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An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

github.com

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Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#91

A case study in passive aggressive behavior. Well done!

I agree with the sentiment of your comment, but I don't think it was necessary. There are better ways to put it, and several of them have already been made.

A higher level of discussion and low noise is something to shoot for on HN.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#92

> Before 2007, the way to participate in Open Source was fragmented. Each project had their own workflow, patches circulated in emails, issues were reported in a myriad ways, and if anyone wanted to contribute they had to figure out every project's rules. And it was much better IMO. Now we have a centralized website, in the hands of a single corporation, which requires nonfree JavaScript for much of the basic functio…

As someone who sometimes feels like the only one who remembers both the world before GitHub-style pull requests and the benefits that patches have over them, I can appreciate your ode to patches and the way that Git was designed to handle them. Not really excited about your no-true-Scotsman-ing, though.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#94

A case study in passive aggressive behavior. Well done!

I agree with the sentiment of your comment, but I don't think it was necessary. There are better ways to put it, and several of them have already been made. A higher level of discussion and low noise is something to shoot for on HN.

I disagree. The passive aggressive nature of the post needed to be pointed out. It is at the heart of what is wrong with this post. This was not just another letter that "pretty much anyone signing the Dear Github letter would also feel comfortable signing" as the OP would now like you to believe, but a passive aggressive response to the constructive criticism of the original, as evidenced by its tone, timing, and context.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#95
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment of your comment, but I don't think it was necessary. There are better ways to put it, and several of them have already been made. A higher level of discussion and low noise is something to shoot for on HN.

I disagree. The passive aggressive nature of the post needed to be pointed out. It is at the heart of what is wrong with this post. This was not just another letter that "pretty much anyone signing the Dear Github letter would also feel comfortable signing" as the OP would now like you to believe, but a passive aggressive response to the constructive criticism of the original, as evidenced by its tone, timing, and co…

> The passive aggressive nature of the post needed to be pointed out.

It has been, several times, but each in a much better way than the comment I was responding to did.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#96
post #84
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GitHub issue tracker does need to change. Does anyone like any bugtracker? That's a serious question. I've never used one that was a joy to use as a submitter (GH's issue tracker is one of the better ones, as it's so simple) or as a maintainer. As a maintainer I've found them really frustrating in general; JIRA has been one of the better ones for me. Any consensus on 'decent' trackers?

> I've never used [a bug tracker] that was a joy to use as a submitter [...] And it shouldn't be. If it is, people submit stupid bugs. When you get a notification of a bug, and you go read the bug, and try to reproduce it, you'll spend at least about five-ten minutes. The submitter then is obliged to spend at least about that much to report a proper bug report to an open source project where even the licence revokes…

A repro steps field is a must. If I was a contributor (and I am!) then I would look at the thousands of bugs coming through and focus on only those with those that have that filled in.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#97
> Before 2007, the way to participate in Open Source was fragmented. Each project had their own workflow, patches circulated in emails, issues were reported in a myriad ways, and if anyone wanted to contribute they had to figure out every project's rules.

Don't you still have to figure out every project's rules? Being on Github does not impose coding guidelines, testing requirements, documentation requirements, contributor license agreement policies, project management and governance system, code review process, dispute resolution process, and so on.

> Nowadays doing Open Source is infinitely easier thanks to you, GitHub. You've provided the tools and the social conventions to make those days a thing of the past.

Nearly every time over the past 30+ years that I've wanted to fix a bug or add a feature to some open source thing I've been using, and been thwarted, it was never figuring out the workflow, or patch procedure, or issue reporting that did me in, or figuring out the project's rules.

The big problem has usually been one or both of (1) the project has a bazillion files and it is not at all clear from the meager documentation and haphazard directory organization which are for the thing itself and which are for ancillary tools, and (2) it gets build errors that I can't resolve.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a huge mistake you're making there. Recovery time would be in the years because github is a hub . It became a focal point for a very large amount of activity, losing that hub would be an absolute disaster.

> losing that hub would be an absolute disaster. Not really. I agree GitHub is a great for open source, but its not essential. It would be a shame to lose the community, central location, user activity history, etc... but actively maintained projects would not suffer much. The recovery process would be as simple as pushing to a new remote and emailing the core developers. It would probably take a few months to proper…

    > The recovery process would be as simple
You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one.

It's like suggesting that it's not so bad if a massive forum shuts down by pointing out how easy it is to install phpbb and run an import script.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#99

> Before 2007, the way to participate in Open Source was fragmented. Um...ever hear of Source Forge ? Yeah, before 2007 there was another OSS hegemony. It failed to meet its users needs. It was replaced. So it goes.

And then they decided to inject adware into OSS installers. What a nightmare that was.

Re: An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

#100
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> losing that hub would be an absolute disaster. Not really. I agree GitHub is a great for open source, but its not essential. It would be a shame to lose the community, central location, user activity history, etc... but actively maintained projects would not suffer much. The recovery process would be as simple as pushing to a new remote and emailing the core developers. It would probably take a few months to proper…

> The recovery process would be as simple You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. It's like suggesting that it's not so bad if a massive forum shuts down by pointing out how easy it is to install phpbb and run an import script.

> You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one.

That's a straw man. I said it would take a few months to resolve the logistical issues surrounding migration.

Instead of caricaturing my thought process, could you please specify some of the "disastrious" difficulties you and the GP are concerned about?

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