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I really dislike the trend of open-source software centralising around GitHub. It's slowly becoming a single point of failure in the ecosystem, and it's closed

by gkya 10y ago

I really dislike the trend of open-source software centralising around GitHub. It's slowly becoming a single point of failure in the ecosystem, and it's closed and corporate software. One day it's going to fail. And we'll be left with a plethora of people who don't know how to patch a file or attach a diff to an email. Sad. Is it really that hard to set up Trac or sth.?

dsacco 10y ago
But git itself is decentralized. Even if software projects are centralized around GitHub, many people (including myself) prefer the command line where possible, which is essentially universal and not hard to pick up at all. In a worst case scenario the entire project could be preserved with history and exported. And you really think people might not be able to attach a diff to an email? I just don't see this dystopian future. For what it's worth I use GitHub but have essentially no brand loyalty to it.
- the_duke 10y ago
  There are plenty of devs who don't know about patches and have never used `git format-patch` or `git apply`. But then again, learning how to do it probably takes 5 minutes...
- PerryCox 10y ago
  Yeah that's exactly how I feel. I've used all three (gitlab, bitbucket, and github). If the OP is that worried about github going down, just add a pushurl in .git/config to another host and that solves the problem.
  - hobarrera 10y ago
    It doesn't solve the problem. I still can't see the PRs and comments stored in github.
- reloop 10y ago
  > But git itself is decentralized. To me that sort of makes things worse. I have nothing against using GitHub as such, but I also think it's important that projects like this should lead by example. If you centralize things that are inherently decentralized it's hard to make a case that decentralization is important. > many people (including myself) prefer the command line where possible, which is essentially universal and not hard to pick up at all. As someone who, at least thinks they, understands how DVCS works I find the git command line quite unintuitive. It's a mix between more low level commands and added shortcuts. The solution becomes "just run these three commands you know and use Github". > In a worst case scenario the entire project could be preserved with history and exported. That's not really realistic, unless something really drastic happens. People often use Github for more than git itself, it becomes an integral part of the workflow. If it's was easy to switch people would run something else in parallel (which some projects do). All in all I think the pragmatic solution is to have your own system and then interface Github as one channel. If you can't set up your own system that is competitive as a completment to Github, well then you are effectively dependent on Github.
diggan 10y ago
What we really need (instead of everyone using Trac) is a truly distributed P2P way of doing what Github is doing, forming a community around open source code and a platform for developing it.
- rogual 10y ago
  Sounds like you could build such a tool on top of Git itself, just using, say, an orphan branch to store discussion histories, submitted patches, etc.
adrianN 10y ago
Before github there was sourceforge. It's pretty dead now but open source development continues. So while I agree that an open and distributed system that does what github is currently doing would be better, I don't think that github's popularity and eventual demise is as terrible as you claim.
- gkya 10y ago
  It's a company. How long can it live? Will it live 50 years later? 20? 10? This is an important question because projects like Python will live that long.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    It's not impossible to move to a different platform.
  - cderwin 10y ago
    It's a significant possibility that Github the company will die, but github the site will not, at least not immediately. For example, github could be bought, in which case there would be no immediate reason to think the site would cease to exist immediately. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine that github the company could fail (i.e. die off) without github the site becoming extraordinarily less popular, in which case we shouldn't really care if github the site is still around. Of course there's also the option that code hosting becomes an inherently unprofitable business, in which case we're sort of screwed all around. Trying to figure out which of these scenarios (or a different one!) is going to happen sure looks like optimizing prematurely to me, in particular so long as there does exist some fashion of a backup repository.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >This is an important question because projects like Python will live that long. Planning in the 20 or 50 years range is counter-productive. Heck, whole countries might not exist by that time (the same way ex-USSR and Eastern European countries split into different ones).
cx1000 10y ago
Sounds to me like you don't understand how git works. If GitHub shuts down, people will just use a different server to host their repository, such as gitlab. The guy in charge of making the decision weighed the fact that it's closed source, and it still won. > But to me, the development process is more important than worrying whether a cloud-based service publishes its source code... This is especially not a worry as GitHub is not a walled garden; its extensive SDK allows for downloading any and all data that goes into the platform. In summary, his reasons were: github has become a social network of open source devs; gitlab has no killer features github doesn't; and Guido prefers github https://snarky.ca/the-history-behind-the-decision-to-move-python-to-github/ https://snarky.ca/the-history-behind-the-decision-to-move-py...
- taken__-- 10y ago
  So did twitter.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
> don't know how to patch a file or attach a diff to an email How many minutes does it take to learn those skills?
- cderwin 10y ago
  I would wager a solid 3 minutes.
coldtea 10y ago
>I really dislike the trend of open-source software centralising around GitHub. It's slowly becoming a single point of failure in the ecosystem, and it's closed and corporate software. One day it's going to fail. If your criteria is only depending on things that are not gonna fail someday, you'll be severely limited in your options. Any decentralized solution would require money and people to host it (per project), would not provide a uniform interface to developers and users of code, and would not be as mature as GitHub is (at least initially). Besides, git is decentralized -- so people will have copies of the repo anyway, which they can backup fully anywhere they like. As for issues, etc, they could get them from GitHub for future-proofing and store them somewhere -- if GitHub fails them for some reason, they could then make some importers and load the same issues, notes etc on another host. >Is it really that hard to set up Trac or sth.? Given that GitHub hosts 10,000s of projects, it would mean several collective man-years lost for no reason. And in the end you'll have Trac to face (which is something to avoid in itself).
- jwilk 10y ago
  Re issue backups, there's: https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup I'm not quite happy with it, but it's better than nothing.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  >"Any decentralized solution would require money and people to host it" Unless home servers were used, in which case you're already paying for the bandwidth for your home internet connection. All you'd really want to add on top of that is a decentralised identity layer, for managing permissions across all repositories.
- 1wd 10y ago
  > you'll have Trac to face (which is something to avoid in itself). Serious question: What's so bad about Trac?
MereInterest 10y ago
There underlying git is decentralized. I have a cronjob set up to keep a local copy of all of my repositories. If github were to disappear tomorrow, I would still have the code. Granted, I wish that the issues were stored within a branch, so that they would be copied along with the repository.
- tbranyen 10y ago
  Not a branch, but maybe git-notes would be a good place for them...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tsomctl 10y ago
I really dislike the trend of carriages centralizing around gasoline engine. It's slowly becoming a single point of failure in the ecosystem, and it's dead and mechanical. One day it's going to fail. And we'll be left with a plethora of people who don't know how to brush down a horse or feed them. Sad. Is it really that hard to hitch up a horse?

