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Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

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Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#41

Post by andrewstuart »

Here's a term you need to start saying to management of your company: "software supply chain risk".

github just became a business risk and a software supply chain risk.

I recently worked for a very large company that was 100% all in on github.

And now its clear that in an instant and single developer or perhaps the entire organisation can be finished as far as github goes.

Any CTO would now be negligent to have an organisational dependency/risk on github.

The future has to be companies getting out of the cloud, getting out of vendors who can inflict major business damage in an instant with no recourse on the basis of entirely unknowable decisions.

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#42

Post by throwaway894345 »

AvieDeckard wrote: post #20
SirMaster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess, we need a fediverse solution or source code now?

Git is already decentralized. So no, we don't need a fediverse equivalent. Crazy idea, but what if you hosted your code on your infrastructure, like the "old days"? Or, move to an independent forge, or stay where you are. The concern isn't about GitHub directly, but that everyone storing all their source code in one place is concerning. Git is flexible. I'm kind of surprised at how ubiquitous GitHub is given how easy…

As much as I love doing things myself, the reality is that I spend wayyyy more time doing things myself than I save, and time is my main constraint. Getting booted off of GitHub would be a pretty minor inconvenience compared to the time sink of doing it myself, especially if I botch something and lose data.

> Git is flexible. I'm kind of surprised at how ubiquitous GitHub is given how easy it is to host your own repositories and set up a mailing list to accept patches and discussion on.

The UX you're proposing is far worse than what GitHub provides for less effort, and anyway GitHub isn't just "repo hosting + code review", you also get web hooks, CI, user/org management, code search (such as it is), a web interface (as well as mobile app), etc. And you don't have to teach people how to use it effectively.

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#43

Post by whatshisface »

meowface wrote: post #30
whatshisface wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way it got banned represents something that could happen to any one of us - getting seen by an MS employee on the front page of HN is something that can only happen to Chris Wanstrath. Moving off github is a good idea anyway, since they took away source code search for non-signed-in-users. I experience that annoyance every time I need to find the source of an error string in someone's github project.

>Moving off github is a good idea anyway, since they took away source code search for non-signed-in-users. I experience that annoyance every time I need to find the source of an error string in someone's github project. It could be done in part for cynical registration metrics reasons, but I'm guessing search is probably costly and this helps reduce automated activity. I also imagine they might face issues with bots…

I use several devices, oftentimes don't keep cookies, and now that 2FA has been mandated for all accounts (even ones whose sole value is a ticket to source code search), logging in takes a flow-breaking context switch. In fact, it takes more time to access github search than it does to clone the repo and grep locally. Although I am aware of the passkey workaround, I am not a huge fan of installing browser extensions with access to my credentials, and I don't want to have the equivalent of my_passwords.txt on every single one of my devices.

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#44

Post by imjonse »

rcoveson wrote: post #16
beanjuiceII wrote: post #4

calm down its already back

If it happens to you: 1. Remain calm 2. Tweet at your 66k followers 3. Briefly wait while the dozens of those that work at GitHub trip over each other getting your account reactivated

you forgot

0. Cofound github

:)

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#45

Post by flowck »

simonw wrote: post #14

This is one of my nightmares... I have 800+ repos on GitHub and I dread the thought of some weird machine learning algorithm somewhere deciding that my account should be banned. A lot of the stuff I care about on there is backed up elsewhere, but not everything. I even have a tool for this: https://datasette.io/tools/github-to-sqlite - which exports issues, issue comments etc to a SQLite database via the GitHub API.…

I stopped reading at "I have 800+ repos on GitHub". DUDE, it's time to back up your account to some other service. Anything can happen.

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#46

Post by Xeamek »

The automatization of moderation is legitimately one of the scariest problems with modern internet, but because it's abuse and mistakes inherently affect tiny minority, nobody cares. And obviously companies will fallback to automated tools rather then pay for human reviewers.

I don't really know how this should be dealt with.

...or maybe it shouldn't. And we should just accept that random minority will have their livelihoods destroyed. After all, it wouldn't be the first time when society disregarded injustice of few for the convenience of the many

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#48

Post by dave4420 »

Kluggy wrote: post #13
ilaksh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been at least a few truly decentralized efforts along the lines of GitHub. There is almost no interest. I also feel that just going with one or two other companies is better than exactly one monopoly but we can do much better. For some reason if I say p2p on HN it's not appreciated.

The issue is more that p2p is always touted as the solution and yet there's been almost zero actually useful solutions developed. There's some fundamental issues preventing the decentralized network to be a generic solution and until that's sorted out, it doesn't seem to add to a conversation to bring up p2p as a solution.

You can tell when a decentralised technology becomes successful, because then someone will build something centralised on top of it.

Re: Chris Wanstrath "defunkt" GitHub cofounder and former CEO is banned on GitHub

#50

Post by JohnFen »

simonw wrote: post #14

This is one of my nightmares... I have 800+ repos on GitHub and I dread the thought of some weird machine learning algorithm somewhere deciding that my account should be banned. A lot of the stuff I care about on there is backed up elsewhere, but not everything. I even have a tool for this: https://datasette.io/tools/github-to-sqlite - which exports issues, issue comments etc to a SQLite database via the GitHub API.…

> This is one of my nightmares... I have 800+ repos on GitHub

This is one of the reasons I don't use Github: I am deeply uncomfortable putting so much power over me in their (or most companies') hands.

Even if they're entirely trustworthy and reliable right now, any company is just an acquisition away from that no longer being the case.

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