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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 introduct

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.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    > and trac Because, honestly, trac just sucks. It ain't as bad as the stuff Atlassian sells but still... it tries to be a fusion of MediaWiki and Bugzilla, and eh nope.
    - voltagex_ 11y ago
      I still get a few emails a year from Trac instances where there is no support for unsubscribing emails
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    > instead of helping projects This isn't how it works. You don't help projects by pretending the football-stadium-sized issues with them don't exist and using them despite their flaws. Trac is an awful, awful piece of software. It's awful to set up, to use, to maintain, to gather feedback from, it's awful for just about everything. If in some very weird parallel universe it gathered even 1% of the following that Github has today, you'd find a 20 page google document at the top of HN about its issues. This is me being nice. Kallithea is a lot better, but it's just a far poorer Github-like clone. You might as well use Gitlab. The other advantage of Github is the network effect. You don't have to create yet-another account, which removes a barrier to contributions. When you're an open source project, you can think of the "Submit issue" button as your payment form. Same UX rules apply: The user must be able to file the issue as easily as possible. You should not throw obstacles in their way. You should not ask 50 questions when they can't answer half of them, especially if they just want to tell you "You have a typo in decode.c" or even just say hi. Time to enrollment. How easy is it to become a contributor? When I file an issue on your project, I am doing you a favour - you should help me help you. I have myself given up on several large scale projects because they use shit software for bug tracking. It's not fun. A lot of people don't understand this today. Github has fixed these issues and this is a huge reason why they are popular. And before you say anything, this document here is about is not time to enrollment, but quality of life when you are already a developer (especially on large projects). I'd certainly love for GH to fix those.
    - 11y ago
- spopejoy 11y ago
  OMG can we get a moratorium on "tbh"? Just say "Indeed" or some other filler. "To be honest" is bad writing even when it's spelled out.
dominotw 11y ago
> They're chasing some other goal...whatever it is. I've been puzzled for a while with what github is doing hiring so many social impact employees. https://twitter.com/agelender https://twitter.com/agelender https://twitter.com/_danilo https://twitter.com/_danilo https://twitter.com/rachelmyers https://twitter.com/rachelmyers https://twitter.com/nmsanchez https://twitter.com/nmsanchez https://twitter.com/BiancaCreating https://twitter.com/BiancaCreating https://twitter.com/ammeep https://twitter.com/ammeep https://twitter.com/davystevenson https://twitter.com/davystevenson Maybe something more noble than a social coding site?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- onewland 11y ago
  I happen to be an acquaintance of Rachel Myers, and while she does do not-for-profit stuff outside of work, do you have some evidence that she's a "social impact employee" there? It's not obvious on her Twitter/Github profiles. I don't want to assume any motive to your comment, but I think it would be a cause for concern if the world at large assumes that women/minorities are hired strictly for their "social impact".
  - dominotw 11y ago
    I assumed it had to do something with community involvement from here https://github.com/blog/1521-rachel-myers-is-a-githubber https://github.com/blog/1521-rachel-myers-is-a-githubber Github is a trailblazer here for tech companies taking social impact seriously. There is nothing derogatory about it. They do amazing projects in this area eg: http://connecthome.hud.gov/ http://connecthome.hud.gov/ https://github.com/detroitwaterproject/detroit-water-project https://github.com/detroitwaterproject/detroit-water-project I was merely curious about how this fits into their grander strategy.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Estragon 11y ago
bo_Olean 11y ago
How reasonable is it to make issue tracking and social interaction part of the SCM itself [with optional web interface] ? git issues "This needs attention" >> Issue #1 created git issues >> List of issues git issues -u #11 >> Issue #11 up voted >> #11 Important stuff, needs attention git issues -d #6 >> Issue #6 down voted git issues -f #4 >> Issue #4 flagged
- hk__2 11y ago
  Your `.git` directory would become huge pretty quickly and you would have plenty of problems with people commenting on issues without having a repo up-to-date. How would you handle conflicts in that case?
  - npizzolato 11y ago
    How is that a different problem than people editing code in a repo that's out of date?
    - neandrake 11y ago
      You have to be a coder to participate~
arnold_palmur 11y ago
> They're chasing some other goal...whatever it is. Maybe putting most of their efforts into Atom and Electron?
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Mayhap it is related to their abandonment of being a meritocracy as doing such was being divisive? Success can be very devise as well so perhaps they are making a noble sacrifice to avoid dividing people.

