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GitHub is fantastic in so many ways, but I think it would be remiss not to point out that the hegemonic platform for open source and Free Software development i

GitHub is fantastic in so many ways, but I think it would be remiss not to point out that the hegemonic platform for open source and Free Software development is itself a proprietary platform, run by a company whose business model is reliant on companies continuing to develop proprietary software. It's also in many ways a single point of failure for many open source communities, and it will be very interesting to see what happens if GitHub ever folds.

adamnemecek 9y ago
Should all sw be written by volunteers?
- nickbauman 9y ago
  I think what adjlinux is talking about is a tragedy of the commons, which your question sidesteps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Software is different. I don’t deplete it by using it. It’s in my interest to contribute things back since more people will be testing my code and fixing it.
- ajdlinux 9y ago
  No. I'm a professional open source developer who is paid exclusively to work on GPL and Apache licensed software. I basically don't believe in large-scale open source being a volunteer endeavour - it's futile to have a mostly-volunteer team try to compete against commercially funded teams.
manmal 9y ago
If Github folds, Gitlab or Bitbucket will take over, and we might hardly notice if they make an effort to copy over pull requests and comments.
pilsetnieks 9y ago
Git itself is open source; if Github would to away without warning, you could host your repo anywhere that supports git, or host it yourself. There would be problems, however, with issues, comments, wikis, etc. as well as all kinds of package managers that rely on github.
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  What are the most used package / dependency management tools which rely on GitHub? Many can install packages from there, or from any Git URL, but they tend to have centralized stores as well, right? One example that comes to mind is Cargo. At least a couple years ago, the package index (but not packages themselves) for crates.io was stored in a Git repo hosted on GitHub. But (without checking, on a phone) I’m fairly certain crates.io doesn’t/didn’t rely on any GitHub APIs, just Git operations, so it would be easy to recover if GitHub just disappeared. Rust’s CI operation, on the other hand, is somewhat tightly coupled with GitHub. Last time I checked, the software powering bors only support GitHub’s APIs; support for competing APIs like Gitlab were open tickets. But I’m sure in an emergency the team would be able to put together support for another project host.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - steveklabnik 9y ago
    The index is on GitHub, but only the index. You can mirror it and Cargo knows how to work with the mirror. http://www.integer32.com/2016/10/08/bare-minimum-crates-io-mirror-plus-one.html http://www.integer32.com/2016/10/08/bare-minimum-crates-io-m...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- ajdlinux 9y ago
  What I'm more interested in is how GitHub has reduced friction in developer workflows, as the Thank You GitHub statement discusses, and how fragmentation of the git hosting ecosystem would change that. Right now, if I want to fix a bug in a GitHub hosted project, I log in to my existing GitHub account, report an issue, fork the repo, do the fix, submit a PR. If I have to use GitLab or Bitbucket, as I learned a couple of days ago when I had to submit a PR to a GitLab project, it adds a certain amount of friction (signing up for accounts, learning where all the right buttons are, etc) that I don't have when I'm using GitHub as the dominant platform which everyone else uses. If GitHub were to go away, would we end up with a single dominant new player that in turn provides a low friction workflow that everyone's used to, or would we have a more fragmented ecosystem? Furthermore, GitHub has played a large role in cementing the role of Git itself as the community's preferred VCS - much to the detriment of competitors like Mercurial, it must be said. If GitHub goes away, how sticky is Git itself?

adamnemecek 9y ago

Should all sw be written by volunteers?

nickbauman 9y ago
I think what adjlinux is talking about is a tragedy of the commons, which your question sidesteps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Software is different. I don’t deplete it by using it. It’s in my interest to contribute things back since more people will be testing my code and fixing it.
ajdlinux 9y ago
No. I'm a professional open source developer who is paid exclusively to work on GPL and Apache licensed software. I basically don't believe in large-scale open source being a volunteer endeavour - it's futile to have a mostly-volunteer team try to compete against commercially funded teams.

manmal 9y ago

If Github folds, Gitlab or Bitbucket will take over, and we might hardly notice if they make an effort to copy over pull requests and comments.

pilsetnieks 9y ago

Git itself is open source; if Github would to away without warning, you could host your repo anywhere that supports git, or host it yourself. There would be problems, however, with issues, comments, wikis, etc. as well as all kinds of package managers that rely on github.

tomjakubowski 9y ago
What are the most used package / dependency management tools which rely on GitHub? Many can install packages from there, or from any Git URL, but they tend to have centralized stores as well, right? One example that comes to mind is Cargo. At least a couple years ago, the package index (but not packages themselves) for crates.io was stored in a Git repo hosted on GitHub. But (without checking, on a phone) I’m fairly certain crates.io doesn’t/didn’t rely on any GitHub APIs, just Git operations, so it would be easy to recover if GitHub just disappeared. Rust’s CI operation, on the other hand, is somewhat tightly coupled with GitHub. Last time I checked, the software powering bors only support GitHub’s APIs; support for competing APIs like Gitlab were open tickets. But I’m sure in an emergency the team would be able to put together support for another project host.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- steveklabnik 9y ago
  The index is on GitHub, but only the index. You can mirror it and Cargo knows how to work with the mirror. http://www.integer32.com/2016/10/08/bare-minimum-crates-io-mirror-plus-one.html http://www.integer32.com/2016/10/08/bare-minimum-crates-io-m...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
ajdlinux 9y ago
What I'm more interested in is how GitHub has reduced friction in developer workflows, as the Thank You GitHub statement discusses, and how fragmentation of the git hosting ecosystem would change that. Right now, if I want to fix a bug in a GitHub hosted project, I log in to my existing GitHub account, report an issue, fork the repo, do the fix, submit a PR. If I have to use GitLab or Bitbucket, as I learned a couple of days ago when I had to submit a PR to a GitLab project, it adds a certain amount of friction (signing up for accounts, learning where all the right buttons are, etc) that I don't have when I'm using GitHub as the dominant platform which everyone else uses. If GitHub were to go away, would we end up with a single dominant new player that in turn provides a low friction workflow that everyone's used to, or would we have a more fragmented ecosystem? Furthermore, GitHub has played a large role in cementing the role of Git itself as the community's preferred VCS - much to the detriment of competitors like Mercurial, it must be said. If GitHub goes away, how sticky is Git itself?