by gkya 10y ago

dsacco 10y ago

But git itself is decentralized. Even if software projects are centralized around GitHub, many people (including myself) prefer the command line where possible, which is essentially universal and not hard to pick up at all. In a worst case scenario the entire project could be preserved with history and exported. And you really think people might not be able to attach a diff to an email? I just don't see this dystopian future. For what it's worth I use GitHub but have essentially no brand loyalty to it.

the_duke 10y ago
There are plenty of devs who don't know about patches and have never used `git format-patch` or `git apply`. But then again, learning how to do it probably takes 5 minutes...
PerryCox 10y ago
Yeah that's exactly how I feel. I've used all three (gitlab, bitbucket, and github). If the OP is that worried about github going down, just add a pushurl in .git/config to another host and that solves the problem.
- hobarrera 10y ago
  It doesn't solve the problem. I still can't see the PRs and comments stored in github.
reloop 10y ago
> But git itself is decentralized. To me that sort of makes things worse. I have nothing against using GitHub as such, but I also think it's important that projects like this should lead by example. If you centralize things that are inherently decentralized it's hard to make a case that decentralization is important. > many people (including myself) prefer the command line where possible, which is essentially universal and not hard to pick up at all. As someone who, at least thinks they, understands how DVCS works I find the git command line quite unintuitive. It's a mix between more low level commands and added shortcuts. The solution becomes "just run these three commands you know and use Github". > In a worst case scenario the entire project could be preserved with history and exported. That's not really realistic, unless something really drastic happens. People often use Github for more than git itself, it becomes an integral part of the workflow. If it's was easy to switch people would run something else in parallel (which some projects do). All in all I think the pragmatic solution is to have your own system and then interface Github as one channel. If you can't set up your own system that is competitive as a completment to Github, well then you are effectively dependent on Github.

diggan 10y ago

What we really need (instead of everyone using Trac) is a truly distributed P2P way of doing what Github is doing, forming a community around open source code and a platform for developing it.

