22 ms·

Dear GitHub

• aesthetics1 11y ago
  Each and every suggestion is a sane and much needed improvement.
  • Royalaid 11y ago
    Especially the +1
    • maligree 11y ago
      +1. Fix this.
      • dtm5011 11y ago
        me too
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    • 131hn 11y ago
      Best github support thread ever : https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/9 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/9 (scroll down)
      • shurcooL 11y ago
        I made a similar issue here: https://src.sourcegraph.com/issues-playground/.tracker/26 https://src.sourcegraph.com/issues-playground/.tracker/26
    • jcastro 11y ago
      I don't think a +1 button would help. Google Code had stars in order to encourage people to +1 something without creating noise and then instead of +1 comments you got +1 comments AND people yelling at them for using it wrong.
  • slavik81 11y ago
    I completely agree with some of these suggestions, but it doesn't need all of them. If you really need a heavily-customizable issue tracking system, you can do anything you want in Bugzilla or Jira. Every checkbox, dropdown and mandatory field they add makes GitHub Issues less attractive to those who don't need it. Simplicity is a feature, and it's one that you sacrifice as you make your software more flexible.
    • xirdstl 11y ago
      I guess it depends who is logging issues. If I'm experiencing some bug that I need fixed and motivated enough to log an issue at all, I'm probably motivated enough to fill out a few more fields.
• kmfrk 11y ago
  Being a maintainer on a project with some minor community on GitHub is such a garbage experience. It’s pretty neat as a general user, but at least you get the impression with BitBucket that they prioritize productivity and project management. And the task system hasn't received any significant updates since their inception - which is a shame, because tasks are an awesome invention, they just have to be implemented awfully with issues. I also remember that we recently had to move the entire decision-making process to Slack instead where I suggested we just use the emoji voting system to make our decisions with.
• anarchy8 11y ago
  I feel like there is a great opportunity right now for anyone to make a Github replacement. Sounds like a lot of these features are sorely needed at the moment. Why has Github been complacent?
  • seangrant 11y ago
    Because Github succeeded in being the Git repo host. I think you're on track with saying their complacency is an opportunity and I wouldn't doubt to see a Github killer born this year.
  • kmfrk 11y ago
    They've pretty much been profitable since the start unlike other start-ups who may be more eager to please users/customers.
  • jmsdnns 11y ago
    Why not bitbucket?
    • zabuni 11y ago
      Bitbucket requires payment for larger numbers of collaborators. Github requires payment for private repositories. Open source requires unlimited collaborators, and no one wants to pay.
      • ddbennett 11y ago
        Public (Open Source) repositories on Bitbucket do not have a limit to the number of contributors.
    • briandear 11y ago
      Bitbucket's UX and integrations are worse than Github.
      • dvdgsng 11y ago
        That's almost entirely subjective. YMMV.
• Zikes 11y ago
  Issue spam (in the literal sense) definitely needs addressed as well: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYI31g1UQAUXQbs.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYI31g1UQAUXQbs.png
  • pekk 11y ago
    It's my project, why can't I just delete issues like any other bug tracker?
    • Zikes 11y ago
      The issues were deleted in fairly short order, but their notifications were still sent out to all repository watchers and persisted beyond the issue deletion. Also, most issues were generated mere seconds apart from accounts less than a day old. So the issue isn't that GitHub didn't let them clean up the issues after the fact, but that there were no a) rate limiting options, b) user reputation options, or c) issue submission filtering options. Any one of those three would have reduced the impact significantly.
• kmfrk 11y ago
  Being a maintainer on a project with some minor community on GitHub is such a garbage experience. It’s pretty neat as a general user, but at least you get the impression with BitBucket that they prioritize productivity and project management. And the task system hasn't received any significant updates since their inception - which is a shame, because tasks are an awesome invention, they just have to be implemented awfully with issues. I also remember that we recently had to move the entire decision-making process to Slack instead where I suggested we just use the emoji voting system to make our decisions with. What really gets to me is how adamantly GitHub has ignored all the people who've gone on about this forever. Last time they seemed to care marginally was when jacobian finally managed to twist their arm and get them to implement the Close Issue feature, because one repo issue was a radioactive pit of abuse and invective.
  • mpdehaan2 11y ago
    I wonder if the whole "managerless culture" is to blame and is unfixable? (In other words, why hasn't SOMEONE had this thought about issues in N years? One is they deem it not a problem, another could be that they think to optimize for the filer, and the maintainer doesn't matter, or... there's no organization at all?) There could be (theoretically) no one to make anyone do anything, and perhaps the issue tracker is either a quagmire of a codebase or something no one wants to touch because something else is more exciting? That's one theory. My other theory is they spend a lot of time on scaling problems and/or GitHub enterprise (which I haven't seen) -- and don't really do features anymore. But it does feel there is no vision for changes to GitHub (maybe they think it's "solved") and it's ceasing to evolve in noticeable ways in any direction. Can't really be sure. But I find it interesting. Again, the core is good. It's just curious to watch it so closely and not see the needle moving in any perceptible way.
    • kmfrk 11y ago
      I like the theory of the flat-office culture or philosophy affecting this. Then again, it could be the kind of anarchic Libertarian or laissez-faire bent that we see with reddit that makes it exceedingly different to grant special permissions and privileges, especially across subreddits/issues/users/orgs. Or maybe user experience just doesn't matter for today's start-ups; maybe we've passed the Overton window for start-ups deciding it's not worth caring about their users. A lot of the time, I feel like more of a user+ than a(n) (super)admin on my own repos. I might as well have the permissions and tools to ruin my own project - in the name of pure unadulterated freedom if for no other reason. The dashboard and notification system have always been POS, too, so it might just be that everything that basically isn't tethered to a GUI is on the bottom of the totem pole.
• spellboots 11y ago
  :+1:
  • snickmy 11y ago
    ahahaha
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• mplewis 11y ago
  Bitbucket kills GitHub issues with these two features: - Multiple assignees for an issue - An "Approve" button so that maintainers can stamp a PR with the seal of approval
  • diezge 11y ago
    Surprised I didn't see my personal favourite mentioned - the unlimited free private repos!
    • minimaxir 11y ago
      To be fair, GitHub has to make money. None of the complaints are about the GitHub business model, which is IMO pretty fair.
      • diezge 11y ago
        True, I guess with Atlassian it's different as their actual flagship product is Jira (and I assume the people who buy the paid-for BB packages are loyal to BB due to things like the free repos so it evens itself out).
      • hobarrera 11y ago
        GitLab offers pretty much the same as GitHub and is free (as in FLOSS). Their hosted version also offers free unlimited private repositories.
  • fidget 11y ago
    Github kills Bitbucket with this one feature: uptime
    • polysaturate 11y ago
      ...and speed in my experience. Both the web UI and push/pull.
  • earlz 11y ago
    I just wish that bitbucket's UI was half as smooth as Github. Sure, it's not terrible, but it has a lot of rough edges.
• shmerl 11y ago
  It's also annoying that Github sometimes is missing some basic features like attachments to bug reports and comments for instsance. All mature bug trackers have such feature.
• rahelzer 11y ago
  Do the undersigned send any money to github? It might be better to phrase your demand in the form of a question, "how much can we pay you to do this work for us?"
  • hellofunk 11y ago
    GitHub is a service, not a contracted vendor for work. There's a big difference.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      • dikaiosune 11y ago
        They aren't a charity, but they have positioned themselves in that direction by targeting (and capturing) so many open source projects.
      • hellofunk 11y ago
        You'll have to explain why you think they are a charity, because I see no application of that term in a rational way.
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
  • Zikes 11y ago
    GitHub got to where it is today thanks to the network effect that the undersigned helped create. If open source were to do a mass migration to another provider, many of the contributors whom are paying for private repositories and other features would most likely follow.
  • rmchugh 11y ago
    GitHub's success is based on its community. Simple fairness says the community should be respected and listened to, simple business says if the community doesn't get something back, it will get pissed and go somewhere else.
• johnlbevan2 11y ago
  NB: Duplicate post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904693
  • dang 11y ago
    Since they're both near the top we might as well treat the later post (which is the other one) as the duplicate.
    • minimaxir 11y ago
      The post with ~110 points was killed in favor of the ~50 point post at the time. In that case using time as the tie breaker might not be the best since people will have to upvote again.
