Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

blog.ffwll.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 251 posts

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#221

Post by cyphar »

hobarrera wrote: post #192
rattray wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in a world where GVFS is a thing (not quite yet), I fail to see the advantage of a monotree over a monorepo with lots of branches and scripting around a MAINTAINERS file. What's wrong with branches and folders? Why are upstream repositories needed? (My hunch is the answer is just "it's slow with that much code" to which I again say "not when GVFS is ready"). Not to say Linux should change their ways, just…

GVFS has been working for years, but it's not even used related to the linux kernel at all. It's actually a GNOME-thing.

Not sure why people are downvoting you. Just because Microsoft decided to give an already-in-use name to an internal project doesn't mean that the original project no longer exists. https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#222

Post by lmm »

pm215 wrote: post #212
rattray wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in a world where GVFS is a thing (not quite yet), I fail to see the advantage of a monotree over a monorepo with lots of branches and scripting around a MAINTAINERS file. What's wrong with branches and folders? Why are upstream repositories needed? (My hunch is the answer is just "it's slow with that much code" to which I again say "not when GVFS is ready"). Not to say Linux should change their ways, just…

I think a big chunk of "why is the kernel's git workflow the way it is" is just "it's a formalized and tooled-up equivalent of the preexisting organizational structure where everybody was emailing patches, submaintainers had kernel source trees on their local machines that they were in charge of, etc". That said, one area I suspect the 'branches in a common repo' model will have trouble is access control. With the ke…

> Disclaimer: I haven't looked at github's access control model, maybe it lets you lock down master?

It does. It's pretty easy to have specific branches with specific permissions.

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#223

Post by gkya »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #100
snakeanus wrote: post #55

I can't really see the obsession that everyone has with centralised and closed services like github. We need to start moving away from them, not move more projects to them. Mailing lists and NNTP make decentralisation quite easy while being open standards and without having the need to have any account in any centralised service, why drop all these features away?

> We need to start moving away from them, not move more projects to them. It seems this topic comes up quite frequently on HN. Unfortunately, while it sounds great in theory, no one ever has a practical way of doing this. The main problem here is the user experience. When using GitHub I can find an open source project, copy the URL, pull it down, make changes, push and click a button for a pull request. A little bit…

There are marketing buzzwords, irrelevant in the open source community.

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#224

Post by Tade0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #36
kibwen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress relies strongly on people working together toward a common goal. If being "unreasonable" works for Linux, that's fine. But before others go trying to blindly emulate Linus, I'd suggest attempting to be reasonable first.

What people really don't seem to get is that Linus' cultural background is Finnish, and that Finns tend to be extremely outspoken and that they couldn't lie or polish their words if their life depended on it. http://www.karelia.fi/welcomingguide/the-finnish-way-of-life What to American sensibilities are grave insults to Linus is most likely just him speaking his mind without any filter in place, the way he was brough…

> The Finnish language lacks a specific word for "please"

Now I see where the Klingon language drew some of its inspiration. :D

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#225

Post by [deleted] »

dajt wrote: post #162
[deleted] wrote: post #132

[deleted]

I think you're right. And if so I agree with Linus. I don't get the entitlement of OSS people. They want to play in someone else's sandpit but enforce their own rules. If you don't like the way the project is run then fork it, go make your own or find another one.

[deleted]

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#226

Post by vertere »

coldtea wrote: post #215
rattray wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in a world where GVFS is a thing (not quite yet), I fail to see the advantage of a monotree over a monorepo with lots of branches and scripting around a MAINTAINERS file. What's wrong with branches and folders? Why are upstream repositories needed? (My hunch is the answer is just "it's slow with that much code" to which I again say "not when GVFS is ready"). Not to say Linux should change their ways, just…

> to which I again say "not when GVFS is ready") So they should base their decisions on the eventuality of some project being ready?

Some 'enterprises' love doing that sort of thing. One project gets behind or fails and there are so many cascading problems.

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#227

Post by snakeanus »

qu4z-2 wrote: post #213
ythn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really nice having some things standardized. I can tell from a glace how popular a project is by the number of stars. I can tell how many bugs it has by perusing the issues. I know I'm not going to get any spyware if I download something. The fragmented approach means you have to learn a bunch of different services, each with their own nuances. Then you have crap like sourceforce injecting adware into the downlo…

> I know I'm not going to get any spyware if I download something. You mean aside from that intended by the project maintainers?

If this is indeed what ythn means then git supports commit signing, so I fail to see how this would be an issue.

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#228

Post by snakeanus »

u801e wrote: post #176
snakeanus wrote: post #55

I can't really see the obsession that everyone has with centralised and closed services like github. We need to start moving away from them, not move more projects to them. Mailing lists and NNTP make decentralisation quite easy while being open standards and without having the need to have any account in any centralised service, why drop all these features away?

> Mailing lists and NNTP make decentralisation quite easy For mailing lists, most people use one of the big email providers (like gmail), their ISP's email service, or they set up their own mail server. The last option is what would make email truly decentralized, but, in order to be able to send messages to others, you would also need to set up SPF and DKIM on your MX to ensure deliverability to other servers. For N…

> in order to be able to send messages to others, you would also need to set up SPF and DKIM on your MX to ensure deliverability to other servers

This is actually quite trivial nowadays. I did hear that setting up and configuring mail servers was difficult with Postfix and Sendmail but I personally had no problem setting up qmail and opensmtpd.

> For NNTP, on the other hand, you would either have to use Google groups, or one of the free Usenet providers. If you set up your own news server (which would make this option truly decentralized), then you would also need to enter into a peer arrangement with several other usenet providers in order to have your articles distributed on usenet.

Not everything really needs to have its articles on the usenet. There are many NNTP networks that do not have that.

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#229

Post by rlpb »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #209
justinjlynn wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, awesome. I was going to look at that later this afternoon. Cheers!

Launchpad is also incredibly opaque to people who don't use it often. It took me a very long time to find the actual release binaries and how to get the sources + build info for them. It was for some nginx modules in a PPA which depend on a newer nginx than what is stock in Ubuntu Trusty. Took literally half a day to get binary-compatible modules built from source (building dynamic modules and they must match all the…

I can see how that that experience would have been poor for you, but I think it's a rather unfair comparison when comparing to GitHub. It's apples to oranges. Launchpad does more than git hosting, merge proposals ("pull requests") and bug tracking; it also manages the build infrastructure of a distribution and the publication of distribution sources and built binary packages. You did get tangled up doing the latter, but the former case is the context of this discussion. GitHub, GitLab and Sourceforge all cannot even do the much more complex tasks for which you had a poor UX on Launchpad.

Re: Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community

#230

Post by kronos29296 »

shp0ngle wrote: post #218
KekDemaga wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Linux is the core of the open source movement. If it dies the rest of it might die with it.

Well, it might happen that Google will fork Linux into their own thing, and it will be harder better faster stronger, and for some reason hard to merge back into Linux. And the ecosystem will move. It's hard to imagine now, but it can happen. Or it will be GNU Hurd.

(Ir)relevant xkcd.

https://xkcd.com/1508/

Post reply on HN