. Unless you think github is "too big to fail" which I can assure you it is not

Re: GitHub was down

#207

Post by syshum »

heartbreak wrote: post #72
syshum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they want you to Rely on Github... if they could find away to make Git only work with Github they would in a heart bet. Github is not a open source company, it is not really even a supporter of free software IMO they are a danger to free software for this very reason. They are following the old school Microsoft model of Embrace and Extend... I am waiting to see if they can extinguish,

What? Github employs members of the Rails core team including Aaron Patterson. They literally pay for open source software development. I'm sure they employ direct maintainers/contributors to other open source projects as well.

And you believe that makes them an "Open Source Company"

To me in order to be a Open Source company your primary product must itself be Open Source.

RedHat as an example... RHEL is open source

GitLab.. GitLab is open source

These are open source companies

Hiring a few devs for work on some side projects that are open source does not make one an Open Source Company

If they open GitHub Core then they can claim to be a open source company

Re: GitHub was down

#208

Post by syshum »

chucksmash wrote: post #195
johannes1234321 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if we "heard about GitHub vs. Gitlab" more people outside HN might hear about GitLab. Might be more dangerous, than the chances of a win shutting GitLab down.

So you fault them for being evil geniuses by not acting evilly?

More likely they got sound legal advice and realized they could not actually win in court, or their investors killed that idea as a waste of money

You do not hear about many VC funded startups initiating lawsuits for a reason. That is the realm of established companies.

Re: GitHub was down

#209

Post by lettergram »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #54
kaikai wrote: post #27

I would love to see a chart of traffic to other sites when GitHub goes down. My bet is that HackerNews and Twitter both get significant spikes from all those bored developers.

> bored developers Bored? Git's a distributed version control system, so no excuses. Get back to work! But in all seriousness I kind of wish GitHub provided a way to mirror things like issues and PRs so you never have to be fully reliant on one service. Not being able to read these really does make it impossible to get work done offline.

"git on the block chain"

Re: GitHub was down

#210

Post by syshum »

pavement wrote: post #88
syshum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they want you to Rely on Github... if they could find away to make Git only work with Github they would in a heart bet. Github is not a open source company, it is not really even a supporter of free software IMO they are a danger to free software for this very reason. They are following the old school Microsoft model of Embrace and Extend... I am waiting to see if they can extinguish,

Just because it's A common motivation and strategy, doesn't mean it's THEIR motivation and strategy. A more likely strategy/motivation is that the product is you . AKA: farming the users. Create a desirable pasture, and the animals farm themselves.

It is partly the MS EEE model and partly the Adobe model, where they give away free or low cost services to get indivuals hooked, often at young age, then when they are employed at larger firms they push the firms to adopt that software internally.

Get a bunch of Open Source Developers to do your marketing at their "real jobs" so they can sell the Enterprise Version.

Since GitHub is a private company it is Unknown (at least I can not find the info) if they are profitable or not, or what their revenue numbers even are so it is unclear if that is a successful plan or not.

GitHub could very well run into the same problems as SoundCloud.

Post reply on HN