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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

#241

Post by vetrom »

evouga wrote: post #107
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.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. My private forks are * mine* and I most certainly do not want GitHub guessing at whether and when to permanently delete them without my consent. Companies of course have the right to manage access to their proprietary source code, for example by only giving access to corporate accounts under their control and reclaiming those accounts when an employee leaves.

Any (quite relevant actually) discussion of SCM policy and management aside, you've got to remember: There is no 'cloud', it's just somebody else's computer.

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

#242

Post by baobabKoodaa »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #126
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the private repo had the MIT license in it, then it was licensed with the MIT license, regardless of how widely or publicly the repo was distributed.

That's not true. I can go put the MIT license text in every folder on my computer and it won't actually apply the license to anything.

Ok, it's not true in the general case, but it's true in this specific case. The project was intended to be an open source project from the beginning; we were intending to open source everything.

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

#244

Post by funcDropShadow »

irjustin wrote: post #185
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.

It really sounds like the forking and access should be "license aware" which sounds like an absolute nightmare to manage but that would help in this specific scenario? I can see it simply creating more worms than helpful.

It really sounds like users of Github shouldn't trust Github to keep their forked repositories for them.

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

#245

Post by funcDropShadow »

charcircuit wrote: post #219
jzb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It knows the license applied to the repository. For a private repo it may not be "released" under that license but planned for release. If AcmeCorp is planning to release - but hasn't - a project under MIT or whatever, they may have the license declared in the repo but that's not a guarantee it's ever going to be released. If it's a private repo, and your access has been under your status as an employee, then I don't…

Software can be open source and not released. Employees can legally release it themselves since it is open source.

No, the software becomes "Open Source" or "Free Software" the moment someone licenses it to somebody else under such a license. Simply copying a file named LICENSE into some private directory has no legal relevance. As an employee, you usually don't get a license to the work artifacts you are working on.

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

#248

Post by madduci »

evouga wrote: post #107
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.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. My private forks are * mine* and I most certainly do not want GitHub guessing at whether and when to permanently delete them without my consent. Companies of course have the right to manage access to their proprietary source code, for example by only giving access to corporate accounts under their control and reclaiming those accounts when an employee leaves.

So the main solution would be not forking, but cloning and straight create a separate project? Will it work?

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

#249

Post by comprev »

evouga wrote: post #107
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.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. My private forks are * mine* and I most certainly do not want GitHub guessing at whether and when to permanently delete them without my consent. Companies of course have the right to manage access to their proprietary source code, for example by only giving access to corporate accounts under their control and reclaiming those accounts when an employee leaves.

My client recently moved from GitLab (self hosted - many teams had their own isolated server) to GitHub.com and managing access for the thousands of developers has been a small headache. We were encouraged to use our personal GitHub accounts instead of making new ones.

They are promoting "internal open source", yet due to a wild variety of permissions, colleagues can't fork to their own space or push a branch for a PR. Chasing the repo owners or at least someone with authority to grant permission is rarely worth the hassle.

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

#250

Post by joshxyz »

Had this happen to us before. Tradingview's JavaScript SDK is in an invite-only private repository in GitHub. We forked it, made our specific changes, then lost it once the Tradingview team removed our access after weeks of them trying to sell us stuff and not closing any sales from us.

The private fork we had, with our numerous changes, all gone.

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