      • dang 11y ago
        In general you're right, but this story was guaranteed not to lack for upvotes. Indeed it went to #1 as soon as we buried the other one as a dupe. I realize it's not a big deal, and it's actually a great sign about the HN community that almost no one cares much about karma. But we do want to try harder to give the original submitter credit, because then the incentive is aligned with what's best for the community: finding good stories that haven't been posted yet.
• iwwr 11y ago
  Is there an issue tracking system out there that works on top of the Github issue system?
  • woogley 11y ago
    waffle.io does this, but having to run on top of GitHub means it can't really fix problems like voting. But it can offer better search and things like that
  • rohamg 11y ago
    We would love your thoughts on ZenHub.io [1] - fully integrated issue tracking, +1, estimates, burndown charts, kanban boards, even a personal todo list - a lot of the features asked for here, right within the GitHub interface and presented a lot more cleanly than competing products. Disclosure: I work on ZenHub :) [1] https://www.zenhub.io https://www.zenhub.io
    • iwwr 11y ago
      Looks nice. How do I add additional organizations after the first one? Can I send an invite to other organization managers to make themselves available for ZenHub? Thanks!
      • Cassidy57 11y ago
        Each organization is treated separately, all you need to do is install the extension and visit a repo of the other org. From there you'll start a 2 week trial and you'll be able to invite your team members and managers :)
  • shurcooL 11y ago
    This tracker app [0] is designed to be pretty modular, and there's a service implementation that uses the GitHub API client [1]. In theory, you could modify it and expand it to cover your custom needs for issue tracking. [0] https://src.sourcegraph.com/apps/tracker https://src.sourcegraph.com/apps/tracker [1] https://godoc.org/src.sourcegraph.com/apps/tracker/issues/githubapi https://godoc.org/src.sourcegraph.com/apps/tracker/issues/gi...
• Jyaif 11y ago
  I suspect they are focusing on developing their enterprise offering. Anyway, I found that http://feathub.com/ http://feathub.com/ addressed my frustration about the absence of a voting system.
• mpdehaan2 11y ago
  While I don't maintain Ansible anymore, +9 billion on this. GitHub is hard at scale. GitHub is fantastic because everyone is on it, but the issue system has not improved since inception - and I felt the UI changes have actually stepped back. We had to implement our own bot to comment on tickets that did not appear to follow a template, and I would have given a kingdom for a template that let people filter their own tickets into whether they were bugs or feature requests or doc items. We also had a repo of common replies we copy and pasted manually (this because there was so much traffic and me replying quickly would likely tick someone off - but this too could have been eliminated mostly with a good template system). Having this built-in (maybe I could have picked a web extension) would have also been helpful. So many hours lost that could have been features or bugfixes - and by many, I mean totally weeks, if not cumulative months. GitHub does the world a great service, and I love it, but this would help tons. I always got a response when I filed a ticket - ALWAYS - but a lot of them were in the "we'll take that under consideration" type vein. I feel opening GitHub RFEs up to votes is probably not the answer to serve the maintainer side of the equation, since users outnumber maintainers, but these needs to be done and would greatly improve OSS just based on expediting velocity. If you don't use the GitHub tracker you lose out on a lot of useful tickets. However, if you use it, you are pretty much using the most unsophisticated tracker out there. It's good because there's a low barrier to entry, but just having a template system - a very very very basic one, would do wonders. A final idea is that GitHub really should have a mailing list or discussion system. Google Groups sucks for moderation, and I THINK you could probably make something awesome. Think about how Trac and the Wiki were integrated, for instance, and how you could automatically hyperlink between threads and tickets. The reason I say this is often GitHub creates a "throw code at project" methodology, which is bound to upset both contributor and maintainer - when often a "how should I do this" discussion first saves work. Yet joining a Google Group is a lot of commitment for people, and they probably don't want the email. Something to think about, perhaps. Also think about StackOverflow. It's kind of a wasteland of questions, but if there was a users-helping-users type area, it would reduce tickets that were not really bugs, but really requests for help. These take time to triage, and "please instead ask over here and join this list" causes people pain. I love all the work to keep up site reliability, maybe I'd appreciate more/better analytics, but I totally say this wearing a GitHub octocat shirt at the moment.
• rmchugh 11y ago
  A shame that GitHub aren't more responsive to the community that enables their success when they make such a big deal of their openness. It is also our own fault that we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on a single provider of a relatively simple service. That said, I'm extremely grateful to the platform for enabling collaboration on open source and to the company for its work on Git, Resque etc. GitHub's strategy is to open source everything except the business critical stuff, but it seems to me that their business is in enterprise support rather than in actual software. Perhaps they should just open source the whole platform and count on their service business being enough to carry the company?
• neilgrey 11y ago
  Yup, I love GH, use it every day, but issue management is the pits. It'd be really nice if I could custom sort the queue of issues so that I know what's next up in my queue of things to do; right now I've got 5 tags called NextUp:1 -> NextUp:5 on each repo; this takes way more manual updating than a simple drag/drop widget. Like they mentioned, having a voting system would be super useful for knowing what matters -- I cringe every time I leave a +1, so I've gotten into the habit of at least adding a comment after it --- but the premise and the pain are the same.
  • mjevans 11y ago
    I agree with voting. I also think that voting systems should only have /positive/ inputs. (I agree with the content of a given statement/post). Negatives belong as a concretely expressed /contrasting opinion/ which can, it's self, be 'agreed with' (voted for).
  • ma138 11y ago
    We created ZenHub - https://www.zenhub.io/ https://www.zenhub.io/ - specifically to solve these problems. The addition of a task board in the GitHub interface allows you to communicate both the priority and progress of GitHub issues. While adding a +1 button to comments allows feedback without clutter. Best of all, it is free for Open Source :) You can read more on why we created ZenHub here - https://medium.com/axiom-zen/introducing-zenhub-2-0-c352a12c2ec2#.qd71ypvkl https://medium.com/axiom-zen/introducing-zenhub-2-0-c352a12c... and get in touch with us via our public support repo here - https://github.com/zenhubio/support https://github.com/zenhubio/support I hope we can help improve your GitHub experience!
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• kiloreux 11y ago
  My experience with Github support is terrible, if not one of the worst, I once had an issue and contacted their support and it took them 1 month to respond to me (literally) I was really surprised by that.
  • hk__2 11y ago
    I contacted them dozens of times in 4 years and never had to wait more than a day. I guess you’ve been unlucky that time.
  • daniel-levin 11y ago
    I had the opposite experience. I am on the free student plan for private repos. It has to be renewed annually. It wasn't clear to my how to do so. I asked, and Scott from Github support contacted me in under a minute and sorted it out. I was very impressed.
• monkmartinez 11y ago
  I do not operate a popular OSS project, but I have experienced the +1 spam and it sucks. The suggestions, in my opinion seem rational. Interesting side note: With the exception of Selenium, most of signees are maintainers of JS/HTML OSS projects. I wonder if we could objectively compare JS to <lang> projects in terms of the problems mentioned in the document. For example, there is a strong correlation between +1'ers and JS repos vs. Python or vice versa. Perhaps, we could walk away with JS devs are more chatty than CPP developers when discussing issues... I don't know, just a thought.
  • dikaiosune 11y ago
    The same question about JS repos struck me. I suspect that if you write a shared letter then you just ask your network to sign it instead of <random other person from different ecosystem>, but I would be curious to know if these grievances are disproportionate in different communities.
    • stingraycharles 11y ago
      I'd like to think that someone who writes this kind of letter would take such a thing into account. It's really possible that there is a strong correlation between a language and people being more involved with Github. I wouldn't be surprised that many developers from other language ecosystems just don't care.
  • ketralnis 11y ago
    I think it's just monkey see->monkey do. As soon as one person said +1, everyone that saw it thought that that's just how you voted for stuff. It's the same reason you see comments on HN or reddit that just say "This." or that if you leave your shoes by the door, everyone else will do the same. I doubt these people keep doing it if you ask them not to.
    • maxaf 11y ago
      There's an old story about this man who stood quietly next to a closed door in Moscow, said nothing to no one, and did nothing else of interest. Eventually others joined him, and before long a queue has formed. No one knew what they were standing in line for. Monkey see - monkey do.
