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Give up GitHub: The time has come

sfconservancy.org

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Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#51

Post by cybrox »

parentheses wrote: post #43

GitHub is a business and currently provides free storage and a pretty nice interface to it. It’s easy to say “our rights are being stripped away” but the view that businesses should operate like non profits or government services with the common good in mind is ludicrous!

These are the immediate "products" GitHub provides, however, I would argue it provides a lot more.

GitHub provides a place for people to easily collaborate on FOSS software. It has helped millions of people getting into software development or into their first FOSS project by lowering the barrier of entry significantly.

Can you imagine how many people would start contributing to FOSS early in their career if they had to deal with mailing lists, patch sending, multiple git remotes, rebasing, etc. all at once just to start providing a small contribution? - Probably not as many.

I don't support everything GitHub does and I do see CodePilot as problematic but the article opens with "Those who forget history often inadvertently repeat it.". - You know what has screwed us over a lot in recent history? Cancelling something/someone without thinking it through first. Oh the irony.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#52

Post by cybrox »

NoGravitas wrote: post #47

I publish my public FOSS work on a self-hosted Gitea. I don't allow account creation, and people can send me pull requests by email. That said, I think one thing (other than interface and brand loyalty) that keeps FOSS projects on GitHub is network effects. You can reasonably expect to search it and find the projects you're looking for, and your account lets you use the issue tracker and pull requests on other projec…

> people can send me pull requests by email.

Great, you already lost half of them.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#53

Post by skeeter2020 »

digitallyfree wrote: post #33
travisgriggs wrote: post #5

> For its part, Git was designed specifically to make software development distributed without a centralized site. Just yesterday I had to explain the basic premise/history of Git to a young intern. I had asked him if he was using Git to manage his little pet project the company gave him to play with. “No”, he replied, he didn’t know what the company’s policy was to posting code in public on GitHub. As I explained to…

I actually (almost) got in trouble once for this because people thought I was posting code publicly on Github when I was merely creating a local repository in my home directory. I had to explain what Git was and how it was not Github.

The same thing happens with people who should know better that google or even the www is not "the internet"

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#54

Post by joshstrange »

pabs3 wrote: post #32
johnnypangs wrote: post #15

What are peoples opinions on gitlab? It wasn’t mentioned in this article, I’m wondering if it was a willful omission.

GitLab is mentioned on the advocacy page https://giveupgithub.org/ . GitLab is an open-core business, which means there is a permissively licensed FOSS version and a proprietary version. The gitlab.com website uses the proprietary version. In addition many features of GitLab don't work at all or work much less well if you turn off JavaScript. They have swayed a lot of ostensibly FOSS, copyleft-leaning and privacy/sec…

> In addition many features of GitLab don't work at all or work much less well if you turn off JavaScript.

I feel like the venn diagram of people who complain about JS being required and of people who have never had to code up a web /app/ that users expect rich interactions without a page-reload is just a circle.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#56

Post by prepend »

BeetleB wrote: post #46
travisgriggs wrote: post #5

> For its part, Git was designed specifically to make software development distributed without a centralized site. Just yesterday I had to explain the basic premise/history of Git to a young intern. I had asked him if he was using Git to manage his little pet project the company gave him to play with. “No”, he replied, he didn’t know what the company’s policy was to posting code in public on GitHub. As I explained to…

2 years ago, while interviewing internally, I asked the team what VC they use. It was Team Foundation's proprietary VC (and not a DVCS). I mentioned to them that even MS recommends Git for Team Foundation's usage. "Well of course, MS invented Git!" Wrong on so many levels: 1. Conflating Github with Git. 2. They bought it, not invented/founded it. 3. Most importantly, MS's recommendation to use Git for TF existed long…

> refusal to use Git[1] due to its complexity

I kind of like this friction. If a software developer finds git too complex, that’s an important signal that I should minimize my exposure to them. I’d never work in a team that dumb, and I wouldn’t want any dependencies on their code.

Of course there are other reasons not to use git, but complexity is not one.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#57

Post by earljman »

no_wizard wrote: post #19

You can either try and sway people purely philosophically as the software freedom conservancy is trying to do here, but I think ultimately in today's world, you need more, most of the time, you need to show that: - what you opposed negatively affects your target audience in real ways that matter, for their career, livelihood, or some other means - Show that continuing to be apart of an old model will be damaging in t…

> sway people purely philosophically

yeah these same types of purely philosophical arguments have led me to move away from services like DropBox and Google Drive at my own expense. Lost too many hours trying to find the “we do things the right way” alternative—when it comes down to it, if it works well and keeps the friction low, mf’s can have their bag

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#58

Post by cybrox »

johnnypangs wrote: post #15

What are peoples opinions on gitlab? It wasn’t mentioned in this article, I’m wondering if it was a willful omission.

I do really like GitLab, I use it at work daily.

But they manage to change and sometimes break the UI in every update and it just gets more and more bloated every day. - At least that's what it feels like.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#59

Post by [deleted] »

cybrox wrote: post #52
NoGravitas wrote: post #47

I publish my public FOSS work on a self-hosted Gitea. I don't allow account creation, and people can send me pull requests by email. That said, I think one thing (other than interface and brand loyalty) that keeps FOSS projects on GitHub is network effects. You can reasonably expect to search it and find the projects you're looking for, and your account lets you use the issue tracker and pull requests on other projec…

> people can send me pull requests by email. Great, you already lost half of them.

[deleted]

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#60

Post by cybrox »

prepend wrote: post #56
BeetleB wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 years ago, while interviewing internally, I asked the team what VC they use. It was Team Foundation's proprietary VC (and not a DVCS). I mentioned to them that even MS recommends Git for Team Foundation's usage. "Well of course, MS invented Git!" Wrong on so many levels: 1. Conflating Github with Git. 2. They bought it, not invented/founded it. 3. Most importantly, MS's recommendation to use Git for TF existed long…

> refusal to use Git[1] due to its complexity I kind of like this friction. If a software developer finds git too complex, that’s an important signal that I should minimize my exposure to them. I’d never work in a team that dumb, and I wouldn’t want any dependencies on their code. Of course there are other reasons not to use git, but complexity is not one.

Working with git can become extremely complex if your workflow is bad.

Not git's fault, though.

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