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RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

lists.gnu.org

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Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#11

Post by microtonal »

Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for free software. They considerably lowered the bar for making a project available. SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. With GitHub, anyone could start a project and no-one would look down on you and tell you that your project is not novel enough or whatever.

GitHub also drastically lowered the bar for contributing to free software. Contributing to a project used to mean subscribing to a mailing list, submitting a patch there, and not much would usually happen. With GitHub you fork, submit a PR, get your PR automatically built and unit tested with CI, the project owner can merge your PR with a single button click. It's fine to prefer an e-mail patch workflow, but GitHub has shown that for most of the population, submitting patches through PRs is a much lower bar.

At this point, GitHub is largely unnecessary. Most of the features have been copied and reimplemented better in FLOSS alternatives such as GitLab, Gitea, Gogs, etc. But since they were one of the first, people will stay due to network effects.

Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#13

Post by microtonal »

xwowsersx wrote: post #2

How does GitHub encourage sloppy licensing? How is GitHub bad for free software?

I think the reasoning is that you can host projects on GitHub without them being FLOSS, since you can just start a repository and add code without ever adding a license. If you do not add a license, it is just copyrighted code, and cannot be redistributed freely.

Some repositories take this to the extreme. There are some closed source software vendors that use GitHub as an issue tracker and collection of Markdown files.

If GitHub wants to permit such uses - it's their party.

Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#14

Post by tsukurimashou »

psv1 wrote: post #9

There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when he makes these extreme generalisations.

I think he really just speaks his mind, I'm not sure he is trying to be edgy or anything, he always had quite radical ideas and positions. I mean people have been calling him a lunatic for years, he has been fighting for free software and warning people about proprietary software and the obvious risks it carries. Despite being proven right about quite a lot he warned about, people views never really changed about him.

Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#16

Post by sergiotapia »

wichert wrote: post #7

There is some awful stuff in that thread, like this gem [1]: After microsoft puchased Github, they encouraged "Codes of Conduct". So now 40k "opensource projects" hace CoC's. Obviously men won't be contributing to said projects, other than the people allready in them. [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-1...

Obviously it's hyperbole - but a lot of people are definitely put off by coc, myself included. It's a wretched, insidious text sneaked in by very bad actors into mainstream open source repositories.

Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#17

Post by ezkl »

tsukurimashou wrote: post #14
psv1 wrote: post #9

There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when he makes these extreme generalisations.

I think he really just speaks his mind, I'm not sure he is trying to be edgy or anything, he always had quite radical ideas and positions. I mean people have been calling him a lunatic for years, he has been fighting for free software and warning people about proprietary software and the obvious risks it carries. Despite being proven right about quite a lot he warned about, people views never really changed about him…

What exactly do you consider radical about his position in this instance?

Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#18

Post by Snetry »

kburman wrote: post #5

Can someone explain the issue with slopy licensing and what is RMS?

While GitHub encourages licensing and even help users with a dedicated menu for it they don't enforce it or help in making licensing decisions which in the eyes or RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) is bad

Re: RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community

#19

Post by Kovah »

psv1 wrote: post #9

There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when he makes these extreme generalisations.

I can second this. While there are a lot of developers out there who respectfully and objectively push free software forward, Stallman looks more like a maniac preacher to me. His extreme views and statements are more annoying for me, than helpful.

If Free Software was a religion like Christianity, Stallman would probably be called an extremist preacher.

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