• jasode 11y ago
  The bullet points of complaints feel like a continuation of Linus Torvald's refusal of github pull requests in May 2012.[1] Taken all together, it seems like github is on a path of alienating their most valuable members. Github was unresponsive to Linus' feature requests and it turns out that theme continues almost 3 years later. If github plans to evolve into a full-featured ALM[2] like MS Team Foundation or JIRA instead of being relegated to being just a "dumb" disk backup node for repositories, they have to get these UI workflow issues fixed. [1]https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_lifecycle_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_lifecycle_manageme...
  • treve 11y ago
    I don't see anything wrong with going after the massive amount of smaller project with simple needs, instead of the few large projects & popular projects with very specific needs. If github evolves to the projects you're mentioning, you'll surely alienate the many more casual users. I personally hate working with the bloated applications you mention.
• athenot 11y ago
  I have mixed feelings about these requests. Yes it would be nice to have these extra features in GitHub. Its issue handling has always been a bit light on the workflow side—but IMHO has made up for it with a pleasant way to organize conversation around issues. The simple and smooth UX is part of what makes GitHub so great. For the opposite side of the spectrum, there's the Bitbucket+Jira combo. It is customizable to a PM's heart's content, and in the process can become a mess of a tool.
  • alfonsodev 11y ago
    I have mixed feelings about custom fields, I'd like Github UI to become as burden as Jira, but in the other hand 'reactions' as Slack or Facebook are implementing would make much easier to follow a discussion without so much scroll down.
• deathanatos 11y ago
  This, I feel, is the most important bug, even though it precedes the list: > We’ve gone through the only support channel that you have given us either to receive an empty response or even no response at all. We have no visibility into what has happened with our requests, or whether GitHub is working on them. I'd like to call out that the GitHub user @isaacs maintains an unofficial repository[1] where the issues are "Issues for GitHub". It's not much more than a token of goodwill from a user to open a place like that to organize bugs (GitHub: you are lucky you have such a userbase!), but it's the best thing I know of for "has someone else thought of this?"[2]. Many of the issues that have been filed there are excellent ideas. [1]: https://github.com/isaacs/github https://github.com/isaacs/github [2]: though I'd say if you also think about it, you should also go through the official channel, even if just to spam them so they know people want that feature.
• jondubois 11y ago
  I like GitHub issues as they are. I wouldn't like to force people to adhere to a particular format when reporting problems. I find it strange that some project maintainers get annoyed when people use the issues section to post questions. What's wrong with that? A question can reveal design failures about your software... Maybe if your software was better designed, people wouldn't be asking the question to begin with. I do think there should be a +1/like button though.
  • rco8786 11y ago
    The request was to allow maintainers to define a template or have the ability to add fields. So the formats would be on a project by project basis. > Maybe if your software was better designed, people wouldn't be asking the question to begin with. This is just silly.
    • jondubois 11y ago
      Not so. For my project, I noticed on several occasions that different people were asking the same questions and that prompted me to rethink the design of the project a bit and it greatly improved the community engagement as a result.
      • anarazel 11y ago
        Sure, sometimes that's the case. In many other situations it's just people being almost comically lazy.
      • rco8786 11y ago
        That's my point. Questions are a good thing. You don't "design away" user's questions.
  • detaro 11y ago
    Why should maintainers not get annoyed if people ignore the proper support channels (which often have a great community of users to help) and further burden the developers instead?
• xpaulbettsx 11y ago
  While I applaud the initiative, it's also a pretty strong indictment of the JavaScript / node.js community that there is not even a single non-male OSS maintainer on this list of important JS projects. What is being done in the JS community by those who lead it to make progress on this and who is leading that charge? If the answer is "Nobody", why is that true?
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • arasmussen 11y ago
    Why did this get downvoted? Ugh.
    • qaq 11y ago
      Hmm what does this have to do a) with topic b) with node.js?
  • voltagex_ 11y ago
    You could open a pull request on the list itself.
  • dvdgsng 11y ago
    Tell us, why does the gender matter in this debate? Sounds rather sexist to me.
  • jessaustin 11y ago
    ...pretty strong indictment... This is like blaming the schools for poverty. Yes it would be wonderful if Node module maintainers were a perfectly representative blend of all the races, genders, religions, and orientations on Earth. The gap between that vision of Node and the one we have pales in comparison to the gap between that vision of Earth and the one we inhabit.
  • pluma 11y ago
    There is plenty being done in JS/node communities (plural! because there is more than one) at all levels. It just turns out that change doesn't happen over night. Conferences already reverse discriminate by aiming for a gender balance in speakers (despite the submissions they chose from being very imbalanced). User groups have adopted CoCs to protect female and minority members. There are even female-only special interest groups. There's also this: https://github.com/nodejs/inclusivity https://github.com/nodejs/inclusivity Besides, the list you're referring to is not an exhaustive list of important JS projects. It's a list of maintainers who have signed this open letter. What does their gender add to the conversation? Inclusivity in programming comunities and JS/node in particular has drastically improved throughout the past decade. But structural changes take a long time to show results. The distribution you're seeing today represents what was being done in the past, not what is happening today.
• asb 11y ago
  There's been no mention of phabricator yet so I thought I'd give it a shout out. It's used by LLVM, FreeBSD, Blender, Wikimedia and others and I love it. It's under very active development and even if it doesn't solve every issue in this letter, by using an open source tool for development you of course have the option to customize it to the needs of your community.
  • robmaister 11y ago
    Phabricator is pretty great overall, love that it's under such active development. Only gripe is that some parts of it are still highly coupled, so doing something like adding a custom button to the text editor view or writing your own internal application very quickly becomes a huge mess, an effect that is multiplied by the active development and no promise of stable public APIs. Your experience will be great as long as you don't try and do anything custom, at least for the next year or two.
  • zzzeek 11y ago
    I'm looking very closely at Phabricator, it looks quite nice.
  • dethos 11y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't knew about it. After a quick read, it seems to be a very interesting alternative.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • aidenn0 11y ago
    Phabricator is great! I host it for a couple of my projects. I love it, and it was easy to setup. Seriously: if you have a web server (or php hosting) anywhere, try out phabricator; it's easy to setup, and you can even point it at a github (or any public git/svn/hg) repository to fiddle around with its features, as hosting the repository inside phabricator is not mandatory.
  • neandrake 11y ago
    Another shoutout here to phabricator. I started hosting it internally at the company a year ago and have near 100% adoption from developers for code reviews, additionally using the task/issue tracking for some projects.
• AndyKelley 11y ago
  I don't like the general feel of these suggestions. It sounds like more bureaucratic features, the lack of which is a big part of why GitHub is so pleasant. Making an issue or a pull request feels like having a casual chat with the project maintainers. Adding fields and other hoops to jump through puts distance between people.
  • lorenzfx 11y ago
    I guess for maintainers of popular projects, everybody's "casual chat" (by people who did not read CONTRIBUTING.txt, do not supply the version of relevant software they are using etc.) is not as fun as it is for you.
• pekk 11y ago
  GitHub also does not allow deletion of bullshit issues.
• beshrkayali 11y ago
  I do like Github, and I understand how it makes the entire process of maintaining a code repo a lot easier, but what I'd genuinely like to know is why don't big projects just move to their own thing? I understand that there isn't a single solution that exactly matches what Github has, and that maintaining your own git server + git management/issues/etc.. app is a pain, but I see it as the only real solution. Developing in the open can't be done on platforms where restrictions apply, and they do apply. I'm saying this with no intention of sounding like a jerk, but 18 project maintainers and/or developer need to write an open letter to get Github to give'em a "me too" button? I understand the issue, but i still find it rather silly. The only aspect I could think of where Github has the pro is the community of developers it has, but does it really matter that much? Especially for established/big projects that probably don't care about the fork/stars numbers, or the random look around-ers that pass by.
  • tyre 11y ago
    > I understand that there isn't a single solution that exactly matches what Github has, and that maintaining your own git server + git management/issues/etc.. app is a pain You outlined exactly why people don't build their own or use another system. Github is the best there is. That doesn't mean it doesn't have problems, but if your company/project/expertise isn't focused in collaborative development and/or version control, you're just distracting yourself by building your own. The authors are not saying "we can build a better Github." They have complaints and would like them resolved, but don't see a good way of having that happen.
