12 ms·

GitMask – Develop Anonymously

285 points by josephscott 9y ago

f2n 9y ago
I wonder how long that will last until GitHub bans them for (presumably) massive amount of spam. The fact that it's PRs only, not just issues, makes it a bit harder, but I can't imagine it'd be that hard to abuse
- analogj 9y ago
  To be honest, I was worried about that as well. But it's been pretty good so far. Gitmask always adds a comment in the PR mentioning where the PR is comming from, so in the event of any projects/repos getting spammed, I can hopefully disable PR's being opened against those projects.
  - sbarre 9y ago
    To that end, you may want to include a prominent note on the website about how to report abusive activity and what your policy is for dealing with it. Simply having that easily accessible may got a long way.
    - analogj 9y ago
      Good point.
      - datamingle 9y ago
        Could also rate limit 1 PR for a given repo per day. Perhaps even have a queue.
        analogj 9y ago
        I don't really want to go down the rate limit route quite yet, but it could be an option.
  - jarofgreen 9y ago
    Can I also suggest making this opt-in per repo? I don't want this in my repos at all. Oddly enough, just last week I got in a row with someone else with exactly the same idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7kp73c/anonymous_pull_request_on_github/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7kp73c/anonymo...
- jarofgreen 9y ago
  Not sure why this is getting downvoted; given what we know about abuse online, especially in anonymous systems, I'd question if this project should even exist. GitHub put a lot of work into their anti-spam systems and this basically let's people bypass that completely. If I was them I'd shut it down right now.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    Because unfortunately people don't take kindly to critique around here.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    From the HN guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
analogj 9y ago
woah, this is my project. Glad you guys find it interesting. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.
- everdev 9y ago
  Cool project! I've thought about this before and ended up making throw away accounts. I really like this approach though.
  - analogj 9y ago
    Thanks!
- napsterbr 9y ago
  Feedback: not sure what your site is doing, but it appears to have an overlay over the content and it takes several seconds to load. Granted, I have a terrible connection, but I could not read the site (which was loaded) due to a blank layer on top of it.
  - analogj 9y ago
    weird. What browser are you using?
    - napsterbr 9y ago
      Ah, figured it out. It's due to a really bad connection. There's a spinner with white background. The underlying page loads (I can see parts of it if quickly scrolling), but the spinner div won't go away. Minor issue that wouldn't affect most of your visitors. Print: https://imgur.com/UqSUUTA https://imgur.com/UqSUUTA On a faster connection it worked fine. Not sure what this spinner is (can't debug on mobile). Ordinarily I wouldn't bother much making my service accessible for those with extremely crappy connection, but given your service might be used by people on 3rd world countries, behind proxies and so on, it might be a good idea to simulate slow connections on your landing page :) Maybe adding a "close" button would solve
ktpsns 9y ago
I did not really understand the benefit in comparison with a sock-puppet account linked to a throw-away e-mail address. That's the universal way for any web registration form.
- analogj 9y ago
  creating another account is an option, but Gitmask also strips github comments, strips the author info (which comes from your ENV and .git config), and squashes the commits. Just in case there's any data leakage.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  If you're not paying attention, git pulls information out of your OS and sticks it into your git commits without asking you. It does at least tell you it's done that, but it doesn't ask you before hand, it just goes ahead and does it, then begs forgiveness. I see a lot of value in having a tool in my workflow that strips all of that without my having to think about it.
  - anowlcalledjosh 9y ago
    > git pulls information out of your OS and sticks it into your git commits without asking you Really? The only information I know of that gets into a commit is your name & email and the current time, and the first two have to be configured before you can commit.
    - Sir_Substance 9y ago
      It depends on whether it can pull your email address out of the OS. If you're on a linux machine, usually it can't, so it pops up the "set your global user and email" prompt without committing things. If you're on a domain windows machine though, often it can. When that's the case, it does the commit first, and then asks you to set the config explicitly. You then swear, change the config to be blank, and then go amend the commit you just made. In any case, the whole thing is a pain that adds mental overhead I'd rather spend on programming.
- 9y ago
carussell 9y ago
This is cool. I've been looking for an "open relay" to help with collaborating on GitHub-hosted projects that's easier than doing account resets.[1] I'll check it out later. Side note: the Git project is enforcing the Git trademark now.[2] If you want to use "Git" for your branding, you'll need to get approval. 1. https://www.colbyrussell.com/2016/02/13/keeping-a-low-profile-on-github.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2016/02/13/keeping-a-low-profil... 2. https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw@sigill.intra.peff.net/ https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...
- analogj 9y ago
  hmm, good to know. I'll have to look into that
- username223 9y ago
