Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#223:59: “No one donates money to OSS”
00:00: “You must leave the world’s biggest software website to go to this random Germanic non-profit because MS was bad 20 years ago”
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#323:59: “No one donates money to OSS” 00:00: “You must leave the world’s biggest software website to go to this random Germanic non-profit because MS was bad 20 years ago”
Are we sure "MS was bad" is the right thing to say? Are they now behaving ethically and responsibly?
If not, maybe it's very valid to be critical of our over reliance on such an actor, specially when alternatives are present.
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#423:59: “No one donates money to OSS” 00:00: “You must leave the world’s biggest software website to go to this random Germanic non-profit because MS was bad 20 years ago”
Are we sure "MS was bad" is the right thing to say? Are they now behaving ethically and responsibly? If not, maybe it's very valid to be critical of our over reliance on such an actor, specially when alternatives are present.
They are a large and wealthy corporation, with a lot of proprietary software and service products. It may appear, at times, that their interests align with the interests of end users or open source contributors, but that is at best a fleeting illusion; the moment they figure out how to make more money by screwing people, that's exactly what they'll do. That's why Recall is coming back to Windows, despite a huge backlash some five minutes prior. It's why the code to Windows and Office will never be open source. It's why the SSH remote plugin for Visual Studio Code is, for some reason, a proprietary binary that MSFT refuses to build for platforms that are not economically relevant to the Azure business unit (e.g., BSD or illumos systems).
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#5What I haven't seen in this post is the description of _real threat_, which comes from M$ owning GitHub.
By no means I would call them "good", but what they can do?
Delete your repo? Firstly, why would they do that? Secondly, just a backup.
>Selfhost your repo, that's not that hard.
Maybe this was true a few years ago (spoiler: no), but now, in the era of AI, shitstorm it became extremely hard.
Crawlers will constantly DDoS your servers and AI-powered not will continuously try to register to your platform.
See, for example, this: https://outage.sr.ht/ or this: https://drewdevault.com/2025/03/17/2025-03-17-Stop-externali...
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#6What I haven't seen in this post is the description of _real threat_, which comes from M$ owning GitHub. By no means I would call them "good", but what they can do? Delete your repo? Firstly, why would they do that? Secondly, just a backup. >Selfhost your repo, that's not that hard. Maybe this was true a few years ago (spoiler: no), but now, in the era of AI, shitstorm it became extremely hard. Crawlers will constant…
Surely, it may be a bad idea, to be _reliant_ on GitHub entirely, but in the world, where supporting your own infrastructure is so expensive and time-consuming I think, that GitHub is a acceptable option.
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#7Related:
- Lessons from open source in the Mexican government [1]
- Europe as a software colony (documentary) [2]
The TL;DR is: If a diplomat from the US is at your doorstep and wants to doxx, eh... talk to, your CEO, you're doing exactly the right thing.
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#8Linus Torvalds (Git was originally created by him) seems to be actively contributing in GitHub for the Linux kernel repository (also created by him): https://github.com/torvalds/linux Anyone has seen his position on this topic?
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#923:59: “No one donates money to OSS” 00:00: “You must leave the world’s biggest software website to go to this random Germanic non-profit because MS was bad 20 years ago”
Companies/Corporations aren't good or bad, they simply don't obey to moral rules like humans, as their sole goal is making more profit and make sure it will grow with time. As they grow,this aspect becomes less and less compatible with the customers interests, that's why we see many businesses rewriting their contracts or terms and conditions in a more restrictive way and rarely the other way around.
It's not about being companies being good or bad; it all depends on if and when the company need for profit will force them to walk that line after which they start to be user hostile. So, pretty much any company can be forced one day in a condition to become "evil".
For that matter, I'd trust Codeberg over GitHub any day, as it has no interests in pushing me into using other services, selling my data or should they go bankrupt (hardly as they're a non profit) lying to me about that until it's too late because my data is an asset their liquidators want to cash from.
Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)
#10Linus Torvalds (Git was originally created by him) seems to be actively contributing in GitHub for the Linux kernel repository (also created by him): https://github.com/torvalds/linux Anyone has seen his position on this topic?
Isn't the Github repo a mirror?