rogual 10y ago
Sounds like you could build such a tool on top of Git itself, just using, say, an orphan branch to store discussion histories, submitted patches, etc.

adrianN 10y ago

Before github there was sourceforge. It's pretty dead now but open source development continues. So while I agree that an open and distributed system that does what github is currently doing would be better, I don't think that github's popularity and eventual demise is as terrible as you claim.

gkya 10y ago
It's a company. How long can it live? Will it live 50 years later? 20? 10? This is an important question because projects like Python will live that long.
- adrianN 10y ago
  It's not impossible to move to a different platform.
- cderwin 10y ago
  It's a significant possibility that Github the company will die, but github the site will not, at least not immediately. For example, github could be bought, in which case there would be no immediate reason to think the site would cease to exist immediately. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine that github the company could fail (i.e. die off) without github the site becoming extraordinarily less popular, in which case we shouldn't really care if github the site is still around. Of course there's also the option that code hosting becomes an inherently unprofitable business, in which case we're sort of screwed all around. Trying to figure out which of these scenarios (or a different one!) is going to happen sure looks like optimizing prematurely to me, in particular so long as there does exist some fashion of a backup repository.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >This is an important question because projects like Python will live that long. Planning in the 20 or 50 years range is counter-productive. Heck, whole countries might not exist by that time (the same way ex-USSR and Eastern European countries split into different ones).

cx1000 10y ago

Sounds to me like you don't understand how git works. If GitHub shuts down, people will just use a different server to host their repository, such as gitlab. The guy in charge of making the decision weighed the fact that it's closed source, and it still won. > But to me, the development process is more important than worrying whether a cloud-based service publishes its source code... This is especially not a worry as GitHub is not a walled garden; its extensive SDK allows for downloading any and all data that goes into the platform. In summary, his reasons were: github has become a social network of open source devs; gitlab has no killer features github doesn't; and Guido prefers github https://snarky.ca/the-history-behind-the-decision-to-move-python-to-github/ https://snarky.ca/the-history-behind-the-decision-to-move-py...

taken__-- 10y ago
So did twitter.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago

> don't know how to patch a file or attach a diff to an email How many minutes does it take to learn those skills?

cderwin 10y ago
I would wager a solid 3 minutes.

coldtea 10y ago

>I really dislike the trend of open-source software centralising around GitHub. It's slowly becoming a single point of failure in the ecosystem, and it's closed and corporate software. One day it's going to fail. If your criteria is only depending on things that are not gonna fail someday, you'll be severely limited in your options. Any decentralized solution would require money and people to host it (per project), would not provide a uniform interface to developers and users of code, and would not be as mature as GitHub is (at least initially). Besides, git is decentralized -- so people will have copies of the repo anyway, which they can backup fully anywhere they like. As for issues, etc, they could get them from GitHub for future-proofing and store them somewhere -- if GitHub fails them for some reason, they could then make some importers and load the same issues, notes etc on another host. >Is it really that hard to set up Trac or sth.? Given that GitHub hosts 10,000s of projects, it would mean several collective man-years lost for no reason. And in the end you'll have Trac to face (which is something to avoid in itself).

jwilk 10y ago
Re issue backups, there's: https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup I'm not quite happy with it, but it's better than nothing.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
>"Any decentralized solution would require money and people to host it" Unless home servers were used, in which case you're already paying for the bandwidth for your home internet connection. All you'd really want to add on top of that is a decentralised identity layer, for managing permissions across all repositories.
1wd 10y ago
> you'll have Trac to face (which is something to avoid in itself). Serious question: What's so bad about Trac?

MereInterest 10y ago

There underlying git is decentralized. I have a cronjob set up to keep a local copy of all of my repositories. If github were to disappear tomorrow, I would still have the code. Granted, I wish that the issues were stored within a branch, so that they would be copied along with the repository.

tbranyen 10y ago
Not a branch, but maybe git-notes would be a good place for them...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tsomctl 10y ago

I really dislike the trend of carriages centralizing around gasoline engine. It's slowly becoming a single point of failure in the ecosystem, and it's dead and mechanical. One day it's going to fail. And we'll be left with a plethora of people who don't know how to brush down a horse or feed them. Sad. Is it really that hard to hitch up a horse?