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Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

codeberg.org

131–140 of 225 posts

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#131
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. >> I find it interesting that people only ever say this when talking about free software initiatives. Nobody moans about software getting 'political' when talking about closed-source companies enforcing intellectual property laws that were literally written by politicians. I'm sorry, but I find your extremely selective quoting offensive. You are disto…

If your 'general principle' doesn't apply to the most important and popular software in the world (open source) then perhaps it is not very general, and not very principled.

My general principle is that political opinions as well as political conflicts and fault lines should not determine access to IT infrastructures.

Now, open source licences themselves as well as distribution platforms such as public git repositories guarantee access to some very important global IT infrastructures.

Perhaps you can see why my general principle cannot apply to open source in the same way it applies to other things that fall under "their politics" - the rather sloppy term I originally used.

It's the same reason why the principle of tolerance cannot apply to tolerance itself in the same way it applies elsewhere.

I think principles are always contradictory in the absolute. They only make sense as directions along specific dimensions and can rarely be applied to themselves.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#132
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that some choices cannot be avoided, but others can and should be avoided. In my opinion, we should avoid linking the use of IT infrastructures to political issues such as systems of government, wars, climate change, gender identity, religion or anything else that is unrelated to the technical aspects of that infrastructure. Open source licences themselves are a good example of how I think it should be done.…

What makes IT infrastructures special compared to anything else that we should avoid political matters? For me they are critical and omnipresent. So crucial, in fact, that they are somewhat at the center of political matters nowadays. They are probably a core part of many policies. And I believe the way they are done cannot avoid politics. Trying hard to project into myself into your perspective, I'm trying to compar…

I already conceded that it is not possible to avoid all politics. There are political decisions to be made that are directly related to the infrastructures themselves, their functioning, their economics, their accessibility, the power structures they enable, etc. I did not mean to exclude these political aspects.

What I meant very specifically is that access to IT infrastructures in the widest sense of the word (including source code) should not be restricted based on political opinions or fault lines.

Going further, I would not even restrict access to criminals as long as the criminality is not related to the functioning of the infrastructure itself. I believe that such restrictions would threaten the infrastructures themselves, make them worse for everybody or at least cause unacceptable levels of collateral damage.

I agree that absolute neutrality doesn't exist. But throwing out the whole concept of neutrality just because neutrality has its limits would be a bad idea. E.g., network neutrality has a very specific meaning. It doesn't mean that networks can be neutral in absolutely every way.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Services don't need to handle every single use case to be viable alternatives. GitHub does host proprietary software, but it is most well known for being a place to collaborate on free and open source software. Codeberg addresses this primary use case in a more focused way than GitHub intends to, and because of this, Codeberg is an excellent alternative to GitHub.

This sort of myopic, self-important, holier-than-thou perspective is why the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself. Whatever you think Github's most known or most useful featureset is, the fact of the matter is it dominates because they don't draw philosophical lines in the sand and exclude people as a result. It's a big tent, all are welcome, and as a result, it has near…

Everyone is welcome at Github? Just recently Github banned a few Russian developers. Probably to comply with sanctions.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#134

> No tracking. Your data is not for sale. Of course, Codeberg is not saying GitHub sells your data, but it seems to imply someone is selling your data if you don't use Codeberg and instead use other services. Is there any backing for this? Who sells your data if you use GitHub that won't sell your data when you use Codeberg?

They are selling everyone's code through copilot

If the code is publicly available on Codeberg, won't GitHub just go take it from there and then sell it through copilot?

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#135
post #65
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot is trained on publicly available code.

"Publicly available" is different from "licensed under a FOSS license". Anyone other than the original author doesn't have the right to distribute, modify or even execute the code. Even if the code is licensed under an open source license, in most cases it requires users to attribute the original author, while in some cases derivative work must be licensed under the same license too. GitHub Copilot use the code witho…

> distribute

Does moving code between a company's data centres count as distribution?

Heck doesn't merely hosting the files count as distribution?

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#136
post #35

People don't seem to realize the risk of centralizing on a single provider and solution. Currently, it's like 90% of the FOSS projects are hosted on GitHub. It all seems smooth and all until one day you log in to their platform and find yourself essentially shunned-off from collaborating on FOSS scene [1] . I'm grateful Codeberg, sourcehut and other alternatives exist. One nitpick from my experience: Codeberg's stati…

Since you mentioned sourcehut, I’ll point out that their static hosting is excellent. I host my blog on there and have had no issues.

Not that excellent. They still don't have ipv6 support in 2023

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#137
post #75
post #19

> Our mission is to support the creation and development of Free Software; therefore we only allow repos licensed under an OSI/FSF-approved license. For more details see Licensing article. However, we sometimes tolerate repositories that aren't perfectly licensed and focus on spreading awareness on the topic of improper FLOSS licensing and its issues. If you aren't doing FOSS software and aren't "tolerated" you aren'…

Not an alternative for everybody

So what?

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#138
post #19

> Our mission is to support the creation and development of Free Software; therefore we only allow repos licensed under an OSI/FSF-approved license. For more details see Licensing article. However, we sometimes tolerate repositories that aren't perfectly licensed and focus on spreading awareness on the topic of improper FLOSS licensing and its issues. If you aren't doing FOSS software and aren't "tolerated" you aren'…

I moved all my company repos to Codeberg because unlike Github it has proper support for git signature enforcement, and I can self host whenever I want for free so I am not locked in because the platform itself is open source. No one can censor me because I can put it on my own domain any time with modest effort.

100% of all repos I have as a company other than some internal documentation are FLOSS.

I am of the strong opinion closed source software should not exist, and you can be a very successful and well paid software engineer spending the majority of your time working on open source software if you care enough to pursue that path.

Maybe you do not make quite as much money when you dial the greed down a bit, but you contribute to building a society with better collaboration and faster progress that will benefit us all.

We should build open source community around open source projects and tools where we can fix issues ourselves instead of hoping a central for profit company will do it for us. IMO the only projects that should stay on Github are ones that believe centralized dictatorships like Microsoft are best equipped to govern software development.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. We don't all agree on what makes the world better and what makes it worse. That said, I don't have a problem with this particular project. It's absolutely fine to create a git hosting solution specifically for open source as open source is its…

So we can arbitrarily label whatever we dislike as "political" and then demand people to "their politics out of $thing"? That's not how it works. There are no neutral positions.

What I mean by "keep out" is that I don't want political opinions or fault lines to determine access to IT infrastructures.

I worry that this is where we're headed, but as I said, hosting open source git repositories is not that and I have no problem with it whatsoever.

I think we can and should be neutral with regard to _some_ distinctions in _some_ specific contexts. That's not the same as saying there is a neutral position in general.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#140
post #65
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot is trained on publicly available code.

"Publicly available" is different from "licensed under a FOSS license". Anyone other than the original author doesn't have the right to distribute, modify or even execute the code. Even if the code is licensed under an open source license, in most cases it requires users to attribute the original author, while in some cases derivative work must be licensed under the same license too. GitHub Copilot use the code witho…

You grant GitHub a license to display your code, same for Codeberg, they're not bound by your license because you're granting them specific rights. Secondly can you prove damages when a person uses your code but doesn't attribute you? If you can't your license isn't very useful. This is what we all need to understand.
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