Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#71

Post by bitbasher » Wed, Apr 16, 2025, 2:54 PM UTC

maigret wrote: post #70

guappa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always get sad when I read articles like "new open source trend!" that are done by scanning github. All the important stuff is not on github. The open github is mostly used by unfinished test projects.

Probably not fully wrong but Kubernetes and Node are both on GitHub.

There are important projects on GitHub. There are important projects not on GitHub. Both of these statements are true.

The crux is in the former. Should important projects be on GitHub? Should any projects be on GitHub?

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#72

Post by goku12 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 6:08 AM UTC

bitbasher wrote: post #58

FireBeyond wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that was valid twenty years ago, and they certainly burned many bridges. Now there's VSCode, TypeScript, WSL, Dapr and .NET, all open source.

VSCode itself was a malicious move by Microsoft to capitalize on Atom's success, followed by the acquisition of Github and the beheading of Atom. VSCode is "open source" with a walled garden of a marketplace. A quick look at how Microsoft is trying to kill competitors like Cursor (within the last week) by squeezing them out of the walled garden is... telling. These moves by Microsoft are not made in the spirit of ope…

Big corporations are not monoliths, despite them having an overall singular personality. I believe that vscode was a sincere attempt, at least in the beginning. While based on electron which was originally developed for Atom, vscode was always much more performant than atom.

But when it did gain a lot of developer attention, MS's true nature took hold and gradually converted it into the walled garden we see today. It was more subtle in the beginning - a few useful extensions were proprietary and wouldn't work on non-MS builds of vscode for some unspecified reason. It was like a gentle nudge to the developers to migrate to their opaque proprietary builds. Of course, we have seen that before, haven't we?

As an aside, if you like vscode but hate the manipulation, you should give the Eclipse Theia editor [1] a try. It's an almost complete reimplementation of vscode and is compatible with the extensions from OpenVSX. I believe that they have fairer alternatives for collaborative editing, etc. At least, they will spare you the manipulation.

[1] https://theia-ide.org/

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#73

Post by goku12 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 6:29 AM UTC

vanschelven wrote: post #15

I think the reasons mentioned in the article are to be taken seriously (unlike some of the other commenters here). Historically, Microsoft has shown itself as "not an ally to Open Source" to put it mildly. And there is a real tie-in to Github-the-platform (issues, workflows, etc) despite the fact that git repos themselves can be migrated away trivially (by design). Having said that, the alternatives they mention aren…

Issue tracking and PRs have good alternatives. Some dedicated solutions are frankly a lot better than GH - if only people didn't dislike discrete solutions.

On the other hand, network effects is a big problem - especially for open source projects. There isn't a good way to find projects that are scattered over thousands of small git hosts. There should be a project listing and search service (like freshmeat), but for hosted projects.

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#74

Post by rurban » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:42 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #66

Zambyte wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when a huge portion of GitHub is not Git (wiki, discussions, issues, ci...)

The wikis are backed by git repos, i just moved my project wiki from GitHub to self-hosted, took just minutes Issues and PR comments are another story though

Issues and PR are covered in git-bug bridges, easily mirrored to other forges. But since all other forges still suck compared to github, everybody uses github.

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#75

Post by guappa » Tue, Apr 22, 2025, 10:06 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #31

guappa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft was bad today as well. Or have we forgotten windows 11 sending screenshots?

You mean Microsoft Recall? That never sent screenshots anywhere.

There was an article yesterday of microsoft violating MIT license of some project… just in case you still refuse facts.

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#76

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 22, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

guappa wrote: post #75

simonw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Microsoft Recall? That never sent screenshots anywhere.

There was an article yesterday of microsoft violating MIT license of some project… just in case you still refuse facts.

[deleted]

Re: Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

#77

Post by guappa » Wed, Apr 23, 2025, 8:27 AM UTC

maigret wrote: post #70

guappa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always get sad when I read articles like "new open source trend!" that are done by scanning github. All the important stuff is not on github. The open github is mostly used by unfinished test projects.

Probably not fully wrong but Kubernetes and Node are both on GitHub.

They're highly corporate projects though.