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Bidding farewell to Google Code

google-opensource.blogspot.com

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Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#341

Post by walterbell »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #322
dchichkov wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting down Google Code is equivalent to destroying a storage full of handwritten articles, some of which exist only in a single copy and some of which are incredibly valuable. Why valuable? For example computer science researchers had been using Google Code to host supplement code for their research publications for years now. These repositories are not maintained by these researchers any more, yet the code some t…

If the code is that valuable, then perhaps they should put some time into maintaining the code, moving it to another provider, or convincing somebody to pay for hosting.

Are we supposed to believe that Google does not understand the value of CITATIONS and PERMALINKS?

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#342

Post by walterbell »

jpatokal wrote: post #312
comex wrote: post #171

Ugh. No, not that Google Code is shutting down, per se. The alternatives are better and for active projects there is plenty of time to migrate. What I object to is that the site will only be preserved in read-only mode for 5 months, despite its popularity and the resulting large number of deep links into it on the Web. Why not forever? git, hg, and I believe svn can all provide read-only access (with some bandwidth o…

Chris diBona says Google will be keeping a public copy of all unmigrated repos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554

Can that be relied upon as an official Google statement?

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#343

Post by bigiain »

k3n wrote: post #196
comex wrote: post #171

Ugh. No, not that Google Code is shutting down, per se. The alternatives are better and for active projects there is plenty of time to migrate. What I object to is that the site will only be preserved in read-only mode for 5 months, despite its popularity and the resulting large number of deep links into it on the Web. Why not forever? git, hg, and I believe svn can all provide read-only access (with some bandwidth o…

Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management. They see Google Code as a time-sink, and they're probably right, and it's not surprising to me that they'd drop something that is no longer serving it's intended purpose, but instead has negative implications for their model. Keeping it going forward would r…

"Google hates anything that requires a human's touch"

Perhaps they should stop offering products to humans then?

Seriously, why would _anybody_ use/recommend a Google product, when the expectation of "customer service" is "maybe some other poor schmuk on some poorly maintained and difficult to search Google group once had the same problem and they (or some other non Google person) worked out a fix and bothered posting it".

Yeah, you're not paying for it - it's worth exactly that when anything goes wrong. (Unless you're running 5 or 6 digits a month in Adwords spend, then they're _remarkably_ good at CS...)

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#344

Post by ericfontaine »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #216
ericfontaine wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if we're using "Responsiveness of the UI" as the metric, then I would argue that http://fossil-scm.org/ beats both GitLab and GitHub. Fossil is easily self hosted (just run one small executible file). And it is really fast, because it is written in C with sqlite and is simple and minimalistic. It is not git based, but is a simpler DVCS. Dynamically generated pages on my home computer take less than .001 ms to di…

> Well if we're using "Responsiveness of the UI" as the metric, then I would argue that http://fossil-scm.org/ beats both GitLab and GitHub. Which is why I really don't think (and that was my original point) that a Google announcement of shutting down Google Code should act as some sort of advertisement for $code-hosting-site/project. Github and Bitbucket deserve the mention because those projects are well establishe…

> "Github and Bitbucket deserve the mention because those projects are well established."

According to Wikipedia article, GitHub and Bitbucket were established in 2008, and GitLab in sept 2011, making it ~3.5 years old and about half the age. Although the precise meaning of "well established" is vague, and while you could say that GitHub and Bitbucket are "more established" than GitLab, I would say GitLab is at least "sufficiently established" (i.e. at least sufficient enough to host projects with %99+ uptime). Quick searches reveal that GitHub is known to go down, with major ddos in Nov 2011 and 2 hours in March 2014, Bitbucket was down sometime 27th April 2014, GitLab.com went offline for a full 8 hours in July 2014. (Someone who cares further can do a more precise comparison of uptime). But they were all fixed quickly, still up, functioning, learning, and improving. While maybe your threshold for consideration an internet service to be "well established" is different from another person's threshold, your threshold is not necessarily more valid and cannot be determined without more specific criterion.

Based alone on the argument that "well established" services deserve mention, then that should mean services established before Github and Bitbucket that are still running reliably should be mentioned as well. But you have specifically said it's ok for github and bitbucket to deserve mention but not others.

> "I really don't think (and that was my original point) that a Google announcement of shutting down Google Code should act as some sort of advertisement for $code-hosting-site/project."