    • beshrkayali 11y ago
      > Github is the best there is. Doesn't matter really as it's still a locked platform. The argument they're making is that they're developing in the open and they'd like some sort of expedited treatment because of the size of the project or because they're doing OSS. I don't think those two can go hand in hand all the way.
    • jgraham 11y ago
      The point about GitHub today is that being "the best there is" is as irrelevant to its continued success as "being the best microblogging service there is" is to Twitter's. Open Source projects move to GitHub because their users are all already familiar with GitHub from all the other open source projects that use it. That means those people already have a user account, know how to check out your code, are able to file issues, and can probably make contributions even if they're not very familiar with git, for example using one of the GitHub integrated GUIs that will handhold you through making a PR. If you are an odd-duck project using some other infrastructure you don't have any of these advantages, and the barrier to entry for potential contributors is correspondingly larger. For users having a near-monoculture of source code hosting has all the same advantages but reversed; it means they only need a single account, and that every process they learn — all of which are well documented across the web — is fully transferable between projects. It also gives them a recognised place to show off their own code, and increasingly people are asking for a link to a GitHub profile as part of a hiring process. This even happens at Mozilla, an organisation that doesn't actually use GitHub for its most prominent projects (but increasingly does for new things; the advantages I mention here are valuable even when you already have everything set up for using something else). Another benefit enjoyed by projects that use GitHub is the plethora of tools designed to integrate with it; again little to do with the intrinsic merits of the tool and everything to do with network effects (although I will allow that the API is generally very good). So if you chose an alternative to GitHub you might miss out on IDE integration, Travis, landscape.io, reviewable.io, or any number of other third party tools that either exclusively work with GitHub or have smoother integration in the case of such a well-worn path. Tools like reviewable.io are interesting because they are clearly making up for deficiencies in the GitHub platform itself. In that case it's the totally, utterly, useless code review functionality in stock GitHub. And there are many other things in the site that could stand to be improved. For example the notification system that either spams you with every comment from a repo or ensures that you miss anything you don't check via the web UI. The permissions system that makes it impossible to add commits to a PR against your own repository without losing all the metadata associated with the PR. The issue tracker that doesn't allow assigning issues to anyone other than a project admin. But, from a business point of view, none of these things matter because GitHub isn't popular for being the best. It's popular for having been good enough for long enough to become ubiquitous, and now not being so bad as to negate the enormous network effects. So the core of the problem here is not whether or not the authors, or anyone else, can build a better GitHub. The problem is that even if they could it would have to be wildly, dramatically, better to even provide competition. And so people, without meaningful leverage, resort to writing open letters and hoping that they can drum up enough noise that someone at GitHub chooses to care.
• aaron695 11y ago
  After the whole incident where they deleted forks of a project without notice, due to their belief on what is and is not appropriate words to use in code without an apology I think we really need to re-assess GitHub in general. Their 'control' of code and lack of respect to the people running projects is very disappointing and they seem to not want to move forward on the issues. I'm surprised the open community is allowing this de-facto ownership of the worlds code and how it's written to take place, I'm not so sure they are a benevolent dictator. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150802/20330431831/github-nukes-repository-over-use-word-retard.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150802/20330431831/githu...
• guessmyname 11y ago
  Interesting petition, and I agree with it; but I wonder why are all projects mentioned in the _Signed by_ section based on JavaScript? I know there are other languages involved in some of those projects like C++ and Java in Selenium and PhantomJS but this specific thing in the document makes me believe that only JavaScript developers _(at least the ones using GitHub)_ are more prone to complain than other type of developers.
  • hboon 11y ago
    > why are all projects mentioned in the _Signed by_ section based on JavaScript? I also noticed that most of the repositories seem to be based on Javascript. > JavaScript developers _(at least the ones using GitHub)_ are more prone to complain than other type of developers. My guess: Based on numerous sources [1][2], Javascript is the most popular language on GitHub. So there are more developers, more repositories, more activity involved. It just happens that one (or a few of them) talked this through and gather up other folks in their community. [1] http://githut.info http://githut.info [2] https://github.com/blog/2047-language-trends-on-github https://github.com/blog/2047-language-trends-on-github
  • sotojuan 11y ago
    It's simple: This was made by a JS developer who shared it on Twitter and whose followers/community friends are more likely to be JS developers.
• dragonsh 11y ago
  Look at kallithea SCM at http://kallithea-scm.org/ http://kallithea-scm.org/, we have used it and in most cases it works well. Also it supports both git and mercurial. Python should learn a lesson when they decided to move their repository to closed source system like github. But obviously as people use Facebook, developers use github for the same reason, network effect.
• ssmoot 11y ago
  +1 to the notification spam. Being @sam on github sucks sometimes. And as far as I can figure out there's no way to set watching/following/notifications to opt-in only. So every time someone who knows a "Sam" uses @sam incorrectly in an issue I get notified, have to unsubscribe, ignore, and leave a polite message to let them know they're doing it wrong. It's really lame that they've never fixed this.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• jballanc 11y ago
  It's 2016, and GitHub is stagnant. GitHub used to bill itself as "Social Coding", but the "Network" graph has not seen ANY updates since its original introduction in April of 2008. Issues has seen very few updates. Even the OSS projects that GitHub uses internally have grown stagnant as GitHub runs on private, internal forks and maintainership passes to non-GitHub-employed individuals (e.g. https://github.com/resque/resque/issues/1372 https://github.com/resque/resque/issues/1372). The word "Social" no longer appears on GitHub's landing page. They're chasing some other goal...whatever it is.
  • fweespeech 11y ago
    Yeah, I'd honestly like for a website that actually focused on "Social Coding" rather than the Enterprise Money that GitHub is focusing on. Tbh, that is what GitLab, Bitbucket does also which is why they really are only effective as replacements rather than improvements upon. I wonder if threads like this keep popping up if people will say "Fuck it" and build an OSS Github clone that focus on being the Reddit of Code/Git rather than another Version Control Enterprise product. I'd do it but I'm an asshole, not a community builder. EDIT: Since I'm in the edit window and its complaining I submit too fast: Tbh, the problem with Kallithea SCM and Trac is they aren't really built to generate network effects. They both suffer from the same problem as literally every other unsuccessful Github competitor has: 1) You need something built to generate a network effect first, other considerations second, to successfully compete. 2) You need to then leverage that network to chase Corporate money. GitHub seems to be neglecting #1 in favor of #2 and that imbalance is an opportunity if someone can exploit it. However, that requires someone who is good at being a community builder rather than a software dev.
    • dragonsh 11y ago
      Recently even Python language planned to move its repositories to github.com for network effect, instead of helping projects like kallithea SCM and trac by partnering with software conservancy or gnu. Python should learn a lesson when they decided to move their repository to closed source system like github. But obviously as people use Facebook, developers use github for the same reason, network effect. I hope they change the decision to support one of the project like Kallithea or trac by migrating their system and build network effects.
• kkoch986 11y ago
  I would just love if they could add target _blank on all the links in comments and issues. I'm constantly navigating away from the issue to view links in question and then realizing the tab with the issue is gone.
• some-guy 11y ago
  I work at a large company with a central GitHub Enterprise instance, and we use GitHub as a code-reviewing and code-hosting platform. Everything else (including build-automation) is integrated through web-hooks to Atlassian tools for many of the reasons noted in this letter. It works for us, but I am hopeful that GitHub will listen and maybe someday we can have everything on there.
• runn1ng 11y ago
  All this problems seem to me like good problems to have. They all seem to stem from the fact that github is too successful. And too many people are on github and too many people are using it, often in wrong ways. Of course github should solve them all. But still, it's still better to have problems with too many people and too much interest, than have the opposite problem - dying platform that people are leaving (see: sourceforge and Google Code).
  • Mickydtron 11y ago
    Being too successful is of course a good problem for github to have, but for the individual maintainers, it's still a source of frustration that can lead to maintainer burnout. If too many people get frustrated and leave, then it can quickly turn from a problem of too many people to having too few.
  • pvorb 11y ago
    It's not a good problem for the Open Source community after all.
