4 ms·

I find the current situation with Github very unhealthy, because, even though very unlikely, someone can literally pull off the plug of open-source. Not all, b

by gkya 11y ago

I find the current situation with Github very unhealthy, because, even though very unlikely, someone can literally pull off the plug of open-source. Not all, but a great part. If such thing happened, be it with government intervention or some crazy attack towards github, it would make us lose a lot time migrating to other solutions. It would be like a Great Barbaric Invasion of Open Source, where everyone migrated to Bitbucket or private solutions, sort of an OSS incastellation.

msellout 11y ago
The bug tracking data might be tough to replicate, but everything else is stored on each contributor's machine. I think recovery time wouldn't be so bad.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That's a huge mistake you're making there. Recovery time would be in the years because github is a hub. It became a focal point for a very large amount of activity, losing that hub would be an absolute disaster.
  - autoreleasepool 11y ago
    > losing that hub would be an absolute disaster. Not really. I agree GitHub is a great for open source, but its not essential. It would be a shame to lose the community, central location, user activity history, etc... but actively maintained projects would not suffer much. The recovery process would be as simple as pushing to a new remote and emailing the core developers. It would probably take a few months to properly set up a JIRA or other bug tracker and for everyone to settle into the new work flow. The genius of git (or should I say BitKeeper) is that its distributed, so having a hub isn't really important.
    - danneu 11y ago
      > The recovery process would be as simple You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. It's like suggesting that it's not so bad if a massive forum shuts down by pointing out how easy it is to install phpbb and run an import script.
      - autoreleasepool 11y ago
        > You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. That's a straw man. I said it would take a few months to resolve the logistical issues surrounding migration. Instead of caricaturing my thought process, could you please specify some of the "disastrious" difficulties you and the GP are concerned about?
        jacquesm 11y ago
        You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely secondary to that. If you lose github you lose the community and a user / contributer to say 'apache spark' will not automatically be a user / contributor of all the other open source projects hosted on github. Single sign on for contribution to any open source project and a consistent user interface are also big pluses (but those are technical), and would be hard to achieve as well. So in my opinion github (and several other services) are now really too big to fail.
        autoreleasepool 11y ago
        Thank you for the substantive reply. I love github and I do appreciate the macro level of community it provides. If no other community platform sprung up it's demise would certainly be a regression for open source. In that sense, I agree with what your saying. The last line is where we fundamentally disagree, but that's ok. I think open source would be able to recover from the death of github without much long-term difficulty. It would be a painful transition, like all transitions, but I don't think it would be an overwhelming problem or disaster. Maybe I'm just optimistic.
- gkya 11y ago
  If everyone went to another solution like Bitbucket, yes, it would be quick. But if I were maintaining anything significant, after such event, I'd never consider a private solution again. In Turkish we have a saying, "he whose mouth is burnt by milk, eats yoghurt blowingly".
- V-2 11y ago
  In projects that are community-based, it would be a matter of recreating this community too. This involves humans and isn't as simple as restoring a backup, there would be much inertia.
  - gkya 11y ago
    Every git commit most usually contains the committer's email, so that would ease things up a bit.
_pmf_ 11y ago
> I find the current situation with Github very unhealthy, because, even though very unlikely, someone can literally pull off the plug of open-source. It's not very unlikely; it's something that will definitely happen at some point (in the case of SourceForge, well over a decade). Most projects will migrate away, but there will be losses.
- gkya 11y ago
  Though note that SF did not die overnight, it is still lingering. However I, too, believe that most stuff will survive, but I think that it'd take a good while to adapt. And when I say "a good while" take in consideration that articles/releases more than a couple month old are considered ancient these days.

by gkya 11y ago

msellout 11y ago

The bug tracking data might be tough to replicate, but everything else is stored on each contributor's machine. I think recovery time wouldn't be so bad.

jacquesm 11y ago
That's a huge mistake you're making there. Recovery time would be in the years because github is a hub. It became a focal point for a very large amount of activity, losing that hub would be an absolute disaster.
- autoreleasepool 11y ago
  > losing that hub would be an absolute disaster. Not really. I agree GitHub is a great for open source, but its not essential. It would be a shame to lose the community, central location, user activity history, etc... but actively maintained projects would not suffer much. The recovery process would be as simple as pushing to a new remote and emailing the core developers. It would probably take a few months to properly set up a JIRA or other bug tracker and for everyone to settle into the new work flow. The genius of git (or should I say BitKeeper) is that its distributed, so having a hub isn't really important.
  - danneu 11y ago
    > The recovery process would be as simple You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. It's like suggesting that it's not so bad if a massive forum shuts down by pointing out how easy it is to install phpbb and run an import script.
    - autoreleasepool 11y ago
      > You're only thinking of the most trivial part of the migration: the immediate technical one. That's a straw man. I said it would take a few months to resolve the logistical issues surrounding migration. Instead of caricaturing my thought process, could you please specify some of the "disastrious" difficulties you and the GP are concerned about?
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        You entirely fail to appreciate the word 'community'. That's fine with me, I don't care one way or another whether I can convince you that losing github would be a disaster for open source but just for a minute consider why all these open source projects that were formerly hosted in different places migrate to github. The community has achieved critical mass and that is what drives this, the technology is entirely secondary to that. If you lose github you lose the community and a user / contributer to say 'apache spark' will not automatically be a user / contributor of all the other open source projects hosted on github. Single sign on for contribution to any open source project and a consistent user interface are also big pluses (but those are technical), and would be hard to achieve as well. So in my opinion github (and several other services) are now really too big to fail.
        autoreleasepool 11y ago
        Thank you for the substantive reply. I love github and I do appreciate the macro level of community it provides. If no other community platform sprung up it's demise would certainly be a regression for open source. In that sense, I agree with what your saying. The last line is where we fundamentally disagree, but that's ok. I think open source would be able to recover from the death of github without much long-term difficulty. It would be a painful transition, like all transitions, but I don't think it would be an overwhelming problem or disaster. Maybe I'm just optimistic.
gkya 11y ago
If everyone went to another solution like Bitbucket, yes, it would be quick. But if I were maintaining anything significant, after such event, I'd never consider a private solution again. In Turkish we have a saying, "he whose mouth is burnt by milk, eats yoghurt blowingly".
V-2 11y ago
In projects that are community-based, it would be a matter of recreating this community too. This involves humans and isn't as simple as restoring a backup, there would be much inertia.
- gkya 11y ago
  Every git commit most usually contains the committer's email, so that would ease things up a bit.

_pmf_ 11y ago

> I find the current situation with Github very unhealthy, because, even though very unlikely, someone can literally pull off the plug of open-source. It's not very unlikely; it's something that will definitely happen at some point (in the case of SourceForge, well over a decade). Most projects will migrate away, but there will be losses.

gkya 11y ago
Though note that SF did not die overnight, it is still lingering. However I, too, believe that most stuff will survive, but I think that it'd take a good while to adapt. And when I say "a good while" take in consideration that articles/releases more than a couple month old are considered ancient these days.