TL;DR: The rest of the article is vacuous, the list of other reasons is a link of bothersome but not compelling other reasons. In sum, it's not a compelling argument to give up github. I disagree that the correct course of action based on the arguments presented would be to boycott Github rather than take any of course of action that would lobby them to change.
If this is just fucking wrong, I wonder about the implication. Would you say, I am just fucking right? I would be careful whenever having any such conviction. If I were already a hater of github, this article would have resonated with me a lot more. Perhaps there is some kool-aid drinking happening here? Maybe not and everything is totally reason to abandon Github as a hosting platform.
> you would have noticed that they also listed several other issues which far predate Copilot.
I don't quite see that list. I do see this article as quite focused on co-pilot. Though, I do see this:
> There are so many good reasons to give up on GitHub, and we list the major ones on our Give Up On GitHub site. We were already considering this action ourselves for some time, but last week's event showed that this action is overdue.
Which links to this https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ (I'll point out here, linking to a list is different from listing the other points, so.. 'fucking right?')
Re-capping that list from sfconservancy:
(1) co-pilot
(2) contracts with ice
(3) githubs hosting code itself is not FOSS
(4) no self-hosting with github code options (again, github hosting is itself not FOSS)
(5) work to discredit copyleft
(6) wholly owned by MSFT
In this article, it essentially says that co-pilot was the last straw, and a decisively large one at that. So my response is still, this is the last straw where we need to abandon github?
If you are fully vested in the other reasons, then I think that this article would be preaching to the choir.
For me, points 1-6 are bothersome, but still just 2s and 4s on the 1-10 scale of fire alarms. My personal take on this list:
(1) co-pilot: seems problematic, perhaps github can fix it. Maybe a better solution is to lobby github first before doing a cancel campaign
(2) ice contracts: this is bothersome; but I can see how it could be a bit complicated given ownership by MSFT and the complexity of government contracts. It is bothersome though.
(3) closed source: I don't put a lot of weight to this criticism. Just because I can't run Githubs code for myself.. I mostly shrug. Yes, I'd prefer for it to be open source too, but I respect there are various for-profit models out there (and holy-hell I wish I was payed market-rate for FOSS work).
(4) no self-hosting option: Seems like the same point as (3)
(5) CEO leadership discrediting copyleft: bothersome, but without concrete examples, for me it is not fully substantive and just bothersome (but not major, like, wow, they are shutting down FOSS projects, or aiding in getting them taken down by ginning up BS charges, etc..). So, yes, the CEOs of Github were at times discouraging to copyleft. Are they evil incarnate here where those bad actors needs to spurn everything Github? Did the CEOs of Github personally oversee any FOSS projects being sued, or made into non-FOSS? Did they personally increase the cost on FOSS?
(6) owned by MSFT: big companies are big companies and they are really hard to avoid completely... MSFT has had a big culture shift in the last 5, 10 and 15 years. It's not the same company it once was. That is not to say this is not a concern. Though, until I have specifics around how/why I thnk MSFT has become actively evil, this remains just a notable concern.
> If you had actually read the whole article[1]
Apologies for seeming like I only commented on the first paragraph. A lot of the article seems vacuous to me and generally trying to gin up a mountain out of what might just be a gnarly hill.