• orf 11y ago
  I've felt the same way. The worst bit is notifications, so I get a notification that someone replied to an issue I opened. How do I get there? It's not in my notification page, I have to go to the email and click the link from there. Things get missed. GitHub needs to step it up. They got to the top first, but can they stay there?
• arasmussen 11y ago
  I work on a very relevant project called Product Pains. React Native, the open source project, is using Product Pains instead of GitHub issues for bug reports and feature requests. This is because there were thousands of open issues and, just as this document mentions, it's impossible to organize them. The comments are all "+1" and it's really hard to tell what's important and what's just noise. If you take a look at https://productpains.com/product/react-native?tab=top https://productpains.com/product/react-native?tab=top you'll see the power of being able to vote on these issues. So why's Product Pains relevant? 1. It's a temporary alternative to GitHub issues. I'm guessing GitHub will get to adding votes eventually. If you want to use Product Pains for organizing issues for your open source project, go for it. I'll even give it away to you for free. 2. It's a community dedicated to improving products. This document is chock-full of great, constructive, actionable feedback. Product Pains is a community built for posting exactly this. You can post feedback publicly, about any product, people can vote on it, and posts with a lot of votes create a social responsibility for the company to respond. 3. It's a way for your voice to be heard. Posting on Hacker News lasts a day and will get your voice heard. If you post actionable, constructive feedback on Product Pains, and 150 people vote on it, it lingers waiting for GitHub to do something about it. Around 600 users on Product Pains are also React Native developers. They'd probably be ecstatic to vote on constructive feedback for GitHub. For example, go make an account and vote here: https://productpains.com/post/github/implement-voting-for-issues/ https://productpains.com/post/github/implement-voting-for-is...
• jarjoura 11y ago
  There's a lot of great feature requests for issues at the bottom of the document. Not sure why the document highlights only 3 things above the signatures. Yet, I 100% agree with them. I do not understand why Github issues are so basic. The only feature I feel was added in all of 2015 was making the logging of every metadata change extremely verbose (read: maybe too noisy now?!). "Person assigned to the issue" "Person added label" "Person removed label"
• jonobacon 11y ago
  Hi Adam, Addy, Andreas, Ariya, Forbes, James, Henry, John-David, Juriy , Ken, Nicholas, Pascal, Sam, Sindre, My name is Jono and I started as Director of Community back in November at GitHub. Obviously I am pretty new at GitHub, but I thought I would weigh in. Firstly, thanks for your feedback. I think it is essential that GitHub always has a good sense of not just what works well for our users, but also where the pain points are. Constructive criticism is an important of doing great work. I appreciate how specific and detailed you were in your feedback. Getting a good sense of specific problems provides a more fruitful beginning to a conversation than "it suxx0rs", so I appreciate that. I am still figuring out how GitHub fits together as an organization but I am happy to take a look into these issues and ensure they are considered in how future work is planned. We have a growing product team at GitHub that I know is passionate about solving the major pain points that rub up against our users. Obviously I can't make any firm commitments as I am not on the product team, but I can ensure the right eyeballs are on this. I also want to explore with my colleagues how we can be a little clearer about future feature and development plans to see if we can reduce some ambiguity. As I say, I am pretty new, so I am still getting the lay of the land, but feel free to reach out to me personally if you have any further questions or concerns about this or any other issue. I am at jono@github.com.
  • bnegreve 11y ago
    There are more authors on the second page.
    • jonobacon 11y ago
      Oops: I posted too quickly. Updated.
    • pvorb 11y ago
      That's why you shouldn't use Google Docs for such an article (even if it comes in the form of a letter). Nobody expects the concept of pages on the web (as in books, not as in web page).
      • simoncion 11y ago
• thockingoog 11y ago
  I could rant for hours about all the things GitHub doesn't do (or does wrong) for "real" software development. +1 from the Kubernetes project
• pvorb 11y ago
  The problem is that GitHub has a monopoly and is considered _the_ current standard for Open Source. But I think that once some of the major projects move to alternatives like GitLab (which has many of the features described in that letter) GitHub will have to obey its user base. Unfortunately no Open Source project with a large user base will dare to do the first step.
  • pvorb 11y ago
    I went ahead and created an account on GitLab.com. So far I can tell the transition is seamless. You can import a repository from GitHub with only a few clicks. Issues will be inherited, but the single PR on the repo I tried to migrate got lost on the way.
    • haynes 11y ago
      Importing Pull Requests will be possible with the next version of gitlab that's going to be released on the 22nd january. See this MR for more information: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/2168 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/2168
  • sytse 11y ago
    There are some open source projects with a large user base taking the step to us, for example https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman Regarding the three demands in the doc: 1. GitLab has issue templates in EE and on GitLab.com https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/28 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/28 2. GitLab has the award emoji function that doesn't spam and acts as a voting system https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/22/gitlab-8-2-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/22/gitlab-8-2-released/ 3. We're open to displaying CONTRIBUTING.md more prominently, please open an issue on our public issue tracker that contains all our planned features https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues I'll go sleep now but please ask any questions so I can respond tomorrow.
    • pvorb 11y ago
• rlaferla 11y ago
  Github needs two major features: 1. discussion groups for users vs. devs as people use issues for it currently. and 2. A searchable "license" attribute for all projects with standard license templates for MIT/Apache/GPL/etc... When looking for a source code, you need to consider the platform, language and license.
• rlaferla 11y ago
  Github needs two major features: 1. discussion groups for users vs. devs as people use issues for it currently. and 2. A searchable "license" attribute for all projects with standard license templates for MIT/Apache/GPL/etc... When looking for a source code, you need to consider the platform, language and license.
• zzzeek 11y ago
  We need world class, modern, distributed bug tracking now. If you google around for this technology, a lot of nice ideas, many using git itself as transport, were poking around, and around 2009 they started falling silent. Why? Because GitHub started up and everyone just buzzed over to it like so many moths to a flame, having learned nothing from places like Sourceforge about what happens when 90% of the open source world trusts their issue trackers, which is really a huge part of a project's documentation, to a for-profit, closed source platform that does not provide very good interoperability. If GitHub is kicking back and sitting on their huge valuations, then it's time to pick up this work again. If issue tracking and code reviews were based on a common, distributed system like git itself, then all these companies could compete evenly for features and UX on top of such a system, without ever having the advantage of "locking in" its users with extremely high migration costs.
  • hk__2 11y ago
    > We need world class, modern, distributed bug tracking now. Why distributed? You need a central place to report bugs and track them to ensure they’re not duplicated everywhere.
    • monkmartinez 11y ago
      I am not Michael Bayer (but I hope to be more like him someday)... that said, what I think he means or could mean is that issues would be distributed along with the repo. Maybe something like a git log for issues that are attached to and/or part of the repo itself. Thinking about it, something like this would be sweet. I would immediately have a snap shot of things that might go boom when I run said software. eta: Instead, I have to go dig through github itself, which is slow compared to greping through a git log.
      • zanny 11y ago
        Problem is for that system you need per-user authentication mechanisms to verify the interacting party in a bug report. If you can't do that, people can impersonate project members and you're going to have a bad time. Centralized issue tracking is not winning because of implementation details, its winning because you need some central authority to verify people are real and who they say they are. You would have to sign off every message in a git log tree with a personally authenticated gpg key that can be found in a public keyserver everyone trusts.
• Permit 11y ago
  This first request is the anti-thesis of GitHub's simple approach: >Issues are often filed missing crucial information like reproduction steps or version tested. We’d like issues to gain custom fields, along with a mechanism (such as a mandatory issue template, perhaps powered by a newissue.md in root as a likely-simple solution) for ensuring they are filled out in every issue. Every checkbox, text-field and dropdown you add to a page adds cognitive overhead to the process and GitHub has historically taken a pretty solid stance against this. From "How GitHub uses GitHub to Build GitHub"[1]: http://i.imgur.com/1yJx8CG.png http://i.imgur.com/1yJx8CG.png There are tools like Jira and Bugzilla for people who prefer this style of issue management. I hope GitHub resists the temptation to add whatever people ask of them. [1] http://zachholman.com/talk/how-github-uses-github-to-build-github/ http://zachholman.com/talk/how-github-uses-github-to-build-g...