It should not. And as I pointed out clearly in my original comment which I will repeat for emphasis as it has been the core of my whole argument:

"google code blogspot post specifically mentioned both GitHub 8 times and Bitbucket 3 times"

While it was appropriate (and arguably a duty as benefactor) for google to post a link to https://code.google.com/p/support-tools/ containing their export tools to github and bitbucket and the sourceforge import, that reference only takes one sentence and doesn't even require the google blog post itself to specifically mention any services. Considering that a shutdown announcement is a serious matter, it should be kept brief and limited to only information relevant to shutdown. All those specific references could have been omitted and the shutdown announcement would still make sense. By specifically mentioning certain services multiple times, the writer of the blog post has opened the door to queries about mentioning alternative services specifically. Had he written in a neutral manner (either by only posting the Wikipedia link or not mentioning any services), then it would have been inappropriate for GitLab to query for a request to be mentioned.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#345

Post by kibibu »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #257
mintplant wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because GitLab is open source, and the alternatives (GitHub, BitBucket) are not.

> Because GitLab is open source, and the alternatives (GitHub, BitBucket) are not. That's not a reason to use the hosted gitlab version, that might be a reason to self host gitlab.

Not really - if you are into open source because of the ideology and not just for the price then GitLab makes a lot more sense.

If I find a bug in GitLab I can feasibly submit a patch for it.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#347

Post by yellowapple »

enjo wrote: post #235
aikah wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that wi…

On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me) but this is ridiculous. If these projects are truly important than donate some time and move them over yourself. To demand that google invest time and resources into the migration of these migrations or to keeping this running forever is just silly. Hell tools like https://…

It would be the open-source world's equivalent to Geocities shutting down. There are still times when I'm trying to search for something (usually some obscure programming or hardware hacking topic) and the only source of information was a Geocities site. I can't imagine how much of a royal pain in the ass it will be if Google Code experiences the same fate.

> I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me)

The reasons should be clear to anyone with historical context; this isn't the first time Google has spontaneously pulled the plug on some "non-core" project it decided wasn't making quite enough money, in complete disregard of said project's use by the real world. It's these sorts of things that make me very reluctant to invest heavily in Google's ecosystem; I've personally been burned in the past by these sorts of things.

A part of me wants XKCD #1361 to come true.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#348

Post by kzhahou »

le_lenny_face wrote: post #309
kzhahou wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes them sound petty and actually-probably-worse. Just say you're the best git host. Don't mention your competitor. I'm going to go create an account on it now. Good luck, guys!

Spotted the GitHub fanboy. GitLab is objectively better. They even list their reasons on the page. If you disagree you could, you know, refute those points instead of dismissing the whole thing in a petty manner.

Wow, way to miss my point. Gitlab might be better. But when the best location on the frontpage is a direct swipe at the leading competitor, to me that reads as very weak. You know who doesn't bother to take jabs at their competitors? Winners.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#349

Post by krapp »

walterbell wrote: post #328
oldmanjay wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rather watery definition of evil. It is fairly close to saying a restaurant is evil for not keeping a menu item you like.

Would it be ok for Google to delete Usenet archives? Or a library to burn down its own buildings? Or Google to delete all scans of old books? History matters, because citations to "old" research/code may become more valuable with new requirements and research. Surely a company that "organizes the world's information" needs no explanation of these topics.

>Would it be ok for Google to delete Usenet archives?

If it's their archives, yes.

And if those are the only archives of Usenet in existence, then it's not Google's fault no one else cared to back it up.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#350

Post by bigiain »

enjo wrote: post #235
aikah wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that wi…

On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me) but this is ridiculous. If these projects are truly important than donate some time and move them over yourself. To demand that google invest time and resources into the migration of these migrations or to keeping this running forever is just silly. Hell tools like https://…

FWIW, Google were happy for a lot of other people to invest time and resources into putting their projects there in the first place - you don't think there's some reasonable expectation that Google would expend some extremely minimal resources at their scale - to ensuring those peoples effort wasn't wasted/lost?

Having said that, I'm not part of any movement to "demand Google do something different", but I've been a longtime member of the "Warn friends/family/colleagues about the dangers of participating in Google services in any way that'll have any downside when they close it down, because they've got a strong track record of doing that" movement.

If _I_ were the person making this decision at Google, my announcement would have been more along the lines of "blah blah shutdown blah blah apologies/excuses blah blah, so we're going to donate enough to archive.org to ensure everything on code.google.com gets archived permanently, and automatically redirect all future code.google.com requests to that permanent archive".

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