7 ms·

Not open source: http://www.gitkraken.com/faq http://www.gitkraken.com/faq

lallysingh 11y ago
Yeah. I don't know when this happened, but that's become a deal breaker for me. Strange, right? Edit to add: It's particularly strange because I wouldn't depend on this tool in some infrastructural way -- I could switch clients anytime without any lock in. But I'm no longer willing to even try anymore. Odd.
- solipsism 11y ago
  Seems like you should investigate that, then. The first step is noticing that you may be acting irrationally. The second step is correcting (if in fact it turns out to be irrational, which I'm not claiming).
  - ossreality 11y ago
    Um, no. Thank you. There are reasons for only using OSS software that are both philosophical and pragmatic. Literally in the last three days I've had tools that were broken in Ubuntu but working on master or had fixes in pull requests. Plex is the only piece of closed source software that I will voluntarily use on my non-mobile computers.
  - hvis 11y ago
    There are very good reasons not to get invested into non-free software, starting with privacy concerns. Speaking of which, https://www.axosoft.com/privacy https://www.axosoft.com/privacy seems to say that the application is allowed to send home virtually unlimited amount of information about your repositories and the work you do in them.
    - solipsism 11y ago
      Okay, I purposefully and carefully avoided taking a stance on whether or not one should invest in non-free software. You missed that apparently, as did the people downvoting me.
      - lallysingh 11y ago
        That's how I took it. I upvoted you
- iRobbery 11y ago
  That is true, but i can't say i have checked the full source code of git last time i compiled it. But it is an important point nonetheless, evenmore so if the source code you work on is not open source and you wouldn't want the closed source git gui to secretly send bits to any party. For me the deal breaker was the forced registration menu upon start with the same email address that you will use for commits. Instantly removed again.
- dd9990 11y ago
  Not strange at all. Getting to know a tool and building muscle memory is also an investment you don't want to waste.
- bengotow 11y ago
  I don't think this is a dealbreaker for 99% of people. I currently use Tower (https://www.git-tower.com/ https://www.git-tower.com/), a closed-source Mac Git client that costs $70. It's beautiful, it speeds up my work day to day, and it's been worth every cent. Open source is great and I spend my days building an open-source mail client, but I have no problem paying for great tools.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    How is rebasing? Can you merge/split/reorder commits easily?
    - nness 11y ago
      Nope. Tower lacks that feature.
  - shortstuffsushi 11y ago
    I hate to be that guy, but you're paying $70 for that? What does that offer over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's free offering. From a quick glance, they look pretty similar to me.
    - jack9 11y ago
      > What does that offer over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's free offering. An intuitive interface and a simpler layout. I like Tower better for the same reason I like to use a trackpad over a mouse. Day to day, the difference is obvious and positively impacts my performance.
    - nness 11y ago
      They are very similar. Tower has less of git's features as well when compared to SourceTree. It is though much much faster and definitely more stable.
    - microcolonel 11y ago
      Much like GitKraken, the site is completely unhelpful and doesn't have any screenshots. Why would I download, much less pay for, a piece of software which I haven't even seen?
- dvirsky 11y ago
  I'm not concerned by the fact that it's closed source alone, but by the fact that it's both closed source and free-as-in-beer. You know, the whole "if you are not paying for the product you are the product" thing. According to the FAQ it's free while they're iterating until they start a freemium model, which makes sense. But in that case I prefer the InteliJ model, where the community version is also open source.
mbilker 11y ago
Yet you can extract the embedded app.asar and get the source code if you so please. There may be native libraries that are closed source. This is another Electron app after all.
- ajross 11y ago
  That's almost certainly not the point being made. Building a workflow around non-free development tools means that eventually you're going to find support for your favored tool evaporating.
  - yoz-y 11y ago
    Using non open source tools is Harlech ever a problem. Yes the support can disappear, but so can one for FLOSS software. I am working on a tool which is based on a graveyard of abandonned open source libraries and taking them over is absolutely not an option. The only thing you can do is to slowly move to an alternative and hope that it will get maintained. With tools the choice is usually very easy because you can switch to other tools any time.
  - kybernetyk 11y ago
    This seems only be a problem for software developers though. Every other profession out there builds their workflows around proprietary expensive tools and it works out all fine. But we software developers are a special kind. We expect people to work for free (as in no money) to create tools for us we then can use to earn money.
radarsat1 11y ago
Which is weird, seeing as the git license is GPL 2. I mean, I find it weird that one can build a product completely around a GPL project, and somehow not make it GPL. The whole point of the GPL is to restrict derivatives. Yet, somehow this has been mutated to become "links to a library," as if the technical fact that the product links to some code over an API boundary is different, legally speaking, than calling it with arguments over a process boundary. The point of the GPL was supposed to be about derivative products, that is code that depends non-optionally on other code. Whether it depends on that code via linking, calling exec(), or sending HTTP requests, it shouldn't be legal to write a non-open-source application that depends on a GPL program to do anything useful.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Legal derivative works under copyright law of a particular computer program are not the same thing as programs which functionally interact with them -- functional interaction doesn't make a work derivative.
  - radarsat1 11y ago
    But what if the entire core functionality of the program relies on an open source program? This is the case here, I would argue. ps. I realize that in a technical sense my comment is "wrong", hence the downvotes, but what I'm getting at is, doesn't this horribly break the spirit of the GPL?

