Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#151

Post by goodpoint » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #139

goodpoint wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#152

Post by Arnavion » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

jacooper wrote: post #147

Arnavion wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know. The codeberg issue I linked has a link to the upstream gitea issue, which was closed as completed. But presumably codeberg.org hasn't updated their gitea to have that feature yet.

Didn't they recently upgrade 1.19? It should include this change

You could see for yourself, you know. Picking a random repo from the Codeberg org:

    $ curl -LD - 'https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/pages-server/releases.atom'

    HTTP/2 404

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#153

Post by throwthisawayhn » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:08 PM UTC

I appreciate what Codeberg is doing for decentralizing code hosting and providing software (Forgejo) with useful features that can compete with Github, but I must say their Terms of Use especially the "Allowed Content" section is one of the worst I've seen. Imagine a CoC but governing an entire website and all its users...

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#154

Post by hayst4ck » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

Azadzadeh wrote: post #32

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…

The flip side is economies of scale.

Github can implement code search, credential scanning, malware scanning, or any other number of other things and theoretically, every code repo can get it for free.

When everything is centralized, adding a new feature costs k but gives N benefit. When there are M different options adding a new feature costs k * M for N benefit.

I don't think it's as black and white as centralization is bad, but I do agree that it gives microsoft undue power and that power can be a force for good or evil.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#155

Post by EFreethought » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:17 PM UTC

uncleDingle wrote: post #73

xigoi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all are welcome Except for those who don't want their code to be used for training proprietary AI models.

I read the Copilot terms, they only use public repos for AI training. Private repos are not used for training. I've since privated all of my non-forked repos.

Copilot should be opt-in, not opt-out.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#156

Post by jbergens » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:23 PM UTC

haleudo wrote: post #95

timwaagh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a great alternative if you believe GitHub deserves to die because it hosts everyone and making proprietary software should be made as difficult as possible. Which is the same as being against people making a living from building and selling software. ie you are against the existence of programming as a profession. In specifically that case this is superior to GitHub.

> It's only a great alternative if you believe GitHub deserves to die Geez, why so extreme? They choose whom they support for free, and they choose FLOSS projects with similar goals/philosophies. If your project has a different philosophy, fine, up to you, but it's not something they want to spend their time to support for free. You are welcome to go somewhere else, including going to or staying at GitHub. Nobody wan…

If all they wanted was to be free only for OSS they could have made their priceplan that way. Now they basically forbids non-OSS.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#157

Post by kelnos » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:26 PM UTC

allioeddie wrote: post #47

commoner wrote: post #42

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…

> FOSS maintainers need to...

This is a common misconception. We don't need to do anything. We build things on our terms, and set policies how we see fit. If that increases friction so that people like you decide not to contribute, that's a shame, but that's a trade off we're willing to make.

And regardless of all that, advocating for a single platform for anything (whether proprietary or open source) is just a bad idea. GitHub does have a lot of things going for it, but it's a single point of failure, run by an entity that can decide to change the terms of the service in any way it pleases. We might hope and assume they won't do anything destructive (since most destructive things would be detrimental to themselves as well), but stranger things happen.

At any rate, your complaint is fairly specious: Platforms like Gitea (which Codeberg uses) and GitLab are similar enough to GitHub that the usage flow for third-party contributions is pretty similar and requires virtually no effort to learn. (In fact, Gitea and GitLab have been criticized in the past for copying GitHub too much.) Sure, if you were going to use a Gitea- or GitLab-based provider to host your own stuff, you'd have to learn quite a bit more if you were coming from GitHub. But just making a contribution isn't much of a hurdle to jump: the main hurdle is having to create yet another account, though many Gitea and GitLab instances allow you to sign in using OAuth and your GitHub credentials.

It's fine that you don't feel the desire to make principled stands on things like this, but it's unfair of you to talk down so harshly on those of us who do. I'm sure you have some causes that are important to you that I don't share, but I wouldn't criticize you for those, or for how you decide to spend your spare time.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#158

Post by hgs3 » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:27 PM UTC

What frustrates me about GitHub is that GitHub Sponsors does not provide controls for associating a users funding amount with anything. Say I want to sell support: I should be able to associate a users sponsorship level with their capability to ask questions, i.e. sponsor my project for $X grants you N questions. GitHub provides no mechanism for this. Codeberg has an opportunity here to one-up GitHub by providing the tools maintainers need to monetize their work. Just imagine being able to sell closed-source licenses for copyleft software right from the interface.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#159

Post by kelnos » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #104

jwmcq wrote: post #94

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 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…

Regardless of what you said in your later paragraphs, statements of the form "I prefer to keep politics out of X" are often naive, as is the case here. Unfortunately, politics is everywhere, and ignoring that only serves to ignore important aspects of reality that can affect outcomes you care about.

Politics is a part of IT infrastructure, full stop. Ignoring that won't make it go away. The discussion on this post is proof of that.

Re: Codeberg – Fast open source alternative to GitHub

#160

Post by kelnos » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 8:32 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #131

jwmcq wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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

Then you're going to be disappointed, because politics is intrinsically intertwined with software and IT infrastructure. The fact that so much IT infra is built on top of open source and free software means that discussion is inescapable.

The fact that corporations need to track the licensing of the software they use (both for proprietary and open source software) is enough proof of that.