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It makes me sad to see that people actively contribute to the implicit "open source = Github" assumption. Open Source has always been successful because there w

It makes me sad to see that people actively contribute to the implicit "open source = Github" assumption. Open Source has always been successful because there was more than just a single distributor for almost anything. I hope I'll see a new rise of decentralized solutions. For now I'm frightened of the monopolism here.

ortuna 10y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think he/she mentions open source at all? At the same time it's better to have a working project and having the satisfaction of shipping than going in circles trying to appease everyones definitions of open source.
- rhabarba 10y ago
  The whole thing is about "show your Github contributions", further cementing Github's monopolism, right?
  - randpeck 10y ago
    I think it's more "I've created a way to make your Github contributions into a poster." I understand where you are coming from, but it's a tad bit reactionary, don't you think? If I created a website for you to turn a user's facebook activity statistics into a T-Shirt I would hope that you don't think it is contributing to facebook's monopolism of social media.
    - rhabarba 10y ago
      Maybe a way to also include Bitbucket statistics (or something) would be nice. I don't know. Sorry, I might indeed have been quite harsh.
Swizec 10y ago
On the other hand, I find Github extremely useful. 90% of the time when I'm looking for a library, Github's search box is the first place I go. Then if I can't find it that way, I begrudgingly head over to Google.
NathanKP 10y ago
I don't see this as assuming that open source is only Github, its just a matter of practicality. If you want to build a tool that interacts with git repos it is easier to use the Github API than it is to deal with bare git repos, SVN repos, and other random open source projects distributed as tarballs, etc. I speak from experience, having built a crawler and search engine that extracts changelogs from open source projects on Github, parses them, and provides an API for changelogs. [1] I probably never would have built this project if the only thing that had been available to me was bare git repos. It's the github API that makes this search engine possible. The side effect of the Github "monopoly" is that Github can afford to provide a decent API that makes it possible to do things that simply aren't feasible if you are facing a non standard collection of bare git, svn, mecurial, etc repos. [1] https://changelogs.md/ https://changelogs.md/
morgante 10y ago
This comment is very off-topic. Nowhere does this project say that "GitHub = open source" and I'm not sure why you're harping on it here. In fact, this project can even include private (ie. non-open source) commits, making your point even more irrelevant.
andrewstuart2 10y ago
GitHub is so strongly associated with Open Source right now for a few reasons. First, git is decentralized by default. GitHub has very little secret sauce here; most, if not all, of their cool git tricks are actually pushed upstream into the git client to benefit everybody. For remote management, I can run `git init --bare` in any directory on any ol' ssh box I want and then set it up as a remote and get the same exact `git push` experience. Or use any of the strategies that git supports for interacting with remotes. So GitHub chose a great decentralized tool as their foundation, and then got the community UX right. There's easy permissions management, easy SSH key management and instructions, issue and PR tracking, easily-accessed discussion, etc. GitHub is 95% about community and 5% about easy repo management, IMO. That said, they're no longer the only player in town. They're the most universally understood, but you can easily set up a GitLab CE server on your own hardware if you want the same thing for free, but there are management costs associated with that. I think the other critical reason GitHub is associated with open source software is that, after all, it's 100% free for open source software. You get all the above features for free if you don't discriminate about who can see and clone your code. GitLab will give you free private repos, but in my opinion I think GitHub takes the better stance here for the Open Source world. "You want free tools? You have to either pay up or share."
- whositis 10y ago
  > That said, they're no longer the only player in town. They never were. Before github everything was on sourceforge.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  git is decentralized, but the most common workflow makes it basically a slightly better SVN. There is always one authoritative upstream repo, and everyone just pushes to that. Really, GitHub + git is better than SVN in only two ways: better merge tools to make branches cheaper, and local branches. Almost everything else could already be done with SVN (or similar) before. git's decentralized nature is only really used by the Linux kernel developers AFAIK.
  - minitech 10y ago

ortuna 10y ago

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think he/she mentions open source at all? At the same time it's better to have a working project and having the satisfaction of shipping than going in circles trying to appease everyones definitions of open source.

rhabarba 10y ago
The whole thing is about "show your Github contributions", further cementing Github's monopolism, right?
- randpeck 10y ago
  I think it's more "I've created a way to make your Github contributions into a poster." I understand where you are coming from, but it's a tad bit reactionary, don't you think? If I created a website for you to turn a user's facebook activity statistics into a T-Shirt I would hope that you don't think it is contributing to facebook's monopolism of social media.
  - rhabarba 10y ago
    Maybe a way to also include Bitbucket statistics (or something) would be nice. I don't know. Sorry, I might indeed have been quite harsh.

Swizec 10y ago

On the other hand, I find Github extremely useful. 90% of the time when I'm looking for a library, Github's search box is the first place I go. Then if I can't find it that way, I begrudgingly head over to Google.

NathanKP 10y ago

I don't see this as assuming that open source is only Github, its just a matter of practicality. If you want to build a tool that interacts with git repos it is easier to use the Github API than it is to deal with bare git repos, SVN repos, and other random open source projects distributed as tarballs, etc. I speak from experience, having built a crawler and search engine that extracts changelogs from open source projects on Github, parses them, and provides an API for changelogs. [1] I probably never would have built this project if the only thing that had been available to me was bare git repos. It's the github API that makes this search engine possible. The side effect of the Github "monopoly" is that Github can afford to provide a decent API that makes it possible to do things that simply aren't feasible if you are facing a non standard collection of bare git, svn, mecurial, etc repos. [1] https://changelogs.md/ https://changelogs.md/

morgante 10y ago

This comment is very off-topic. Nowhere does this project say that "GitHub = open source" and I'm not sure why you're harping on it here. In fact, this project can even include private (ie. non-open source) commits, making your point even more irrelevant.

andrewstuart2 10y ago

GitHub is so strongly associated with Open Source right now for a few reasons. First, git is decentralized by default. GitHub has very little secret sauce here; most, if not all, of their cool git tricks are actually pushed upstream into the git client to benefit everybody. For remote management, I can run `git init --bare` in any directory on any ol' ssh box I want and then set it up as a remote and get the same exact `git push` experience. Or use any of the strategies that git supports for interacting with remotes. So GitHub chose a great decentralized tool as their foundation, and then got the community UX right. There's easy permissions management, easy SSH key management and instructions, issue and PR tracking, easily-accessed discussion, etc. GitHub is 95% about community and 5% about easy repo management, IMO. That said, they're no longer the only player in town. They're the most universally understood, but you can easily set up a GitLab CE server on your own hardware if you want the same thing for free, but there are management costs associated with that. I think the other critical reason GitHub is associated with open source software is that, after all, it's 100% free for open source software. You get all the above features for free if you don't discriminate about who can see and clone your code. GitLab will give you free private repos, but in my opinion I think GitHub takes the better stance here for the Open Source world. "You want free tools? You have to either pay up or share."

whositis 10y ago
> That said, they're no longer the only player in town. They never were. Before github everything was on sourceforge.
IgorPartola 10y ago
git is decentralized, but the most common workflow makes it basically a slightly better SVN. There is always one authoritative upstream repo, and everyone just pushes to that. Really, GitHub + git is better than SVN in only two ways: better merge tools to make branches cheaper, and local branches. Almost everything else could already be done with SVN (or similar) before. git's decentralized nature is only really used by the Linux kernel developers AFAIK.
- minitech 10y ago