  • dognotdog 11y ago
    If I read it right, they're not asking for a more complicated default for all projects, just that they can customize it for their projects. And I agree, simple is good... but simple is also bad for large projects, as while it makes it easier to create a ticket, it makes it harder to track for the maintainers. They are (rightfully) looking to ease their work, and I do believe it is a net win for both sides if filing a bug is made a little harder, but it becomes a lot easier to manage.
  • lamontcg 11y ago
    Zero structure just leads to lots of shitty issues that have no information on what version of the software it was against, no reproduction steps, and no stacktrace or debug output. I'm tired of closing issues with "I cant reproduce at all, maybe you're on an old version? Anyway feel free to open a new bug if you ever come up with a reproduction step..." A simple optional field to include the version number that the issue was being reported against would do wonders for my interaction with users. And you don't need to include that on your software project, but really if our users can't be bothered to tell us what version they're running, I have many, many other issues to fix which I know are broken in master. Which I guess is the difference. If you're a small project with few users, then the handful of bug reports you get are useful and you want a zero barrier. I have literally thousands of bug reports, hundreds of those will be left without ever being fixed (even though they may be perfectly legitimate). I have to triage. If a user is blocked by not being able to tell me what version they are running then that pre-triage of making them not even bother to cut a ticket with bad information is useful because then they don't waste any of my time...
• technion 11y ago
  Don’t make it so easy to submit bad PRs I recurrently refer to this[0] PR, and the subsequent discussion, as the reason why, if any project of mine gets any bigger - it will not be accepting Github pull requests. [0] https://github.com/technion/maia_mailguard/pull/42 https://github.com/technion/maia_mailguard/pull/42
  • placeybordeaux 11y ago
    Haha what a crazy final exchange. > uh oh, someone is still sulking [...] We really don't care about the drama Oh, okay buddy.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• Osiris 11y ago
  The author mentions that if GitHub was open source, they would implement these features themselves. Gitlab[1] is an open source repository manager that supports local installs as well as public hosting at gitlab.com. If author appreciates open source, perhaps they should put their efforts into improving an existing open source option rather than relying on a proprietary solution. [1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/tree/master https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/tree/master
  • zanny 11y ago
    This. When you are tired of github, start using gitlab, and realize your mistake going forward and stop making it, over[1], and over[2], and over[3]. [1] http://sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/ [2] https://code.google.com/ https://code.google.com/ [3] https://bitbucket.org/ https://bitbucket.org/
    • chei0aiV 11y ago
      Sourceforge runs Apache Allura, which is open source.
      • tcdent 11y ago
        What's realistic timing for getting a feature you contribute (and receive approval) deployed and available for use?
        • sytse 11y ago
          The length of the merge request cycle depends on the complexity of the feature. Simple fixes get merged in days, average features take weeks and sometimes the review suggestions take multiple months to implement. After merge it will release in weeks so since we're on a monthly rel cycle.
  • ywecur 11y ago
    Absolutely agree! I cannot fathom why people are still actively supporting GitHub. Even if you ignore the ethical reasons, which if you are an open source developer really should suffice, GitLab is better and more customizable in every way. Supporting it benefits yourself and all of the FOSS community.
• vmarsy 11y ago
  A lot of these points are fair and interesting, but I fail to grab some of the points, especially that one: Ability to block users from an organization. What does blocking users mean? Blocking from commenting/making PR/cloning? Why blocking a whole organization from an open source project? What would prevent such users to use a personal account instead to do what they organization counterpart is blocked from anyways?
  • jessaustin 11y ago
    A more plausible interpretation would be that a particular GitHub organization might wish to block the inputs of a particular user across all its projects. That is, the phrase "from an organization" is adverbial and clarifies "block" rather than "users".
    • vmarsy 11y ago
      You're probably right! I don't use organization accounts so I'm not sure what was the issue, it would be to prevent haters to troll on every project of a particular company?
      • jessaustin 11y ago
        Yes that would make sense to me, but keep in mind that any user may create an "organization", so this might just be a bunch of repos associated with e.g. a particular framework rather a particular company.
• danielsamuels 11y ago
  I know they've only recently released new permissions for organisations, but they're still extremely lacking. As far as I can see, there's no way of setting permissions at a group level. As an example of how this would be used, we have a Github team within our organisation which is used for non-technical people to post bugs. These people have no reason to be able to see or push code to the repository, they only need to be able to create issues. This applies to every repository in the organisation. As far as I can see, and without manually adding every single repository to the team, there's no way of setting global permissions permissions for a team. This seems like a major oversight to me.
  • teen 11y ago
    I just create a single repo for all issues, cross repo, and manage it with waffle.io. Works well for me, but ymmv
• bsder 11y ago
  Distributed revision control users whining about centralized repository lacking features. Ummm ... anybody getting the irony here? And, from a GitHub business perspective, why do I hear Lily Tomlin: "We don't care. We don't have to." Everybody anointed GitHub as "the chosen one" over strenuous objections from some of us that creating another monopoly for open source projects is a bad idea. Pardon me for enjoying some Schadenfreude now that GitHub leveraged the open-source adoption into corporate contracts and now doesn't have to give two shits about open source folks. Lily Tomlin's Phone Company Sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw
  • Perceptes 11y ago
    I'm an open source project maintainer and share many of the pain points outlined in the document, but I also totally agree with you. Giving control of your project to a company means losing control and having to resort to desperate pleas like this. This is simply what happens when you can't fork it yourself like you could with an open source project. It's likely that GitHub will alleviate these pain points in time, but the lesson is the same: let a company control your destiny and you can no longer have what you want or need when their interests diverge from yours, even if their system is the best there is and was radically better than everything else at the time you switched to it.
• lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  Can anyone post a précis/examples - apparently I do not have rights to see any spreadsheets at all.
• teen 11y ago
  I actually disagree with some of these suggestions, I find the simplicity of Github issues is what makes it so great. I think this should be solved with 3rd party tools, such as waffle.io
• teen 11y ago
  I actually disagree with some of these suggestions, I find the simplicity of Github issues is what makes it so great. I think this should be solved with 3rd party tools, such as waffle.io
• notabot 11y ago
  My company pays me to work on a fairly old-school free software project and we run our own git service. Our workflow is email based so we won't ever consider switching to GitHub. That said, we do sometimes consider setting up an official mirror on GitHub. Ideology aside (some team members might think we shouldn't promote a propriety solution for free software project), the main thing that puts us off is that there is no way to disable pull requests. Closing all pull requests by hand is not appealing; leaving all pull requests open is not desirable. We can probably write a bot to close pull requests, but that is just yet another administrative burden. Not sure if GitHub will ever consider allowing users to disable pull requests though. That seems to go against GitHub's core interest.
  • justincormack 11y ago
    FreeBSD has worked out a means of accepting pull requests on their github mirror, guessing using the API.
    • notabot 11y ago
      I myself don't really see any motive of doing that. It is administrative burden (maintaining the service that bridge API and existing system, managing GitHub accounts / tokens). Compare that to the number / quality of pull requests received [0] [1] and I find RoI of doing that very low. [0] https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/pulls https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/pulls [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pulls https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pulls
• john2x 11y ago
  I wish Github would add a "Discussions" tab for repos, so projects don't need to create a separate Google Group (which require a Google account!) for questions-that-are-not-quite-issues.
• wanstrocity 11y ago
  Chris Wanstrocity is an inept leader, social activists roam the halls in self glory about their contributions to the world while Kakul spends money on retreats and hires senior product people who have zero open source or dev ops experience. This company needs intensive care with new leadership asap or they will be doomed, Gitlab is salivating right now.
• its2complicated 11y ago
  I think if these people have that many issues with GitHub, they should find a replacement. That's what happened in the Node community and it led to a better Node. That's a big list of complaints and GitHub doesn't have much incentive to fix 'em except to silence a bunch of cry babies that are bitching about a free tool.
• danpalmer 11y ago
  I'd settle for just a fix to the (minor) data-loss bug that I reported nearly a year ago, and which still crops up once a month or so. That, and something for code review. Pull Requests are terrible for code review, and it wouldn't take that much to make them so much better.
  • piotrkaminski 11y ago
    I got frustrated waiting for improved PR code review, so I built https://reviewable.io https://reviewable.io. It's best suited for private repos (since there's a learning curve that make throw off potential open source contributors) but it addresses a lot of the issues with PRs. Take a look!
