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Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

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Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#51

Post by simula67 »

Arnt wrote: post #16
tbrock wrote: post #3

Why? It’s free for open source, reasonable for enterprise and private use and I think you could build a better one starting from scratch. GitHub’s success is largely due to the network effect and it’s entrenched status as the canonical code repository. Besides libgit2, aka “the secret sauce”, is already open source. What are you waiting for?

Github has had stunning stability. I bet their architecture is nontrivial, that dozens of parts of their code are tied intricately to their architecture, and that opensourcing only the bits that will run on typical AMIs or on debian^Wdevuan would be little more than opensourcing helloworld.rb.

> Github has had stunning stability

Has it really ? I remember many threads here on complaining about Github's up time

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5808496

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14893441

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984775

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#52

Post by simula67 »

derefr wrote: post #23
tbrock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure. Almost every GitHub competitor does those things better: phabricator, gitlab, etc...

Maybe "secret sauce" is the wrong term. People ended up choosing GitHub purely because of network effects, I think. But those features are the "lock-in" preventing individual projects from easily migrating away. If Git repos just "had" wikis, issues, etc. inside them, the lock-in wouldn't be there, so people would be switching between Git hosts all the time—and there wouldn't really be much value in a "git host" at a…

> If Git repos just "had" wikis, issues, etc. inside them, the lock-in wouldn't be there

People clearly never cared about that, since Fossil ( https://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wi... ) has these things and it never caught on

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#53

Post by joelhandwell »

Misunderstandings looks like happened regarding my intention. I'm totally not interested in running my own github instance in other server just like people who signed the open letter dear-github to plead Github to add +1 button in issue which took really long to be recognized as an issue to be implemented. I'm sure if it was open source, somebody implemented the feature and made a pull request.

My intention is to make github.com "Client Side Code" better by let OSS community join into the development. So open sourcing backend and architecture is not my interest and possibly not interest of MS too. I'm not sure if Github is made of micro services, but if it is, certain client side code could be open sourced first and only that could generate great contribution to improve it.

I'm heavy user of Gitlab and disappointed because it is no longer fully open source and some enterprise features would not be welcomed to be implemented by OSS community because it conflicts with Gitlab company revenue. In my ideal world, MS splits Github source into client and backend and open source "Github client + test backend" for community to test if client code works while they make pull request and keep production backend closed. Do you think MS would be interested in this?

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#54

Post by willchen »

joelhandwell wrote: post #53

Misunderstandings looks like happened regarding my intention. I'm totally not interested in running my own github instance in other server just like people who signed the open letter dear-github to plead Github to add +1 button in issue which took really long to be recognized as an issue to be implemented. I'm sure if it was open source, somebody implemented the feature and made a pull request. My intention is to mak…

I think the +1 button was a really nice feature and something they should've done a while ago, but it's hard to draw the line.

If everyone contributes their pet UI feature (e.g. custom theme, use XYZ monospace font), then there will be dozens of features that only 0.01% of users use, but it increases the overall complexity of the product and maintenance burden.

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#55

Post by joelhandwell »

willchen wrote: post #54
joelhandwell wrote: post #53

Misunderstandings looks like happened regarding my intention. I'm totally not interested in running my own github instance in other server just like people who signed the open letter dear-github to plead Github to add +1 button in issue which took really long to be recognized as an issue to be implemented. I'm sure if it was open source, somebody implemented the feature and made a pull request. My intention is to mak…

I think the +1 button was a really nice feature and something they should've done a while ago, but it's hard to draw the line. If everyone contributes their pet UI feature (e.g. custom theme, use XYZ monospace font), then there will be dozens of features that only 0.01% of users use, but it increases the overall complexity of the product and maintenance burden.

+1 button could work as voting system to reduce that maintenance burden too. Semi-democratic method can be introduced to merge most voted and looks good to MS.

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#56

Post by joelhandwell »

Not sure if they will join conversation but just now I invited @satyanadella @jeffmcaffer @natfriedman @defunkt @bkeepers into the Github issue. If you want them comment, cast vote with +1

https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/304#issuec...

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#57

Post by KaiserPro »

simula67 wrote: post #51
Arnt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github has had stunning stability. I bet their architecture is nontrivial, that dozens of parts of their code are tied intricately to their architecture, and that opensourcing only the bits that will run on typical AMIs or on debian^Wdevuan would be little more than opensourcing helloworld.rb.

> Github has had stunning stability Has it really ? I remember many threads here on complaining about Github's up time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5808496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14893441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984775

compared to gitlab, its a paragon of stability

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#58

Post by nemothekid »

joelhandwell wrote: post #55
willchen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the +1 button was a really nice feature and something they should've done a while ago, but it's hard to draw the line. If everyone contributes their pet UI feature (e.g. custom theme, use XYZ monospace font), then there will be dozens of features that only 0.01% of users use, but it increases the overall complexity of the product and maintenance burden.

+1 button could work as voting system to reduce that maintenance burden too. Semi-democratic method can be introduced to merge most voted and looks good to MS.

The only thing that sounds worse than design by committee is design by democracy. Do you know of any successful projects that are managed this way?

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#59

Post by joelhandwell »

nemothekid wrote: post #58
joelhandwell wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 button could work as voting system to reduce that maintenance burden too. Semi-democratic method can be introduced to merge most voted and looks good to MS.

The only thing that sounds worse than design by committee is design by democracy. Do you know of any successful projects that are managed this way?

My words were not clear, I meant and edited to "semi-democratic" way. The voting is one indicator but I also believe strong vision and strategy of leader is the key to success.

And my point was not +1 button but splitting code into open source "Client side + Test-backend" and closed sourced "Production-backend". Backend can be composed of some interface and multiple implementation such as test impl and prod impl. Actually Github could be hosted in Azure and I do not care their backend as I go github.com anyway.

Re: Dear-GitHub: Host Github by itself as an open source project

#60

Post by krisdol »

tills13 wrote: post #40

I _hate_ people using "M$" un-ironically. It wasn't funny 10 years ago when it started and it's still not funny today. How can you take that one comment seriously with that "M$" part in it.

It started much longer than 10 years ago. On slashdot, it was pretty much the only way I've ever seen Microsoft referred to.
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