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Before GitHub

lucumr.pocoo.org

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Re: Before GitHub

#41

Post by Lammy »

mhi3 wrote: post #37
Lammy wrote: post #9

> But maybe the most underappreciated thing GitHub did was archival work: GitHub became a library. It became an index of a huge part of the software commons because even abandoned projects remained findable. I think this is a bad thing actually. Having something that's centralized but helpful-99%-of-the-time atrophies our collective archival skills. If everything had to be seeded by someone to keep it alive, everyone…

I don't agree with this. Github has existed for years and one of the reasons developers trust it is that they never monetized their "archival" work yet (TBD with all the new Copilot features). The alternative would be many sites, each one of them with their own DMCA rules. What would be the better alternative?

Why are you thinking in terms of “sites”? I was imagining something more like a GitTorrent.

Re: Before GitHub

#42

Post by powvans »

sikozu wrote: post #36
wps wrote: post #21

I am still so salty that Git won out for the average project over Fossil. Sure Git has some performance advantages for massive codebases like the Linux Kernel, but the vast majority of projects will never run into performance limits from their VCS. Fossil’s internal tools (wiki, forum, tickets , etc) are just so useful to have versioned with your code in one file. I use Fossil for all my freelance work and it so easi…

Now is a great time for somebody to buy fossilhub.com and create a new community.

I know someone[0] who is working on exactly this right now: https://fossilrepo.io/

I don't think he's got public sign ups turned on yet. Maybe hit him up on the Twitter for more info.

[0] - https://x.com/ragelink

Re: Before GitHub

#43

Post by MeetingsBrowser »

conartist6 wrote: post #29

I'm working pretty hard on building what comes after Github, but I'm going full-tilt boogie and trying to also work out what comes after Git. I'd love to have a longer conversation with you about how we can seed a better system, because on the off chance I'm successful I have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix past mistakes.

Your username is con artist lol

Re: Before GitHub

#44

Post by palata »

Lammy wrote: post #9

> But maybe the most underappreciated thing GitHub did was archival work: GitHub became a library. It became an index of a huge part of the software commons because even abandoned projects remained findable. I think this is a bad thing actually. Having something that's centralized but helpful-99%-of-the-time atrophies our collective archival skills. If everything had to be seeded by someone to keep it alive, everyone…

> Having something that's centralized but helpful-99%-of-the-time atrophies our collective archival skills.

Also it feels like "if it's not on GitHub, it doesn't exist", which is a bad thing. Feels like too many developers don't know that code can be stored somewhere else.

Re: Before GitHub

#45

Post by a1o »

xtracto wrote: post #40
MrAlex94 wrote: post #10

If it wasn’t for SourceForge I’m not sure my life would’ve ended up where it is! They use to promote projects they liked and ended up putting Waterfox on their front page a few times. Really sad when they started blasting people with ads and swapping out installers with adware for popular projects. By that time I moved to Microsoft’s CodePlex, if anyone else remembers that? Felt like I was the only one using it at th…

I also remember SourceForge fondly, before the ad infested thing. Specially, I remember not "getting" Github at some point. Bitbucket had mercurial support, sourceforge had SVN, and all the Cool projects lived in SF (I'm talking mid/late 2000s). The first time I navigated into a github project and just saw the code three I was puzzled. (SF was centered on the project/product while GH focused on the code.

Hey, I also remember Launchpad and Bazar, and adding an individual new source to my apt. Launchpad had something like CI before everyone from what I remember.

Re: Before GitHub

#46

Post by bombcar »

mbreese wrote: post #11
simonw wrote: post #2

I absolutely loved Trac. Getting a Trac setup as step 1 in starting a new open source project was just an unbelievable amount of friction. Fun fact: Django is still running on Trac today, and has been for more than 20 years now: https://code.djangoproject.com/timeline (I was not involved in setting that one up, though it's possible I helped get the private Trac that pre-dated it running, I honestly can't remember!)

Trac was great. But, my first issue tracker was bugzilla. Setting that up was a bit of a pain, and it didn’t integrate well with anything, but it was very satisfying to see “Zarro Boogs”.

Bugzilla was relatively painless to setup but it already had a bit of the Jira going on - in that it had SO MANY OPTIONS!

I remember being interested in MantisBT and a few others (Launchpad for BZR?) mainly because it seemed they made a bunch of decisions for me.

Re: Before GitHub

#47

Post by kelnos »

psychoslave wrote: post #31
alastairp wrote: post #25

> What GitHub Gave Us To me one of the clear things that GitHub gave us was a structure around a person rather than a project. To me it felt liberating to quickly create a repository attached to my name than it was to go through the (what felt to me) very serious process of coming up with a project name and reserving it on sourceforge just to get a cvs or svn repository (along with website, mailing lists, issue track…

[flagged]

What a weird take on what GP said...

Re: Before GitHub

#48

Post by bombcar »

dangus wrote: post #32

This “slowly dying” effect is what happens to every company that gets acquired by big monster slug companies like Microsoft. What Microsoft acquisitions still have any of their original spark left in them? Or Oracle? Or IBM? Or Google? Etc… Hell, some Microsoft originals from inside the company like Xbox have even lost their edge. Money is great and I’m sure I’d take the big check, too, but I’m surprised more tech fo…

Up until about a year ago, GitHub was the example that would be given if you asked the question.

And now it’s gone.

Re: Before GitHub

#49

Post by rtpg »

I really worry about a bunch of people going over to codeberg. Site's already super slow, but apparently it's quite nice when self-hosted

Anyone who is able to just plop a forgejo instance on their own machines... please do that if possible!

Re: Before GitHub

#50

Post by prima-facie »

Smaller, decentralised forges actually make lots of sense from a digital sovereignty point of view. Over reliance on a single instance like GitHub is not healthy in the long run. The issue they would have to solve is federation.
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