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Ethical qualms about Github? Could you explain? Should I worry about hosting my code there?

by trendia 10y ago

leksak 10y ago
Beyond uptime concerns (which Github manages very well) is the fact that it is closed source, and whenever you use a closed system but that provides very good services for free you yourself is the commodity. Beyond that, dozzie's remark is very much on point, the host could become tainted in the same way as for instance SourceForge. Fortunately, the distributed nature of Git means that you are unlikely to "lose" your source-code. But really you have no control over your code, it is their liberty to censor it if they please. The primary issue, as far as I am concerned, is that while I can clone and go elsewhere is that Github is the centralized hub for (FL)OSS today. Everything lives there. If you are not on there, you are de facto invisible. A better alternative, as far as I am considered, would be a distributed net of "self-hosted" Gitlab instances. I am not comfortable with all the bad press that Github has suffered regarding gender equality, but I feel that I am suffering from vendor lock-in due to the success of the platform.
- hilop 10y ago
  If GitHub censors your code, or even if they don't, you can publish it elsewhere
  - leksak 10y ago
    Absolutely, but that is part of the ethical qualm. You are perpetuating the use of Github as the dominant (code) social network by using it. If you continue to use it after Github has performed an act of censorship (or anything else that violates your values) and you continue to use the service then that act goes unpunished as they will keep their market share and may repeat that act again. After all, there weren't enough negative consequences to avoid doing so in the future.
dozzie 10y ago
Always. It's a third-party place that can sink at any time (if you don't believe this, why would GitHub be any different to what happened to SourceForge or Google Code?). Your code should be hosted under your very own domain first (so called "canonical repository", or how I call it, the "source of truth"), and GitHub or BitBucket should be a replica. Thanks to git's distributed nature, this replica can be two-way, but still a replica.
- hilop 10y ago
  Google Code shut down, and everything of interest moved. There was no problem.
  - leksak 10y ago
    Despite the altruistic acts of certain people, not every project was migrated. Those that weren't migrated are now lost and a part of our digital heritage died. I consider that a problem.
gaius 10y ago
Possibly a reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067
- OJFord 10y ago
  Changing the de facto social network is so hard though - no matter the bad press on Github's awful diversity policy ("not for whites to lead"; "white women are the problem") or recent research take-down (Gitlab followed suit, then retracted and apologised) or even that its closed-source and Gitlab is (can be) open. If they both started from nothing today, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd all quickly settle on Gitlab, but affecting that shift when Github is such an established default is so much harder.
  - gaius 10y ago
    If they both started from nothing today, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd all quickly settle on Gitlab, but affecting that shift when Github is such an established default is so much harder. Absolutely. Just yesterday I wanted to make a small change to a popular open source package, about 10 lines of C. Forked on Github, then sent a Pull Request. Because that's where the project lives, so that's where everyone goes. And Github has no interest in federating PRs in a way that they could be sent from Gitlab.
    - leksak 10y ago
      To be fair, Gitlab doesn't really have an interest in federating PRs either. But, "we" can make that be a public utility that exists.
  - leksak 10y ago
    Aye, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect is a powerful force in dictating human behaviour.

Ethical qualms about Github? Could you explain? Should I worry about hosting my code there?

by trendia 10y ago

Ethical qualms about Github? Could you explain? Should I worry about hosting my code there?

Beyond uptime concerns (which Github manages very well) is the fact that it is closed source, and whenever you use a closed system but that provides very good services for free you yourself is the commodity. Beyond that, dozzie's remark is very much on point, the host could become tainted in the same way as for instance SourceForge. Fortunately, the distributed nature of Git means that you are unlikely to "lose" your source-code. But really you have no control over your code, it is their liberty to censor it if they please. The primary issue, as far as I am concerned, is that while I can clone and go elsewhere is that Github is the centralized hub for (FL)OSS today. Everything lives there. If you are not on there, you are de facto invisible. A better alternative, as far as I am considered, would be a distributed net of "self-hosted" Gitlab instances. I am not comfortable with all the bad press that Github has suffered regarding gender equality, but I feel that I am suffering from vendor lock-in due to the success of the platform.

hilop 10y ago
If GitHub censors your code, or even if they don't, you can publish it elsewhere
- leksak 10y ago
  Absolutely, but that is part of the ethical qualm. You are perpetuating the use of Github as the dominant (code) social network by using it. If you continue to use it after Github has performed an act of censorship (or anything else that violates your values) and you continue to use the service then that act goes unpunished as they will keep their market share and may repeat that act again. After all, there weren't enough negative consequences to avoid doing so in the future.

dozzie 10y ago

Always. It's a third-party place that can sink at any time (if you don't believe this, why would GitHub be any different to what happened to SourceForge or Google Code?). Your code should be hosted under your very own domain first (so called "canonical repository", or how I call it, the "source of truth"), and GitHub or BitBucket should be a replica. Thanks to git's distributed nature, this replica can be two-way, but still a replica.

hilop 10y ago
Google Code shut down, and everything of interest moved. There was no problem.
- leksak 10y ago
  Despite the altruistic acts of certain people, not every project was migrated. Those that weren't migrated are now lost and a part of our digital heritage died. I consider that a problem.

gaius 10y ago

Possibly a reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067

OJFord 10y ago
Changing the de facto social network is so hard though - no matter the bad press on Github's awful diversity policy ("not for whites to lead"; "white women are the problem") or recent research take-down (Gitlab followed suit, then retracted and apologised) or even that its closed-source and Gitlab is (can be) open. If they both started from nothing today, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd all quickly settle on Gitlab, but affecting that shift when Github is such an established default is so much harder.
- gaius 10y ago
  If they both started from nothing today, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd all quickly settle on Gitlab, but affecting that shift when Github is such an established default is so much harder. Absolutely. Just yesterday I wanted to make a small change to a popular open source package, about 10 lines of C. Forked on Github, then sent a Pull Request. Because that's where the project lives, so that's where everyone goes. And Github has no interest in federating PRs in a way that they could be sent from Gitlab.
  - leksak 10y ago
    To be fair, Gitlab doesn't really have an interest in federating PRs either. But, "we" can make that be a public utility that exists.
- leksak 10y ago
  Aye, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect is a powerful force in dictating human behaviour.