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Give up GitHub: The time has come

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Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#541

Post by TheRealPomax »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #255
TheRealPomax wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean two of the most successful pieces of commercial software in the history of modern computing? Because as easy as it is to pretend they're terrible: to millions of users and orgs, they simply aren't.

Eh, first mover advantage counts for a lot. It doesn't necessarily mean the software is good. Burning coal for generating energy was very "successful" and had great adoption. It's still a terrible method for the environment, and we can feel free to regard it as negative. In this analogy, Microsoft products would be like generating energy by burning garbage, aka a dumpster fire.

You'll want to pick your analogies carefully, because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way. But let's not strawman: first mover advantage is very real, but it's been literal decades of competition, and plenty of folks moved off of MS products. Hundreds of millions, however, have not. And still voluntarily install them. Because for them, they work the vast majority of the time, and don't cause any more gripes than Apple or Linux do for others.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#544

Post by quadrifoliate »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #541
quadrifoliate wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, first mover advantage counts for a lot. It doesn't necessarily mean the software is good. Burning coal for generating energy was very "successful" and had great adoption. It's still a terrible method for the environment, and we can feel free to regard it as negative. In this analogy, Microsoft products would be like generating energy by burning garbage, aka a dumpster fire.

You'll want to pick your analogies carefully, because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way. But let's not strawman: first mover advantage is very real, but it's been literal decades of competition, and plenty of folks moved off of MS products. Hundreds of millions, however, have not. And still voluntarily install them. Because for them, they work the…

That's the thing though, burning coal works fine as well and doesn't cause any more gripes than hydroelectric or solar. Without voluntary moves to other products, or regulatory changes, it would have taken likely much longer before we stopped doing it. It's not an exact analogy, but there are parallels – the linked article is suggesting voluntarily stepping away from Microsoft code hosting, and others in the thread have suggested regulatory controls.

> because burning garbage for energy when the alternative is a US style landfill is literally better in every way.

Now that you say it, I do remember reading that Sweden burns garbage for energy. I would have thought that the main problem would be arbitrary emissions from the plant, but from the plan of a typical one, those are trapped and/or filtered [1]. I still think that in the US this would be harder, since people are probably prone to throwing more things in the garbage than they should; and don't recycle as much as the Swedes do.

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[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/energy-from-waste-c...

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#545

Post by rv77ax »

seadan83 wrote: post #176

As a leader of a FOSS project that is on github, and migrated off of sourceforge because SVN and email patches were not scaling - I'm a bit confused by this article. Co-pilot has issues, ergo github is going the way of sourceforge, and so now we must abandon github? Do I have that reasoning correct? We need to: - migrate the bug queue - have all links in commit history break - application integration with githib for…

This is called "vendor lock-in" [1]. I believe you have heard it before.

If the article's writer read this, please add this as one of the reason why FOSS need to move from GitHub.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#546

Post by CRConrad »

natefinch wrote: post #527
danaris wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I'm not seeing any language in there that implies exclusivity...

Presumably because you don't have the right to grant github those permissions, only the copyright owner does.

So GitHub should immediately take down (and remove from their Copilot learning model!) all *GPL code uploaded by anyone but the ("primary"?) copyright holder.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#547

Post by CRConrad »

naikrovek wrote: post #320
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.

I want to know what stuff you guys are putting in public GitHub FOSS repos that you don't want replicated in any way... I also want to know why people think their code is so special that no one else could have ever come up with it independently. Each and every opponent of Copilot is the best developer ever, I guess? That said, I don't understand the choice to use GPL for any reason, so maybe I'm not equipped to under…

> Forcing your code to be open forever isn't freedom, it's the omission of freedom.

On the contrary, forcing your code to be open forever is the only way to preserve freedom.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#548

Post by CRConrad »

entropi wrote: post #482
josephcsible wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing your code to be open forever isn't freedom, it's the omission of freedom. This isn't true. As an analogy, consider that forcing people to not own slaves isn't the omission of freedom. See also https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html

Code is not sentient, has no human rights, masters don't create slaves out of caffeine, etc. etc. This analogy does not hold at all in my opinion.

Making source code available and not requiring the same of those who use it is a temporary fleeting freedom that soon turns into lack of freedom.

Like thinking you're ending slavery by freeing all the current slaves but not making it illegal to own, buy, and sell slaves, or capture previously free people into slavery. Guess if you'd have slavery again very soon?

The analogy is about freedom vs lack thereof, not manual labour vs software. And as you see, it works very well.

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#549

Post by CRConrad »

notpushkin wrote: post #489
natefinch wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some interesting reading: https://felixreda.eu/2021/07/github-copilot-is-not-infringin... https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-c...

> “If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” [Kate] Downing, [an IP lawyer specializing in FOSS compliance] says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” This has some interesting…

> > “If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” [Kate] Downing, [an IP lawyer specializing in FOSS compliance] says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.”

So any code uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder renders someone liable to be sued for copyright infringement, AFAICS. The only question is whom it makes liable -- the uploader, GitHub (=Microsoft!), or both?

I can see arguments either way: The uploader is clearly infringing by giving away a right that isn't theirs to give. But so is GitHub / Microsoft, for using a "right" they haven't been properly given. So I'm provisionally leaning towards "both".

> I can't mirror somebody else's (open source) code on GitHub without their explicit agreement.

Who is doing the "mirroring" -- you, in uploading the code, or GitHub / Microsoft in actually hosting it, keeping it available for download from their "mirror"[1] site?

___

[1]: Is that even the correct terminology nowadays, when AIUI for lots of projects GitHub is their primary code repository?

Re: Give up GitHub: The time has come

#550

Post by CRConrad »

natefinch wrote: post #525
Naracion wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you--however, programmers have not become even better paid because society values programmers. They have become better paid because software is a relatively new artefact in human society which has taken the human life by storm, which has made software companies immensely profitable, which meant more companies wanted to create software and attract the people that could help them do it. As software takes a…

AI can code low level stuff. This one function. This small piece of logic. What it can't do is conceive of how to take a bunch of different functions and put them together to produce an actual product. It can't tell you if you should use postges or mongo. Programmers will always be needed, we'll just move up the stack, and we'll produce more value per hour of our work, justifying our high salaries. Compare the visibl…

> AI can code low level stuff. This one function. This small piece of logic. What it can't do is conceive of how to take a bunch of different functions and put them together to produce an actual product.

Thats what everybody in the chess world said: "AI can decide low level stuff. This one move. This small attack on a rook. What it can't do is conceive of how to take a bunch of different tactics and put them together to produce a game of chess."

...Until Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov.

> It can't tell you if you should use postges or mongo.

Yeah, and then came: "It may be able to play chess, but it can't tell you how to play Go."

Look how that went.

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