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.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > and trac Because, honestly, trac just sucks. It ain't as bad as the stuff Atlassian sells but still... it tries to be a fusion of MediaWiki and Bugzilla, and eh nope.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    I still get a few emails a year from Trac instances where there is no support for unsubscribing emails
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > instead of helping projects This isn't how it works. You don't help projects by pretending the football-stadium-sized issues with them don't exist and using them despite their flaws. Trac is an awful, awful piece of software. It's awful to set up, to use, to maintain, to gather feedback from, it's awful for just about everything. If in some very weird parallel universe it gathered even 1% of the following that Github has today, you'd find a 20 page google document at the top of HN about its issues. This is me being nice. Kallithea is a lot better, but it's just a far poorer Github-like clone. You might as well use Gitlab. The other advantage of Github is the network effect. You don't have to create yet-another account, which removes a barrier to contributions. When you're an open source project, you can think of the "Submit issue" button as your payment form. Same UX rules apply: The user must be able to file the issue as easily as possible. You should not throw obstacles in their way. You should not ask 50 questions when they can't answer half of them, especially if they just want to tell you "You have a typo in decode.c" or even just say hi. Time to enrollment. How easy is it to become a contributor? When I file an issue on your project, I am doing you a favour - you should help me help you. I have myself given up on several large scale projects because they use shit software for bug tracking. It's not fun. A lot of people don't understand this today. Github has fixed these issues and this is a huge reason why they are popular. And before you say anything, this document here is about is not time to enrollment, but quality of life when you are already a developer (especially on large projects). I'd certainly love for GH to fix those.
  - 11y ago
spopejoy 11y ago
OMG can we get a moratorium on "tbh"? Just say "Indeed" or some other filler. "To be honest" is bad writing even when it's spelled out.

dominotw 11y ago

> They're chasing some other goal...whatever it is. I've been puzzled for a while with what github is doing hiring so many social impact employees. https://twitter.com/agelender https://twitter.com/agelender https://twitter.com/_danilo https://twitter.com/_danilo https://twitter.com/rachelmyers https://twitter.com/rachelmyers https://twitter.com/nmsanchez https://twitter.com/nmsanchez https://twitter.com/BiancaCreating https://twitter.com/BiancaCreating https://twitter.com/ammeep https://twitter.com/ammeep https://twitter.com/davystevenson https://twitter.com/davystevenson Maybe something more noble than a social coding site?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
onewland 11y ago
I happen to be an acquaintance of Rachel Myers, and while she does do not-for-profit stuff outside of work, do you have some evidence that she's a "social impact employee" there? It's not obvious on her Twitter/Github profiles. I don't want to assume any motive to your comment, but I think it would be a cause for concern if the world at large assumes that women/minorities are hired strictly for their "social impact".
- dominotw 11y ago
  I assumed it had to do something with community involvement from here https://github.com/blog/1521-rachel-myers-is-a-githubber https://github.com/blog/1521-rachel-myers-is-a-githubber Github is a trailblazer here for tech companies taking social impact seriously. There is nothing derogatory about it. They do amazing projects in this area eg: http://connecthome.hud.gov/ http://connecthome.hud.gov/ https://github.com/detroitwaterproject/detroit-water-project https://github.com/detroitwaterproject/detroit-water-project I was merely curious about how this fits into their grander strategy.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Estragon 11y ago

bo_Olean 11y ago

How reasonable is it to make issue tracking and social interaction part of the SCM itself [with optional web interface] ? git issues "This needs attention" >> Issue #1 created git issues >> List of issues git issues -u #11 >> Issue #11 up voted >> #11 Important stuff, needs attention git issues -d #6 >> Issue #6 down voted git issues -f #4 >> Issue #4 flagged

hk__2 11y ago
Your `.git` directory would become huge pretty quickly and you would have plenty of problems with people commenting on issues without having a repo up-to-date. How would you handle conflicts in that case?
- npizzolato 11y ago
  How is that a different problem than people editing code in a repo that's out of date?
  - neandrake 11y ago
    You have to be a coder to participate~

arnold_palmur 11y ago

> They're chasing some other goal...whatever it is. Maybe putting most of their efforts into Atom and Electron?

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

Mayhap it is related to their abandonment of being a meritocracy as doing such was being divisive? Success can be very devise as well so perhaps they are making a noble sacrifice to avoid dividing people.