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While I don't think github is deserving of "vicious accusations", I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of tomor

While I don't think github is deserving of "vicious accusations", I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of tomorrow. SourceForge.net was once an excellent and trustworthy steward of Open Source software projects. It was predicted by some folks in the free software community that it would not always be the case, and alternatives like Savannah were maintained in order to act as a hedge against that concern. I believe it is more than reasonable to assume that github will change, and it would be downright dangerous to assume that we can rely on a profit-motivated corporation (even one as cool as github currently is) to remain a trustworthy repository forever. So, sure, say nice things about github; I also think github is a good product, and I appreciate their free hosting for OSS projects. And, sure, you should use github if it provides value for you and you're willing to accept the price. But, don't ask me to trust they'll never change, because history indicates they will. It's probably also unfair to suggest that someone criticizing some valid concerns about github's current behavior, based on their own experience with Open Source projects hosted at github, are making "vicious accusations".

pbiggar 11y ago
Really? These aren't vicious? "My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks pricing model." "All the marketing material pimping GitHub’s LFS support [...]. I do not believe this is unintentional." "This is completely batshit. The side effect of this pernicious, greedy pricing model is to [...]" "I honestly couldn’t believe that GitHub would be willing to do something that shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought they could extract from some of their users"
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Nothing you wouldn't see in your average jwz rant, or really any rant.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  OK, those are maybe a little vicious, and probably not entirely fair. Still, the implication of not being able to fork a whole project from github if you use LFS is a pretty big deal.
  - pbiggar 11y ago
    GitHub has added features, and made their product better for their customers, but have not yet made it possible to use from everywhere on their platform. Perhaps that is a big deal (I don't use LFS and until recently neither did anyone else), but it's a far cry from what you said in your original comment, such as "I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of tomorrow." They implement a feature in a restricted manner and all of a sudden they're evil?
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      No, of course not. I have nowhere said github is evil. I've said it would be foolish to believe they never will be, because we have seen on a number of occasions that good companies turn bad (with varying definitions of "good" and "bad") when given sufficient monetary motivation to do so. SourceForge is the best past analog for github, and I think it's worth learning from history. SF.net didn't start out evil and untrustworthy; they started out good. Who's to say github won't do the same?
      - pbiggar 11y ago
        Its not that I believe good forever, but rather that I think it (it being your first comment) was a weird way to take the conversation. Like, why did that even occur to you in this context?
        SwellJoe 11y ago
        I left some of the early parts of my thought process out of the conversation. My thought process went something like this: "This is a feature that is currently, probably accidentally, causing vendor lock-in for github users, as there is no easy way to take a project in its entirety back out of github, if it has enabled this feature. That kind of lock-in has been used in the past, by vendors across a wide spectrum, for evil purposes. Github, were it ever to become evil, would find this the kind of thing that would screw users and produce profit." I don't believe github today has evil intent (though the author of the article seemingly does believe that), but I reserve the right to be skeptical of what the company's intentions will be in the future. Just as I should have been more skeptical of the the future intentions of SourceForge in the past. I think my position on this is entirely fair to github (which is a company and product I like), but I'm also trying to not to be a total sucker and make the same mistakes over and over again.

pbiggar 11y ago

Really? These aren't vicious? "My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks pricing model." "All the marketing material pimping GitHub’s LFS support [...]. I do not believe this is unintentional." "This is completely batshit. The side effect of this pernicious, greedy pricing model is to [...]" "I honestly couldn’t believe that GitHub would be willing to do something that shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought they could extract from some of their users"

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Nothing you wouldn't see in your average jwz rant, or really any rant.
SwellJoe 11y ago
OK, those are maybe a little vicious, and probably not entirely fair. Still, the implication of not being able to fork a whole project from github if you use LFS is a pretty big deal.
- pbiggar 11y ago
  GitHub has added features, and made their product better for their customers, but have not yet made it possible to use from everywhere on their platform. Perhaps that is a big deal (I don't use LFS and until recently neither did anyone else), but it's a far cry from what you said in your original comment, such as "I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of tomorrow." They implement a feature in a restricted manner and all of a sudden they're evil?
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    No, of course not. I have nowhere said github is evil. I've said it would be foolish to believe they never will be, because we have seen on a number of occasions that good companies turn bad (with varying definitions of "good" and "bad") when given sufficient monetary motivation to do so. SourceForge is the best past analog for github, and I think it's worth learning from history. SF.net didn't start out evil and untrustworthy; they started out good. Who's to say github won't do the same?
    - pbiggar 11y ago
      Its not that I believe good forever, but rather that I think it (it being your first comment) was a weird way to take the conversation. Like, why did that even occur to you in this context?
      - SwellJoe 11y ago
        I left some of the early parts of my thought process out of the conversation. My thought process went something like this: "This is a feature that is currently, probably accidentally, causing vendor lock-in for github users, as there is no easy way to take a project in its entirety back out of github, if it has enabled this feature. That kind of lock-in has been used in the past, by vendors across a wide spectrum, for evil purposes. Github, were it ever to become evil, would find this the kind of thing that would screw users and produce profit." I don't believe github today has evil intent (though the author of the article seemingly does believe that), but I reserve the right to be skeptical of what the company's intentions will be in the future. Just as I should have been more skeptical of the the future intentions of SourceForge in the past. I think my position on this is entirely fair to github (which is a company and product I like), but I'm also trying to not to be a total sucker and make the same mistakes over and over again.