171–180 of 225 posts
Also, since resilience is key and avoiding dependence on centralized service, Radicle is high-quality open source project building a decentralized git hosting service: https://radicle.xyz/ Disclaimer: I just love what they do, I am not part of the team and don't hold any of their tokens.
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 centralizati…
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…
I agree, but I also like that everything is on github because it is a single place to search. Is there a meta-search engine for github/gitlab/codeberg/bitbucket/sourceforge/etc.? It would be useful and make it less essential that everything is with one provider. UPDATE: Before someone says "google" I'm specifically talking about a context-aware search engine that has knowledge of code-specific attributes like languag…
I agree that it's nice to have a single place to search, but IMO that convenience is vastly overshadowed by the downsides of relying on a single platform.
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Monopolies are always bad. Always. And Github is a proprietary software which is nearly a monopoly for hosting free software (how ironic, isn’t it?). Exactly like sourceforge was, you are right. Each generation must learn it the hard way. https://ploum.net/2023-02-22-leaving-github.html
> Monopolies are always bad. Always. I don't think that's true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly When monopolies can rival/influence/corrupt the power that would otherwise regulate them, that is the point at which monopolies are definitely bad.
I don't think anyone would hold up a utility company as a paragon of customer-friendliness. Ditto for phone companies and ISPs.
So while it's too simplistic to just say "monopolies are bad", we still haven't found a way to have regulated monopolies that "play nicely" in the same ways companies in a competitive industry are required to do in order to stay relevant.
> When monopolies can rival/influence/corrupt the power that would otherwise regulate them, that is the point at which monopolies are definitely bad.
I would argue that there's no "when" here. This happens in all cases.
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I hate how on Hacker News it's always the corporate, proprietary, market that is cast as the underdog. You know the one who get all the press coverage and has VC money behind it.
hacker news sees creating a company and tearing up regulations as the ultimate form of altruism and bravery add in a side of guzzling right wing talking points from a fire hose and claiming to be a philosopher-economist and you've got a nice front page post discussion
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> Monopolies are always bad. Always. I don't think that's true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly When monopolies can rival/influence/corrupt the power that would otherwise regulate them, that is the point at which monopolies are definitely bad.
I agree with your examples, but at the same time, most public utilities and other natural monopolies, despite government regulation, still act in exploitative, anti-customer ways. I don't think anyone would hold up a utility company as a paragon of customer-friendliness. Ditto for phone companies and ISPs. So while it's too simplistic to just say "monopolies are bad", we still haven't found a way to have regulated mo…
So the question is: are there cases for which a monopoly has a better cost/benefit ratio than whatever the alternative is.
If you take a look at utilities, then theoretically, the upfront cost is passed on to consumers. So two different power utilities would spend twice the capital, which would then need to be passed on to consumers. Twice the repairs after a storm, twice the cost for infrastructure updates. The end state is what we see with home internet, you get a monopoly, but none of the monopoly regulation because "there's competition." Then there are mergers to watch out for, cartel behavior, etc.
So my assertion is that when you apply regulation to a monopoly it might be better than the alternatives that probably need regulation anyway.
> This happens in all cases.
This is mildly off topic, but I think it applies here. This is a statement of inevitability about what is fundamentally a political battle. If, for example, citizens united was fixed, the tax burden for people who have over 10 mil were large, and corruption was criminal and prosecuted as such, then I think it's harder to make this argument.
I think this idea of inevitability is the result of learned helplessness.
I think the idea that monopolies will always exist in a state of conflict with the citizenry is true, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the monopolies will definitely win. I think they are winning right now, but I think the idea that that their victory is inevitable is self defeating.
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> 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.
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Is this really worth throwing a hissy fit over? The OSI list alone is quite broad [1]. I see many licenses there that do not restrict inclusion of code in commercial products. [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/
Is this a joke? OSI essentially means only "corporate friendly" licenses are allowed. If someone wants to protect their work under a non-commercial license, they can do that on GitHub but not CodeBerg.
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Wow, entitled much? Nobody owes you anything, nobody is obliged to host your code. If you want to use the same UI for your closed/work projects and your FOSS projects, you can host your own instance; Forgejo is FOSS. Codeberg seems to be focused at providing a free service to the FOSS community, _and that's okay_. You don't get to be mad at that.
People are entitled to reactions to ads. This is an ad.. this is one reaction. Parent will not use.. I'm guessing you won't use them over github. If 1% readership uses them I would be shocked. 99% of the people commenting won't use them. Now you are saying people can't express themselves because nothing is owed. For every ad watched a comment is owed by the watcher. That's owed.
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Is this really worth throwing a hissy fit over? The OSI list alone is quite broad [1]. I see many licenses there that do not restrict inclusion of code in commercial products. [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/
Is this a joke? OSI essentially means only "corporate friendly" licenses are allowed. If someone wants to protect their work under a non-commercial license, they can do that on GitHub but not CodeBerg.
Yes, use-restricted licenses aren’t Free Software. Codeberg is a non-profit that promotes Free Software. Not a joke, just out of mission.