    • danpalmer 11y ago
      I've actually looked at Reviewable multiple times for use within our team, but never decided to use it. From my usage of the demo, it feels complicated. There are a lot of controls on the screen, and I struggle to tell what exactly I'm looking at at any given time. I also tried the demo, and was shocked to see that Reviewable had edited our PR descriptions to include a big "Review on Reviewable" badge. We currently make heavy use of PR descriptions in quite specific formats, and it felt like Reviewable was forcing itself upon us. To be clear, I'm really glad someone is looking at this problem, and Reviewable looks like a step in the right direction. I'm just quite opinionated on code review and developer tools, and I feel like it could be much better.
      • piotrkaminski 11y ago
        Thanks for checking out Reviewable, and sorry it didn't work out for you. It's definitely a more complex tool than plain PRs but you also get a lot more functionality in return. If you checked it out before I added the interactive onboarding (aka butterflies) and on-demand help you might want to try (yet) again, since I've been told it makes it a lot more approachable. Otherwise, and if you have the time, I'd love to sit down with you (virtually or otherwise) to do a short user study so I can better understand the UX pain points and maybe fix them. As for the badge, it's actually mostly there to help developers find their way to the review. In public repos, it's also the marketing payment for the otherwise free service, but in private repos I can switch it off for you (the flag doesn't have a UI yet). I'm always looking to improve Reviewable, but in the end it's unabashedly opinionated too, and sometimes those opinions will clash -- I'm OK with that. I'd rather make a tool that some people will love than an enterprise monster that everyone will love to hate. :)
• marknutter 11y ago
  Is this a case of the squeakiest wheels getting the grease? What if these problems aren't representative of the overall user base? What if far more people prefer a more simple, minimalistic interface than an ultra-customizeable interface with myriad custom actions and events. I've always appreciated software that deliberately keeps things simple (Basecamp and Workflowly come to mind). It sounds like these people want a full blown Jira/Stash installation.
• ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I am interested in understanding how much recurring revenue Github is receiving for hosting these projects.
• carapace 11y ago
  Wow, what a bunch of whiners. If you hate github so much why don't you just fork it and fix-- Oh, right. It's not open source. Well, there's your problem right there. (I have sooooo much more in this vein but I'll spare you. ;-) EDIT: No I won't. Fuck it. This is too ridiculous. These guys (and they are all guys) chained themselves to github's metaphorical car and now they're complaining that the ride is too bumpy and the wind is a little much. Don't whine about not getting to sit inside the car! Unchain yourself and go catch one of the cars where the doors are unlocked and open and the driver and other passengers are beckoning you to join them. (Apologies for the mangled metaphor.) These folks come off to me like masochistic babies.
  • santix 11y ago
    +1 Shouldn't we (the OSS community) have an open source, roll-your-own version of something like GitHub? Like, the repo-management equivalent to a phpBB or a Wiki or a Wordpress. We do have the separate components, though maybe the hard part is to glue them together. But still, it is something what would be worth the time and effort, wouldn't it?
• nikolay 11y ago
  GitHub does certain things very well, other - not so much. I really think the best way to get them to focus is to start contributing massively to GitLab. Anyway, implementing just voting won't be a such a good idea in the time of Emoji Reactions!
  • metasean 11y ago
    Actually, GitLab counts some emojis as votes - so you can have your :cake: and eat it too ;-) - https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/22/gitlab-8-2-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/22/gitlab-8-2-released/ - https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/5724 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/5724
• jessaustin 11y ago
  Please update the link to https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github
  • colinbartlett 11y ago
    Thanks, I've been trying all day to open the original link on mobile and it just brings my phone to its knees and never opens. Not even sure what is behind that link other than perhaps a very large Google doc?
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• vjeux 11y ago
  A proposal for a better way to deal with github issues: a discussion tab. https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/44 https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/44
• peterfpf 11y ago
  This resonated so much with me PS, it was moved to https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github
• duncan_bayne 11y ago
  "It's the world's tiniest open source violin" https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
• ajsharp 11y ago
  I get that these are super frustrating issues for these people (cough guys) that maintain these repos, but there's something telling about it that it's all JS people. That last cute lil paragraph really sums it up for me: > Hopefully none of these are a surprise to you as we’ve told you them before. We’ve waited years now for progress on any of them. If GitHub were open source itself, we would be implementing these things ourselves as a community—we’re very good at that! LOL. I can't tell if this is "go-fuck-yourself"-level passive aggression, or mindless hopefulness that there might actually be a universe in which Github (or a company like it, with hundreds of millions of dollars of venture funding) could be open source. If I worked at Github, my first thought after reading this would be "mmmmm yeeeeaaaaaaa y'can g'fuck yr'self", while the second thought would be "yea, you're not wrong". Generally, passive aggression gets you nowhere when you're asking for something from someone/something who owes you nothing (I know, I know, they "owe" their customers everything). The Node/React/JS community is hilariously entitled, petulant and childish. The tone of this whole letter is so god damned millennial, it's mind-boggling, because they're not wrong about anything they're asking for. But it's how they ask for it that leaves a dry, acid-y taste in your mouth.
  • Matachines 11y ago
    Interestingly most of these people are older than the millennial category
    • ajsharp 11y ago
      Fooled me ;)
  • patrickaljord 11y ago
    I agree that the "we’re very good at that!" was not needed. But the rest of the letter is ok to me, not particularly entitled. It is after all an open letter, open letters are designed to pressure people into something. In this case, these people have been asking for changes for years nicely and privately and have been ignored. They are just pressuring them as any customers would do. One may ignore the history of git, but its very existence came to be because a million dollar company called BitKeeper started ignoring its open source customers because they didn't owe them anything. Look what happened to them. Who even remembers BitKeeper? Maybe github should take these millennials hippy contributors more seriously if it doesn't want to end the same way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)#History
• sqs 11y ago
  At Sourcegraph, we're trying to help solve these problems for developers everywhere (https://sourcegraph.com https://sourcegraph.com), both in open source and inside companies. GitHub’s commercial success and contributions to the world of development are impressive (and I'm speaking as a GitHub user for 8 years), but they can’t build everything developers need on their own. We’re really pumped about improving dev team collaboration in the GitHub ecosystem by (soon) letting anyone use Sourcegraph.com’s code intelligence (semantic search/browsing), improved pull requests, flexible issue tracking with Emoji reactions instead of +1s (example: https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.tracker/151 https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/.tracker/151), etc.—all on their existing GitHub.com repositories. All of Sourcegraph’s source code is public and hackable at https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph, so it can grow over time to solve the changing needs of these projects. (It’s licensed as Fair Source (https://fair.io https://fair.io), not closed source like GitHub or open source.) Email me (sqs@sourcegraph.com) if you’re interested in beta-testing this on your GitHub.com repositories.
  • alfonsodev 11y ago
    I think reactions as implemented in Facebook, Slack or Sourcegraph is a really neat UX solution for the +1 spam problem.
• billconan 11y ago
  One annoying issue I found with github is that it doesn't provide a discussion board. a lot of times, I have a question to ask, it doesn't mean I found a bug or anything needs progress tracking, but I have to go through the "github issues".
• dang 11y ago
  Url changed from https://docs.google.com/document/d/14X72QaDT9g6bnWr0lopDYidajTSzMn8WrwsSLFSr-FU/preview?ts=5698049d https://docs.google.com/document/d/14X72QaDT9g6bnWr0lopDYida..., which points to this.
• thewhitetulip 11y ago
  we maybe need a feature of hotness of a bug, "affects me too", that'll prioritize issues out of a bucket load of issues, plus on github you first raise an issue then it is sorted into feature request or bug, can be made better
• itomato 11y ago
  Why do you want GitHub to solve the (very) specific problems of issue and defect tracking? They make a facility available as a nicety, but if your project has legitimate Global impact, you should be looking at (or bootstrapping) a counterpart. Don't have the revenue for JIRA? Apply for the Free license. Don't have the stomach for Bugzilla? Turn out a Node/Go alternative. Don't have the business alignment with Clearquest or Rally? Lower your expectations to suit your Free (as in beer) SCM tool.
• petke 11y ago
  I guess I don't know how to use githib. You can send bug reports on a project. But how do you send questions or ask for advice?
