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GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

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Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#11

Post by abetusk »

Jason Rohrer [1] is the author of Passage [2].

His latest game, "One Hour One Life" [3], is a massively multiplayer online game where your character has only one hour of life. You start off as a baby and are dependent on others for shelter and heat before you're able to be autonomous. Eventually you die of old age but your impact on the world/server persists.

I recommend anyone interested to purchase the game [4] or at least look at video stream of gameplay [5].

When I purchased the game, the source code came with it and as far as I could tell was dedicated to the public domain. This was client code so I'm not sure if the server code is released anywhere (maybe this was what was taken down at GitHub).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Rohrer

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passage_(video_game)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hour_One_Life

[4] http://onehouronelife.com/

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu7kXKuShks&list=PLcA1QDRup-...

Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#13

Post by gloflo »

x3ro wrote: post #7
londons_explore wrote: post #2

From being on the other side of this kind of "big company screws little guy for no reason"... In ~80% of cases, there is more to the story than meets the eye. For example maybe a legal complaint came in, or someone was DoS attacking that repo and it put the whole GitHub service at risk.

There's always two sides to a story. That being said, it seems like every other week now there's a story of a cloud service or provider shutting something down or removing something, without our with very little notice, and the only recourse for somebody who cannot afford an army of lawyers is calling them out on Twitter and hoping for the best. This is an alarming trend, and highlights how decentralization and, at t…

> This is an alarming trend

This has always been the case, ever since BBS operators. Data on other people's machines is data on other people's machines.

Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#14

Post by jarfil »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #6

That is terrible and a good reminder that using the "cloud" means that you don't really control your destiny. A quick googling around reveal a couple of options for backing up everything from github (but I'm not sure what you'd do with a backup if you got kicked out like the OP).

It's also a good reminder of why data portability is important. For the git part, you can just git push to another service, even a selfhosted one, and be up and running in no time, and GitHub does keep pages and wikis in git... but all the tickets, that's a problem, and why I don't trust GitHub to be a canonical source for development.

Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#17

Post by bsder »

gridlockd wrote: post #8

The only lesson to be learned here, one that needs to be repeated time and time again: Don't put all your eggs into one basket.

The lesson to be learned here is "Don't use GitHub."

Use something that you can run your own instance of (like GitLab) and make the cloud version a shadow copy of your local one. That way if they pull the rug out from under you, you actually have some way of dealing with the issue.

Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#18

Post by nraynaud »

lopmotr wrote: post #5
londons_explore wrote: post #2

From being on the other side of this kind of "big company screws little guy for no reason"... In ~80% of cases, there is more to the story than meets the eye. For example maybe a legal complaint came in, or someone was DoS attacking that repo and it put the whole GitHub service at risk.

That's why online services will never really be a complete alternative to using your own hardware. They might not get their computers stolen or catch fire, but they destroy your data intentionally when they decide they don't like you. The failure modes are different but still present.

I think there is still an argument to be made that a it's worth it for a lot of companies (in particular in the beginning). Because your pokemon game or your scooter company going offline is not really really a big deal. And then you reach a size where more things are possible like an SLA, people you can call on the phone, and the possibility to shame the provider.

But it's true that each company probably need to think for themselves and their circumstances, and do at least a mental computation every six months: do I need offsite backup, a second cloud provider in cold standby, in hot standby, should I look at a colocation, should I look at square meters and ethernet crimping tools?

Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#19

Post by trickstra »

londons_explore wrote: post #2

From being on the other side of this kind of "big company screws little guy for no reason"... In ~80% of cases, there is more to the story than meets the eye. For example maybe a legal complaint came in, or someone was DoS attacking that repo and it put the whole GitHub service at risk.

so in 20% of the cases it really is a big company just screwing a little guy for no reason?

Re: GitHub removes 5 years of One Hour One Life designer's work

#20

Post by benj111 »

Tetris1 wrote: post #10

We need to hear 2 sides of a story. Github does not just 'delete' files. Author should contact them first and resolve any issues there is. And if github refuse that, than you can cry a river.

Is it not incumbent upon Github to contact the author before deleting his account?
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