Yeah. I don't know when this happened, but that's become a deal breaker for me. Strange, right? Edit to add: It's particularly strange because I wouldn't depend on this tool in some infrastructural way -- I could switch clients anytime without any lock in. But I'm no longer willing to even try anymore. Odd.

solipsism 11y ago
Seems like you should investigate that, then. The first step is noticing that you may be acting irrationally. The second step is correcting (if in fact it turns out to be irrational, which I'm not claiming).
- ossreality 11y ago
  Um, no. Thank you. There are reasons for only using OSS software that are both philosophical and pragmatic. Literally in the last three days I've had tools that were broken in Ubuntu but working on master or had fixes in pull requests. Plex is the only piece of closed source software that I will voluntarily use on my non-mobile computers.
- hvis 11y ago
  There are very good reasons not to get invested into non-free software, starting with privacy concerns. Speaking of which, https://www.axosoft.com/privacy https://www.axosoft.com/privacy seems to say that the application is allowed to send home virtually unlimited amount of information about your repositories and the work you do in them.
  - solipsism 11y ago
    Okay, I purposefully and carefully avoided taking a stance on whether or not one should invest in non-free software. You missed that apparently, as did the people downvoting me.
    - lallysingh 11y ago
      That's how I took it. I upvoted you
iRobbery 11y ago
That is true, but i can't say i have checked the full source code of git last time i compiled it. But it is an important point nonetheless, evenmore so if the source code you work on is not open source and you wouldn't want the closed source git gui to secretly send bits to any party. For me the deal breaker was the forced registration menu upon start with the same email address that you will use for commits. Instantly removed again.
dd9990 11y ago
Not strange at all. Getting to know a tool and building muscle memory is also an investment you don't want to waste.
bengotow 11y ago
I don't think this is a dealbreaker for 99% of people. I currently use Tower (https://www.git-tower.com/ https://www.git-tower.com/), a closed-source Mac Git client that costs $70. It's beautiful, it speeds up my work day to day, and it's been worth every cent. Open source is great and I spend my days building an open-source mail client, but I have no problem paying for great tools.
- duaneb 11y ago
  How is rebasing? Can you merge/split/reorder commits easily?
  - nness 11y ago
    Nope. Tower lacks that feature.
- shortstuffsushi 11y ago
  I hate to be that guy, but you're paying $70 for that? What does that offer over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's free offering. From a quick glance, they look pretty similar to me.
  - jack9 11y ago
    > What does that offer over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's free offering. An intuitive interface and a simpler layout. I like Tower better for the same reason I like to use a trackpad over a mouse. Day to day, the difference is obvious and positively impacts my performance.
  - nness 11y ago
    They are very similar. Tower has less of git's features as well when compared to SourceTree. It is though much much faster and definitely more stable.
  - microcolonel 11y ago
    Much like GitKraken, the site is completely unhelpful and doesn't have any screenshots. Why would I download, much less pay for, a piece of software which I haven't even seen?
dvirsky 11y ago
I'm not concerned by the fact that it's closed source alone, but by the fact that it's both closed source and free-as-in-beer. You know, the whole "if you are not paying for the product you are the product" thing. According to the FAQ it's free while they're iterating until they start a freemium model, which makes sense. But in that case I prefer the InteliJ model, where the community version is also open source.

mbilker 11y ago

Yet you can extract the embedded app.asar and get the source code if you so please. There may be native libraries that are closed source. This is another Electron app after all.

ajross 11y ago
That's almost certainly not the point being made. Building a workflow around non-free development tools means that eventually you're going to find support for your favored tool evaporating.
- yoz-y 11y ago
  Using non open source tools is Harlech ever a problem. Yes the support can disappear, but so can one for FLOSS software. I am working on a tool which is based on a graveyard of abandonned open source libraries and taking them over is absolutely not an option. The only thing you can do is to slowly move to an alternative and hope that it will get maintained. With tools the choice is usually very easy because you can switch to other tools any time.
- kybernetyk 11y ago
  This seems only be a problem for software developers though. Every other profession out there builds their workflows around proprietary expensive tools and it works out all fine. But we software developers are a special kind. We expect people to work for free (as in no money) to create tools for us we then can use to earn money.

radarsat1 11y ago

Which is weird, seeing as the git license is GPL 2. I mean, I find it weird that one can build a product completely around a GPL project, and somehow not make it GPL. The whole point of the GPL is to restrict derivatives. Yet, somehow this has been mutated to become "links to a library," as if the technical fact that the product links to some code over an API boundary is different, legally speaking, than calling it with arguments over a process boundary. The point of the GPL was supposed to be about derivative products, that is code that depends non-optionally on other code. Whether it depends on that code via linking, calling exec(), or sending HTTP requests, it shouldn't be legal to write a non-open-source application that depends on a GPL program to do anything useful.

dragonwriter 11y ago
Legal derivative works under copyright law of a particular computer program are not the same thing as programs which functionally interact with them -- functional interaction doesn't make a work derivative.
- radarsat1 11y ago
  But what if the entire core functionality of the program relies on an open source program? This is the case here, I would argue. ps. I realize that in a technical sense my comment is "wrong", hence the downvotes, but what I'm getting at is, doesn't this horribly break the spirit of the GPL?