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Give up GitHub: The time has come

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Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#231

Post by buchoo »

alexklarjr wrote: post #209
josephcsible wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons that Windows is awful have nothing to do with code quality. Windows is awful because of intentional choices Microsoft made (e.g., bloatware that gets reinstalled with every update, mandatory Microsoft accounts, and mandatory telemetry).

Their code were awful about 30 years before that.

Was it? I recall the kuro5hin analysis of the leaked Windows 2000 source code[0] that said:

>there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20040401115821/http://www.kuro5h...

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#232

Post by sreevisakh »

jvanderbot wrote: post #162
digitallyfree wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We had an intern push code that shall never be released publicly to a public repository after we asked him to "push it to our gitlab server". He just assumed there was only one gitlab server and it was the public one, I guess. That was a bit shocking to me. I started with local VCS only all the way up through school and work.

You should assume that developers, especially interns know nothing about any technology until they had a thorough introduction. And you should anticipate any confusion they may have in the process.

Once, I had to introduce most of the employees of a company to git and git hosting. They were trained from scratch to use git reasonably on the first day. Use of code hosts were taught only on the second day. They were taught hands-on on our internal host and on public server. None of them had any confusion over differences among git and different git hosts. While they did make some mistakes afterwards, none of those were based on total misconceptions.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#233

Post by kyrofa »

prohobo wrote: post #229
kyrofa wrote: post #223

Look, I agree that copilot feels slimy. However, honest question: if you're maintaining an open source project, in most cases I'd say your source is publicly available somewhere. What realistically prevents github from doing exactly what it did with code that isn't even hosted on it? What, with regards to copilot, is changed by moving one's code off of github to some other public site?

Rate limiting Microsoft's ability to exploit FOSS, and moving to platforms that won't/can't implement abusive practices that cause these kinds of mass exoduses in the first place. I think if Microsoft was figuratively and literally rate limited from accessing such a huge swath of open source code, they might not have been the ones to build something like Copilot and we may have been better off for it. A different, mo…

> Rate limiting Microsoft's ability to exploit FOSS [...].

That's my point-- how? Presumably you're just going to host your FOSS somewhere else that Microsoft can still get it.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#234

Post by jlkuester7 »

wilde wrote: post #156
josephcsible wrote: post #122

> If it is, as you claim, permissible to train the model (and allow users to generate code based on that model) on any code whatsoever and not be bound by any licensing terms, why did you choose to only train Copilot's model on FOSS? For example, why are your Microsoft Windows and Office codebases not in your training set? This is my favorite question about Copilot ever.

The boring answer is probably something along the lines of “copilot was trained by employees of OpenAI who aren’t technically MS employees”. When I worked at MS you had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get access to code from other orgs. I can’t imagine what BS you’d need to do to give access to a vendor.

> you had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get access to code from other orgs

This may be the dumbest move from M$ that I have read on this thread! Sure, companies need to protect their private IP, but this really feels like creating unnecessary friction for no good reason...

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#235

Post by prohobo »

kyrofa wrote: post #233
prohobo wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rate limiting Microsoft's ability to exploit FOSS, and moving to platforms that won't/can't implement abusive practices that cause these kinds of mass exoduses in the first place. I think if Microsoft was figuratively and literally rate limited from accessing such a huge swath of open source code, they might not have been the ones to build something like Copilot and we may have been better off for it. A different, mo…

> Rate limiting Microsoft's ability to exploit FOSS [...]. That's my point-- how? Presumably you're just going to host your FOSS somewhere else that Microsoft can still get it.

The new platform itself could literally rate limit requests to download source code. For example: 100 repos per day.

Or, the platform could make it part of their terms of use that licenses must be respected even for machine learning. It could be enough of a barrier to dissuade them.

Would something like that stop Microsoft? Maybe, corporations tend to look for low hanging fruit for stuff like this.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#236

Post by kyrofa »

prohobo wrote: post #235
kyrofa wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rate limiting Microsoft's ability to exploit FOSS [...]. That's my point-- how? Presumably you're just going to host your FOSS somewhere else that Microsoft can still get it.

The new platform itself could literally rate limit requests to download source code. For example: 100 repos per day. Or, the platform could make it part of their terms of use that licenses must be respected even for machine learning. It could be enough of a barrier to dissuade them. Would something like that stop Microsoft? Maybe, corporations tend to look for low hanging fruit for stuff like this.

I'm afraid that feels like wishful thinking more than anything.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#237

Post by deadbunny »

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 was a big fan of GitLab until the recent changes they've made on regards to their free tier and the hoops required to qualify for their Open Source plans.

I'm part of a small FOSS project with about 20 contributors but the changes mean we can now only have 5 max in the Project without paying for licenses or moving the Project to its own namespace and going through an application process for GitLab Ultimate for Open Source (or whatever it's called) which needs to be resubmitted yearly.

I fully understand they are not required to provide services for free but this follows the CI runner allowance reductions - fairly - recently (which is understandable, compute costs money) doesn't give me much confidence for hosting smaller to medium FOSS projects without having to jump further hoops while shouting about how open source they are whittling down their offerings to the bone.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#238

Post by roywashere »

wiz21c wrote: post #118
UglyToad wrote: post #110

Where does this end? You write a license that your GPL code can only be re-hosted on non-GitHub hosts? git still exists, if I'm unhappy with GitHub I can just add a new origin (sourcehut, gitea, gitlab, self-hosting, etc) and push there. But I'm perfectly happy with GitHub and I'm fine if their ML thingy makes money off my code, I get free actions runners, a nice UI, pull-requests, etc, into the bargain, not bad. Lik…

> But I'm perfectly happy with GitHub and I'm fine if their ML thingy makes money off my code, I get free actions runners, a nice UI, pull-requests, etc, into the bargain, not bad. As an indivdual you can certainly think so. But as a community we must balance how much advantages do we get from GitHub versus how much advantages it gets from us. Considering that GitHub will probably make millions with copilot, then it…

But even if you move away from GitHub it would be possible for them to train their models on your self-hosted open source code

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#239

Post by prohobo »

kyrofa wrote: post #236
prohobo wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new platform itself could literally rate limit requests to download source code. For example: 100 repos per day. Or, the platform could make it part of their terms of use that licenses must be respected even for machine learning. It could be enough of a barrier to dissuade them. Would something like that stop Microsoft? Maybe, corporations tend to look for low hanging fruit for stuff like this.

I'm afraid that feels like wishful thinking more than anything.

It simply takes the advantage away from Microsoft. That's not wishful thinking, that's strategy.

Small changes in a situation like this can make a big difference in outcome.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#240

Post by BeetleB »

prepend wrote: post #183
brundolf wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as a senior dev with 8+ years of experience working with git: git is nightmarishly complex. Highly stateful, insanely large CLI surface, huge amounts of terminology/concepts relative to the complexity of what you're actually trying to do with it. I've learned to navigate its waters over the years, fully appreciate the difference between git and GitHub, etc etc, and I don't blame anybody for being scared aw…

Git is super complex, yet it can be used successfully with just a few commands. I blame developers and even most users for being too scared to use it. I think it’s perfectly normal to be scared of it while using it. I think all users of technology should have some basic competence. Like every human should be able to be a basic Unix user, every human is capable of using git. And every developer should be capable.

Original commenter here.

Every one should be able to use Git. However, Git really isn't the best tool for everyone - or even most developers.

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