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Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#21

Post by chrisfosterelli »

nly wrote: post #11
tux3 wrote: post #7

I think this is under the assumption of "employee has a private fork of the company repo, then leaves, employee should not keep the fork" So when "removed as a collaborator" which apparently includes the original being deleted, you lose access to the main repo and all forks, even yours. As if leaving a company.

What's the point? You can always clone locally and push to a new repo without forking on GitHub. Repos will be unlinked and history will be intact.

It's for the same reason that you don't leave ex-employees with access to other intellectual property. Just because they could make their own copies during their tenure doesn't mean you shouldn't try to reduce your exposure.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#22

Post by baobabKoodaa »

rezonant wrote: post #15

I have to assume that the original repository was private when you forked it. If it was public, and then made private, then this should not happen. If the original code was "open source", then why exactly was it in a private repository? Putting "MIT licensed open source" into a private repository is not publishing that source code for the world to use. It sounds like nothing weird happened here other than this compan…

> If the original code was "open source", then why exactly was it in a private repository?

It's been too many years to remember the exact reasons, but this was not the only repo in the project. This was the "working directory" that had all kinds of random stuff that a data science project might accrue over time. Later in the project we published 3 repos which were more "cleaned up" to be potentially useful to outsiders (I use scare quotes around "cleaned up" because the codebases are still a mess, sorry).

Anyway, 3 of the 4 repos appear to still be public:

https://github.com/futurice/health-visualizations https://github.com/futurice/health-visualizations-front https://github.com/futurice/laaketutka-prereqs

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#23

Post by baobabKoodaa »

sbierwagen wrote: post #5

Is futurice/how-to-get-healthy a public repo? It's not visible on https://github.com/orgs/futurice/repositories If you fork a private repo and they remove you from the collaborators list, it's reasonable that your fork would be removed.

Well, it's not reasonable to me, but we'll just have to respectfully disagree on this.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#24

Post by agolio »

fragmede wrote: post #12
csteinbe wrote: post #6

This is documented at: https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...

“But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Bew…

To clarify the appropriateness of this analogy:

This is unexpected behaviour from Github here which may (and has, by the anecdote of OP) cause permanent data loss. Documentation is not good enough, as users should not have been expected to have read the entire documentation.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#25

Post by darekkay »

rezonant wrote: post #19
darekkay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I usually don't use the official "fork" feature, but clone and push the repository manually instead. I would like to keep the fork network connection on Github, but I don't want to see my fork deleted because of an error, malice or simply lack of knowledge.

It will only be deleted if the repo you fork from is a private repository. The documentation [1] covers the other scenarios, in all of which you keep your copy of the code (including when the public repository is made private later). [1] https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...

TIL, thanks! I probably confused this with the GitHub takedowns, when forks are removed as well (as it happened to the youtube-dl repo). I could imagine my manual clone not withstanding such takedown either, though.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#26

Post by charcircuit »

tux3 wrote: post #7

I think this is under the assumption of "employee has a private fork of the company repo, then leaves, employee should not keep the fork" So when "removed as a collaborator" which apparently includes the original being deleted, you lose access to the main repo and all forks, even yours. As if leaving a company.

Github knows the license of projects. It knows if you forked an open source project.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#27

Post by IncRnd »

> Your private repository baobabKoodaa/laaketutka-scripts (forked from futurice/how-to-get-healthy) has been deleted because you are no longer a collaborator on futurice/how-to-get-healthy.

> and now it's gone... why?

Because it was a private not a public repo.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#28

Post by rezonant »

darekkay wrote: post #25
rezonant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will only be deleted if the repo you fork from is a private repository. The documentation [1] covers the other scenarios, in all of which you keep your copy of the code (including when the public repository is made private later). [1] https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...

TIL, thanks! I probably confused this with the GitHub takedowns, when forks are removed as well (as it happened to the youtube-dl repo). I could imagine my manual clone not withstanding such takedown either, though.

Yeah for cases like that, keep a local copy, thankfully many people did

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#29

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #18
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #13

I have a number of git repos that the original developers deleted - because I sync’d them to a usb stick with gitea. I think that is how you have to do it - never entrust a service, especially a free one, with your only copy of anything you value. If the YouTube algorithm nukes your account and all your videos, you should be ready to upload them to a new account. Same with anything else digital. My current is standar…

> If the YouTube algorithm nukes your account and all your videos, you should be ready to upload them to a new account. Same with anything else digital. Do you know if this is a common occurrence? Also, I'm only a YouTube viewer and am not familiar with all the creator tools, problems, communities, etc. But would a creator really re-upload all their back-catalog if deleted? Just to try to get back to views and things…

I remember someone posting an agonized screed, some time ago, about YT deleting their channel, and all the videos.

Apparently, they had not kept the source/rendered originals of the videos, so it actually clobbered their business.

I am a scarred, limping old coot, and have learned [the hard way] that backups are goooood.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#30

Post by IncRnd »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #23
sbierwagen wrote: post #5

Is futurice/how-to-get-healthy a public repo? It's not visible on https://github.com/orgs/futurice/repositories If you fork a private repo and they remove you from the collaborators list, it's reasonable that your fork would be removed.

Well, it's not reasonable to me, but we'll just have to respectfully disagree on this.

It probably seems more reasonable to the people who own the repo.
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