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Give up GitHub: The time has come

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Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#281

Post by sreevisakh »

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.

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

The problem isn't that Microsoft can access you code. It's the section D.4 on Github's terms of service [1]. If you are hosting your code on Github, you are essentially giving Microsoft the legal rights to do certain things with your code. That section is broad enough to allow Microsoft to train copilot with your code. It gives them the freedom to disregard the license. On the other hand, it would be a clear violation of the license if they read your code off another hosts and reproduced it verbatim. I don't know whether any legal challenges would stand in a court, but at least you are not giving away the right to do so.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#282

Post by EForEndeavour »

lynndotpy wrote: post #190
spencerchubb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git --> github porn --> pornhub best explanation of github for noobs

I use video --> youtube "Porn" is a genre of video and YouTube is better known than pornhub.

But the whole point of the "porn --> Pornhub" half-joke analogy is that it shares the word "hub" with Github!

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#283

Post by jrm4 »

starik36 wrote: post #247
jrm4 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely a need for moral panic if, like me, you believe that code and industry quality of product is more important than onboarding more people into the profession. I can't think of a worse idea than subconsciously letting the idea "By default, the way we are supposed store and write code is by putting it in the hands of a deeply centralized third party that will exploit you and owes you nothing" just sor…

> I can't think of a worse idea There are lots of worse ideas. Things get abstracted from us over time. 99% of the code in active development today probably lives in a source control repo that's in the cloud. At one point, decades ago, I looked with amusement on devs that couldn't do C/C++. But the reality was that it wasn't really needed anymore for most tasks.

This is different from what you're saying though. This isn't about "what basic knowledge is needed generally." This is about us frog-boiling ourselves into a world where we end up accepting the mentality that code is owned and controlled by the big company/entity in the center. For now it's "convenience," but if it continues it absolutely will turn into a center of power to be policed. "Dangerous code" will be censored, etc.

In other words, yes, Stallman was right.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#284

Post by westoncb »

devwastaken wrote: post #252
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).

Windows 11 is an example of poor code quality. Bugs everywhere, while the same things work on Ubuntu/popos. Past MS engineers have been commenting for a decade on how MS has grown too big, can't manage, and has become a monolith "too big to fail". By nature when engineers are small pieces of a giant machine, they don't do their best work. And those with the experience move on to better things.

My experience has also been that Windows 11 is buggy (haven't been using it for a while because it can't even reliably connect to the internet). But also in my limited experience (just one install on a single machine in ~2020, used for a few months): Ubuntu is just as bad or even worse.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#285

Post by kyrofa »

sreevisakh wrote: post #281
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.

> That's my point-- how? Presumably you're just going to host your FOSS somewhere else that Microsoft can still get it. The problem isn't that Microsoft can access you code. It's the section D.4 on Github's terms of service [1]. If you are hosting your code on Github, you are essentially giving Microsoft the legal rights to do certain things with your code. That section is broad enough to allow Microsoft to train cop…

IANAL, but as long as they block copilot producing verbatim code (which I believe they do now, after some blowback), I can't reason my way past "so you're not okay with a computer learning from you, but you are okay with people learning from you?". Because I am. One of the reasons I open source stuff is because I've learned so much from OTHER open source projects, and want to pay it forward. Limiting my "pay it forward" attitude to humans feels hard to enforce.

Also, nothing prevents Microsoft from completely ignoring licenses and terms of use elsewhere. This product isn't open source: they can keep the list of projects they crawl to themselves, and I don't see any way to stop it.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#286

Post by rmbyrro »

jrm4 wrote: post #199
brundolf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to frame this as specific to GitHub, or even as a thing to wring hands over. New devs - especially those coming from bootcamps (I say this without judgement) - mostly start with practical skills. Industry-standard ways to just get things done. That's how you get a job, that's how you get off the ground. This goes beyond source-control; languages/frameworks, tooling, etc. You enter the territor…

There is absolutely a need for moral panic if, like me, you believe that code and industry quality of product is more important than onboarding more people into the profession. I can't think of a worse idea than subconsciously letting the idea "By default, the way we are supposed store and write code is by putting it in the hands of a deeply centralized third party that will exploit you and owes you nothing" just sor…

> you believe that code and industry quality of product is more important than onboarding more people into the profession

Perhaps a bit of a stretch?

Does the fact that new devs don't know Git fully necessarily mean the quality of code will decrease? I mean, compared with the new devs knowing Git fully...

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#287

Post by swader999 »

indymike wrote: post #158
swader999 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a typical enterprise need a distributed source control system? It makes a lot of sense for open source. Doesn't the uptake in Github which centralizes this distributed system kind of invalidate its main tenant? I haven't been a hundred percent sure the overhead was ever worth it at most other types of paid gigs over the years. Adding complexity without value is a mistake imo. Maybe it's my own fault I haven't se…

> Does a typical enterprise need a distributed source control system? Yes, unless you are working on a tiny number of source files. The value is that you can work on entire copies of a code base at a time instead of single files. Git does a much better job than making lots of local copies of source code, passing around big diff files and is a lot less hassle than older centralized source control systems. > Doesn't th…

I think I've only worked on projects a couple of times in twenty years larger than a handful of devs so your comment really makes sense.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#288

Post by sreevisakh »

gnufied wrote: post #37
rgrmrts wrote: post #18

Does Github give users a toggle to opt-out of being in the copilot training dataset? I feel like that would be a decent compromise for folks not down with their code being used in copilot.

Given Git is distributed (or most source control as a matter of fact today is) - even if you stopped pushing your code to Github, does it stop Copilot from pulling code from sources like gitlab.gnome.org, kernel.org, gitlab.kde.org etc? I think underlying discussion should be about licensing, not about website to which you are pushing open source code to. Because that can be easily worked around.

There is a hidden problem with licensing here. Developers are giving Github the permission to use the code with a different license [1]. The clause sounds broad enough for them to justify training copilot with it. This allows them to disregard the license with which the project is published. The developers don't have the protection of a FOSS license anymore when you host there.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#289

Post by rglullis »

seadan83 wrote: post #226
rglullis wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget Copilot for a second. Do you think it is healthy for the industry to be so dependent on one single service provider, and a closed one on top of that?

There is gitlab, a decent alternative. Bitbucket is a (poor) option too. I think I would quibble with that dependency statement. Github is providing a lot of services, high availability, project tracking, a web api, etc... The money model, as is for many free to FOSS tools is that by getting devs tooo use those tools, they'll carry forward to their professional lives and recommend the adoption by their companies. Tha…

You say BitBucket and Gitlab are alternatives, but at the same time you can not fathom the idea of migrating away from GitHub. So it's safe to say that GitHub has a de facto control of the market, much like Windows controlled the desktop market until early 2000's.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#290

Post by jvanderbot »

sreevisakh wrote: post #232
jvanderbot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tau…

Yes, it was a learning experience.
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