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Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

radicle.xyz

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Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#61
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am stupid, Naaa just lazy https://radicle.xyz/faq

As far as I understand there is no the why in the faq? > Radicle is an alternative for people and organizations who want full control of their data and user experience, without compromising on the social aspects of collaboration platforms. Since this can be achieved by self-hosting other non p2p solutions I don't see this as a why for the product. I am trying to understand the actual benefit of p2p here that is it.

The P2P is honestly a bit of a negative because the provision model looks very "default open" - which is not want anyone who wants to own the hosting experience wants.

Sure: you do have to include an identity document, but it didn't give me an overwhelming sense of safety that I couldn't accidentally expose all my private repos to the P2P network.

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#62
post #55

This is a great idea and exactly what software development needs right now. However there are a lot of things that seem more complicated than necessary. https://radicle.xyz/guides/protocol I'm reading through the delegate consensus model for branches and I don't see why any of that is necessary. It's encroaching on the P2P that Git already does well, which is who I decide to push and pull from. I think this project c…

This strikes me as entirely missing the idea of Radicle. What you are saying is basically "why automate things if you can just do them manually". But worse is not better; there is value in having the P2P transport layer work _transparently_. If you intend to force user to manually (or semi-automatically) juggle remotes for every single device on the network, you have already lost. TL;DR What you describe is just Git…

+1. Also GitHub is more than a git storage, it’s a forge [0]: people use it to store their code, manage changes, track issues, publish releases, and so on. That’s what Radicle wants to be.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#63
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody works on a fork on their own machine. Since everybody pulls the changes of the others and sees if something collides with their own changes, its pretty much possible to do it manually. Thats how I started this approach. It's really just a 0815 git based workflow. Just not for code but for a tasklist. Meanwhile I wrote a bit of tooling around it. But using it is not at all a must.

0815?

An expression that, at least in Germany, means "the bare minimum/default". It originates from a German machine gun:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/08/15_(Redewendung) (German Wikipedia, there seems to be no English version)

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0815?

An expression that, at least in Germany, means "the bare minimum/default". It originates from a German machine gun: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/08/15_(Redewendung) (German Wikipedia, there seems to be no English version)

Thanks. That’s interesting. :-)

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#65
post #55

This is a great idea and exactly what software development needs right now. However there are a lot of things that seem more complicated than necessary. https://radicle.xyz/guides/protocol I'm reading through the delegate consensus model for branches and I don't see why any of that is necessary. It's encroaching on the P2P that Git already does well, which is who I decide to push and pull from. I think this project c…

This strikes me as entirely missing the idea of Radicle. What you are saying is basically "why automate things if you can just do them manually". But worse is not better; there is value in having the P2P transport layer work _transparently_. If you intend to force user to manually (or semi-automatically) juggle remotes for every single device on the network, you have already lost. TL;DR What you describe is just Git…

> What you describe is just Git on top of a generic P2P overlay network

That would be the most widely useful functionality, upon which other features can be layered. If the simple functionality can't be used alone, and you have to buy into a more complicated model, then it makes the tool less broadly useful.

Git actually provides a pretty good experience if you have a remote that's always online. I can push and pull branches around to get between all my different devices. GitHub is usually up.

What I would be interested in, is a remote I can host from my house, instead of the cloud. I could leave the public key on my profile and others can checkout the repository.

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, why don't you like ai in coding? Because they're making money from open source code without contributing?

GitHub effectively contributes a significant amount of money and work hours by hosting close to all the open source software for free, including some CI time and the collaboration features. For some projects like Nix that's a really non-trivial system on its own. It's not just the code that counts towards FOSS contributions.

This is true. But what if they change their mind?

IMHO, this shows the huge dependency of all of the world’s open source software on a single company. (Microsoft, who owns GitHub).

In this context, Radicle - as an alternative way of hosting the world’s OSS - makes a lot of sense to me.

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#67
post #61
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand there is no the why in the faq? > Radicle is an alternative for people and organizations who want full control of their data and user experience, without compromising on the social aspects of collaboration platforms. Since this can be achieved by self-hosting other non p2p solutions I don't see this as a why for the product. I am trying to understand the actual benefit of p2p here that is it.

The P2P is honestly a bit of a negative because the provision model looks very "default open" - which is not want anyone who wants to own the hosting experience wants. Sure: you do have to include an identity document, but it didn't give me an overwhelming sense of safety that I couldn't accidentally expose all my private repos to the P2P network.

So, if I understand correctly, you’re not so much concerned about the p2p architecture, rather than the default seeding policy? (You’d prefer that to be selective rather than open by default? )

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#68
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I've been looking for a CardDAV server to replace an entire NextCloud install that was used only for that purpose. Serendipity at its finest!

Maybe check baikal https://sabre.io/baikal/ comming from Nextcloud it was a lot simpler to host.

Terrific, thank you.

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#69
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub effectively contributes a significant amount of money and work hours by hosting close to all the open source software for free, including some CI time and the collaboration features. For some projects like Nix that's a really non-trivial system on its own. It's not just the code that counts towards FOSS contributions.

This is true. But what if they change their mind? IMHO, this shows the huge dependency of all of the world’s open source software on a single company. (Microsoft, who owns GitHub). In this context, Radicle - as an alternative way of hosting the world’s OSS - makes a lot of sense to me.

> But what if they change their mind?

Then you can demand all your money back ; )

But seriously, it would be nice to distribute it. We already have other options coming slowly. The fediverse forges are being worked on and should be available in 2025, like https://forgejo.org/

Re: Radicle 1.0 – A local-first, P2P alternative to GitHub

#70

Surprised no one mentioned ForgeFed [0]: > ForgeFed is a federation protocol for software forges and code collaboration tools for the software development lifecycle and ecosystem. This includes repository hosting websites, issue trackers, code review applications, and more. ForgeFed provides a common substrate for people to create interoperable code collaboration websites and applications. It's based on ActivityPub […

Agreed. It was quite a disappointment seeing Radicle uses its own protocol instead.

Federated and P2P models are not the same thing.
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