This sounds like an indictment of git. It was supposed to make it easier for OSS developers to collaborate, but it turns out that you become bound to a monopoly like Microsoft. Why can't git users develop an easy to maintain server, like svn and fossil did, for example?
SDL Moves to GitHub
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Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#82> I know this is a trap, but I’m tired and don’t have the energy to be a server admin for something that’s held together with scotch tape and prayers when I’m really supposed to be writing OpenGL code.
OMG I feel heard. I feel like this is me.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why engage with a company that have proven themselves to be an enemy of Free Software? I'm not buying their "how do you do, fellow Linux users" facade.
So, to ask again, what is a specific way that choosing Github and Microsoft can hurt a software project in the future? I'm not asking in bad faith here. If there are such dangerous I would very much like to know them.
Look, I don't know. Speculating seems like a pointless exercise, and I'm already being downvoted for not liking Microsoft enough. I think I'm just about done with this website.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#84This sounds like an indictment of git. It was supposed to make it easier for OSS developers to collaborate, but it turns out that you become bound to a monopoly like Microsoft. Why can't git users develop an easy to maintain server, like svn and fossil did, for example?
Not sure this is an indictment of git. It still works great without central servers (unlike svn) but GitHub just makes it nicer for most people. And with GitHub the wiki is just a git repo so I’m guessing it would be easy to take with you. Not sure how the GitHub issues work so that would be a pain to move away from.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#85I've never heard of mercurial until this post, I've been using git for version control and it does the job really well. To those who use mercurial over git, why?
A much better UI. Git won because of the influence of the Linux kernel developers, that's all.
git won because it's default workflow is better than hg's
hg added stuff to match git's workflow but it isn't hg's default. The tutorials for hg all teach a decidedly inferior workflow to git.
ps: did a 20 person year long project in hg first, next project was git. Not going back if I can help it.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why engage with a company that have proven themselves to be an enemy of Free Software? I'm not buying their "how do you do, fellow Linux users" facade.
So, to ask again, what is a specific way that choosing Github and Microsoft can hurt a software project in the future? I'm not asking in bad faith here. If there are such dangerous I would very much like to know them.
SDL is a project with a long history, so let's pretend they move a backlog of 5,000 issues over to Github. Everything is great--now users can search, discuss, open, manage, etc. all these issues on a slick web UI. People are happy and things just work.
Now some years later there's a blog post from Github, "An update to our free tier" that outlines dramatic changes. It turns out Microsoft needs to make some changes to keep their shareholders happy with their returns. Now Github only allows 2,500 issues per repo on the free tier--you'll be wowed with slick graphs that show for 99.999% of users they'll never even know or notice this new limitation. People will post long comments on the Hackernews thread about how 2,500 issues ought to be enough for anybody and that Github/Microsoft actually love developers _more_ because they're willing to reduce the features than shut down the business.
And now SDL is in a bind.. a free project that generates no revenue now is facing a dilemma. Should they pony up real dollars to keep the history of their 25+ year old project? The cost of moving source control isn't trivial and is a huge ops burden that keeps the devs from doing real work... and cha-ching out comes the credit card, out goes a $100/mo then $200/mo etc, etc. charge.
This isn't some wild speculation, look at Microsoft products like Onedrive that clawed back huge free tiers of storage in the past. It's just an inevitability with commercial software that costs will rise and someone will be squeezed for money.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#87This is poignant for me, for reasons that have nothing to do with the technical merits of git vs mercurial, or github/Microsoft specifically as a company. > It’s not just Bugzilla. It’s the wiki, the mailing lists, the quaint little Mercurial web interface. The little open source thing that we rely on but no one is working on and probably has security holes in it. It’s all janky, and it causes developer friction. It…
You don't have to compete with hosted systems that have dedicated teams of developers and operations shipping features though. Linus Torvalds manages the development of the entire Linux kernel (millions of lines of code, thousands of contributors) with just an email client, text editor, and git CLI. I will say too don't expect these hosted services to free you of operations burden. On the contrary you're even less co…
I mean that may be technically true but practically without something Github-like it's very difficult to make it work.
If you started a FOSS project today with a mailing list wherein contributors mail you git patches, you would get exactly 0 contributors.
And maybe that's ok, maybe this is your baby, and if someone wants to push code to it they can learn how to email a patch to you.
But for many developers, they do want to have some of the load taken off of them by other developers. They want to reap that benefit of OSS.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This seems to sum up the biggest pain point that drives people away from OSS. Not knowledge, not skill, not price, but the total experience of a nice piece of software that lets you get the work you actually want to get done... done. This is why I continue to be fascinated by FreeBSD, I don't use it for much but when I do, what I'm trying to do almost always works right out of the box. My point is that is all comes…
What are you using FreeBSD for? I imagine it's quite good at some things, but isn't that range kind of limited? You need to have the precise set of hardware that's well supported and then use it for precisely the thing it supports well.
In my experience of using FreeBSD for twenty or so years, for the most part, if it's a major vendor and a few years old then it's supported.
It is true that FreeBSD is slower to get new hardware support but I actually like that, it's one of the major reasons why things just work in FreeBSD. You put the work in upfront, select the right hardware and FreeBSD will serve you well for years with very little effort.
They aren't chasing some imaginary/political/technological dream they are delivering high quality software using tried and tested methods.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wonder why they did not pick GitLab since it is significantly better for FOSS ideals and has the same niceness of GitHub
> has the same niceness of GitHub Debatable. As a previous paid customer, I have never been a fan of GitLab, I've always found it slow, buggy and of confusing design language. YMMV.
I think what was meant is that at least parts of GitLab are FOSS and can be installed locally which in not the case with github.
Re: SDL Moves to GitHub
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree. Git wasn't the clear winner when GitHub launched - and in fact the entire category of distributed version control was still proving itself. I remember the GitHub team investing huge amounts of effort into convincing people to use git and teaching them how to do it - one of the four co-founders (Scott) was dedicated to that effort full-time.
git was the clear winner when github released.
Not really, lots of folks were using mercurial with BitBucket which didn't support Git at the time. Bazaar and Launchpad were also pretty common. I remember at one point around 2009-2010 I was semi-regularly using CVS, Subversion, Mercurial, Bazaar and Git.