• osoti 11y ago
  World’s top ten coldest places that will chill you to bones! http://goo.gl/5BvVCZ http://goo.gl/5BvVCZ
• alexchamberlain 11y ago
  Totally agree with what has been said. However, I find it interesting that most of the signatories displayed were for JS projects.
• fphilipe 11y ago
  My biggest gripe with GitHub has been the notification system. Personally I can't use the web UI for notifications because they bundle multiple notifications per issue. This leads to potentially missed notifications since it is up to me to scan the issue/PR for new comments. My workaround has been to use email notifications exclusively. I have a Gmail filter that applies a label to all notifications and skips the inbox. Then in my mail client I have a smart mailbox that only shows me unread notifications with that label (or that folder, from an IMAP perspective). The smart mailbox then shows me a counter of unread notifications. This way I don't oversee comments when multiple ones are made in a PR. Problem 1: No context in these notifications. It would be nice if these emails could show the code in question for diff comments or the entire comments thread. Problem 2: Now what is really bad with these notification emails is that the link "view it on GitHub" sometimes no longer links to the comment I'm being notified of. This happens when the comment was made on a PR on a line of the diff that no longer exists, as sometimes is the case when new commits are pushed. I then have to go to the main PR page, expand all collapsed "foo commented on an outdated diff" comments and manually search for the comment in order to get the context and be able to reply. By fixing problem 1, problem 2 would be automatically fixed with it and make my workflow much more productive. Is there anyone else annoyed by this?
  • shurcooL 11y ago
    > Personally I can't use the web UI for notifications because they bundle multiple notifications per issue. This leads to potentially missed notifications since it is up to me to scan the issue/PR for new comments. I think the bundling aspect is an awesome feature! I can read multiple new comments all at once, with context in mind and less total context switches. About being able to miss new comments - doesn't the link in the notifications UI take you directly to the first unread comment?
• justplay 11y ago
  I personally experiencing this issue. i wrote about this in 2014, you can check here http://paritosh.passion8.co.in/post/96619506751/dear-github-its-time-to-put-karma-in-user http://paritosh.passion8.co.in/post/96619506751/dear-github-... although i am addressing the problem in different way but the issue is same.
• qaq 11y ago
  To what degree a company has to not give a f$#% when maintainers of largest projects on a platform can't get any feedback (compounded by a fact that some of those maintainers are very prominent employees of largest github paying customers)
• edem 11y ago
  gog.com has a great mechanic for this which might work here called a community wishlist [1] where people can submit games whey wish to see and people can vote on it and eventually they get things done when possible. [1]http://www.gog.com/wishlist http://www.gog.com/wishlist
• felhr 11y ago
  I just created and maintain a little Android library (a very rewarding experience by the way) so most of the complaints about Github doesnt really apply to me because the size and reach of my project (I understand the point perfectly though). But I read some complaints about the users and the issues they tend to open and I fully agree. They are a minority but I can't only imagine what people with bigger projects have to deal with. This is what I've found: - People with little to zero experience in the language/framework that simply state that my project doesn't work without providing more information and sometimes they didn't reply to my "give me more info" inquiries. - Guys who just want to get their homework done and They are basically trying to get it done using me as non-paid freelance. - And my favourite one, junior dev in a company, he needs to get their work done with more pressure than the previous one so became anxious about their problems and I feel it even via email. Eventually He gets the thing done but He notices I changed the build system to Jitpack for better dependency handling and and start to complain about Man in the middle attacks to his company and black-hat hackers replacing my lib with a malicious one (I guess it could happen but come on). But it is a very rewarding experience besides these anecdotical cases
  • Joeri 11y ago
    It's the nature of any issue tracker to gather low-quality feedback. The people using the product who are happy with it or who can solve their own problems mostly aren't the ones booking issues, unless there are genuine bugs. Paradoxically, a high quality project will have fewer genuine issues to report, and therefore be sensitive to a lower average quality of feedback.
  • jitpack 11y ago
    Hi. your junior colleague might be interested in the security answer here https://jitpack.io/docs/FAQ/ https://jitpack.io/docs/FAQ/. It's an important matter so will be happy to answer any more questions via email/gitter. You can also run JitPack on-premises and have full control over build artifacts.
    • felhr 11y ago
      Fortunately not my junior colleague! just a junior dev using my lib in his company's project. Thank you for the FAQ. I will forward it to him
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• Christan 11y ago
  This is how these World War 1 battlefields look like after 100 years! http://goo.gl/6wJWCe http://goo.gl/6wJWCe
• jp_sc 11y ago
  Classic JavaScripters reaction: throw more tooling at it
• chippy 11y ago
  There are three groups within GitHub, and this article is about the issues faced by the first - big open source projects (a small number). The main bread and butter of GitHub is from private or organizational projects and do not have these issues The majority of accounts on GitHub are folks like the majority of HN readers - developers, coders, hackers and do not have these issues. So all these complaints are in a sense not applicable to the vast majority of both GitHubs revenue generating customers and the vast majority of GitHub users.
• cbr 11y ago
  We’d like issues to gain a first-class voting system, and for content-less comments like “+1” or “:+1:” or “me too” to trigger a warning and instructions on how to use the voting mechanism. Why bother users with a warning? Turn it into a vote, and then highlight the vote icon so you can see what happened.
• transfire 11y ago
  Many times, I've asked GitHub to add icons for :test:, :doc:, :admin: and a couple others. I use them in commit messages as it helps categorize the type of commit. This has to be the easiest kind of improvement imaginable, but they have never bothered.
• zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  What I don't get ... why do people building free software even consider forcing their users and in particular their contributors to use proprietary development tools such as github? (Or, for that matter, exclude people from contributing to their projects who only use free software.) Next, we'll see public complaints to Microsoft because MS Word doesn't properly support the way they want to maintain their project's documentation? I mean, sure, feel free to complain all you like, but how is this not exactly what was to be expected from the beginning, and why do you expect them to care in the future, given that you just seem to have realized that they didn't care in the past, for obvious reasons, and given that their incentives haven't changed, and there is no reason for them to change in the future?
• Karunamon 11y ago
  Most of this stuff seems pretty common sense and reasonable. I really only have a couple of objections: * Issue templating. It's one thing to prefill the entry box, it's quite another to add fields that everyone must fill out. I quite like that filling out something on Github is totally the opposite of filling out something on Jira. * Issues and pull requests are often created without any adherence to the CONTRIBUTING.md contribution guidelines This is a people problem that has plagued open source from day one. You cannot engineer your way around it in a manner that doesn't annoy your contributors. There was a blurb in here about getting rid of the big green "new pull request" button, but that was when this link went to a google doc. Good - if someone doesn't want to take PR's, then they have almost no reason to be on Github in the first place. Put another way, it's the mark of someone that wants a repo as a signpost of sorts without actually interacting with its community.
• bad_user 11y ago
  While I like to bitch and moan about stuff myself, I don't really agree with the first point. What I like about GitHub's issue tracking is that (compared with alternatives, such as Redmine or Jira) it is free form. It doesn't force users to fill information such as steps to reproduce and I don't think it should. And that's because the needs of every project is slightly different. Consider how different the "steps to reproduce" are for a web user interface, versus the usage of some library. Yes, it can be painful for an issue to not provide all the information required, but on the other hand GitHub does a better job than alternatives at fostering conversations and keeping people in the loop. I've even seen projects use the GitHub issues as some sort of mailing list. On the second point, I do agree that GitHub needs a voting system for issues. Given that GitHub has long turned into some sort of social network, adding a voting system for issues is a no-brainer. But then a voting system doesn't address the problem of people getting frustrated about issues taking too long to get fixed. +1's are annoying, but sometimes that's a feature and I've been on both sides of the barricade.
• dabernathy89 11y ago
  People often ask why WordPress doesn't use Github for its primary development (they do have official read-only mirrors there), and it's not just because they already had an SVN-based system in place when Github came to be. It's because the tooling they already had was more sophisticated, especially regarding issues.
• bl4ckdu5t 11y ago
  I've never seen any issues spammed with +1s like the TravisCI request for Bitbucket support
• yingbo 11y ago
  Funny. It's like "Hi, you are rich. We like you. You should onate your money". There are tradeoffs, so pick services you like.