  Hm... TIL: > Don't just create one account for each contribution you plan to make through github.com, e.g., so that you don't have to worry about deleting them. Unless you're paying for all those accounts, this is also against the GitHub terms. I've always created throwaway accounts in the rare cases where a maintainer won't accept an emailed patch. As for hosting/mirroring hobby projects, http://repo.or.cz http://repo.or.cz is nice.
- f2n 9y ago
  >If you have an account and you're participating in a project in any way through github.com, you're part of its social network. What part of GitHub does this person have a problem with? It's entirely unclear what they mean by social network. Is that like, showing the commits you make on your profile? Having a page that shows what you've worked on at all? This seems like good ways to be difficult to work with in open source projects for zero benefit.
  - carussell 9y ago
    The person who wrote that post is me. > Is that like, showing the commits you make on your profile? Yes. > Having a page that shows what you've worked on at all? Yes. > This seems like good ways to be difficult to work with in open source projects First, open source doesn't start and end with GitHub. Second, I prefer not to publish anything to Facebook or Twitter feeds, either. That's a position that folks seem to find palatable. (In fact, it's one that programmers appear to be disproportionately sympathetic to.) I don't see why it shouldn't remain so if the subject of the conversation is GitHub. > for zero benefit Opting out of the same kinds of personal broadcasting on GitHub isn't "zero benefit" to me. And if it is zero-benefit, it means the service linked here is zero-value. I feel differently. We don't have to agree.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
> Just because you think DICSS is amusing, doesn't mean you want your boss to know about it. How about your girlfriend? It's 2018. Dick jokes and "your girlfriend" examples have no place in software engineering, not that they ever did. That holds doubly true for a project whose target audience potentially includes people who have reasons to protect their identity. As potentially better examples: contributions to the bitcoin repository tend to result in spam from random people who think that the list of every contributor to bitcoin is the right list to send random cryptocurrency spam to. Or, you might want to contribute to the https-everywhere repository without revealing sensitive sites you're contributing entries for. ("Potentially sensitive" here could mean a wide variety of things, such as sites for sufferers of a particular medical condition, sites for organizations whose members regularly get targeted, etc.)
- analogj 9y ago
  Fair enough, the examples could use some work. I kinda just threw the landing page together without thinking about it much. I'll take another pass at it.
  - meuk 9y ago
    I don't understand the problem to be honest.
  - 18nleung 9y ago
    Unrelated to the GP, but I really like the design of the landing page — did you put it together yourself?
- jdc0589 9y ago
  as a perpetual man-child with a 13 year old's sense of humor....I resent this, but accept its accuracy.
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  >As potentially better examples: contributions to the bitcoin repository tend to How about a better example: contributors to the bitcoin repository tend to be targets of digital theft.
shykes 9y ago
This is fantastic. I have been doing all my personal open-source work anonymously, and it requires a surprising amount of tooling to get it right. I will give gitmask a try.
- analogj 9y ago
  haha I can understand that. Thanks for the support.
- Walkman 9y ago
  May I ask why? Why did you feel you have to hide your identity?
  - hnzix 9y ago
    Why should they disclose their identity and leave a permanent digital footprint? Some of us are private people by nature. Some of us have stalkers, sensitive employment situations etc. I miss the pseudonym era of the internet. Uploading my nudes to Facebook so they can ID me is so dystopian.
houli 9y ago
Not sure that many OSS projects are going to be interested in merging a patch where a conversation with the patch author for review/feedback can't happen
- analogj 9y ago
  I get that, but at the same time, there's a ton of reasons why a developer might not want their name attached to a bunch of code. As a maintainer myself, I can respect that. If the PR is important enough, I'm more than happy to merge it without knowing the author (with some additional tweaking if necessary).
  - Walkman 9y ago
    Can you tell me one real example of why somebody would do that? I mean REAL, not some random reason you just think of.
    - deanclatworthy 9y ago
      Legally questionable projects. There's plenty of projects on github which can be used for nefarious purposes with disclaimers that it shouldn't be used as such.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  Eh, you'd be surprised. Big projects? no. But I sometimes submit patches to small projects that I've integrated into personal projects, and pretty much every patch I've ever submitted has been accepted without comment. I set my git username and email to "<>" at the global level, which completely breaks githubs UI, and people /still/ accept the pull requests.
insomniacity 9y ago
I like this, but it does make it difficult to discuss the PR. Perhaps you could issue a private key or token in response to the POST and then add comments with that key/token?
- analogj 9y ago
  that's an interesting idea, thanks :)
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
Interesting project but I didn't see any information regarding data collection and retention on your site. Granted that's unlikely to come up but in theory I would imagine someone could subpoena your for information regarding who that person was that created the PR, no? Also curious how this does with, say, updating a PR.
- analogj 9y ago
  Yeah, adding a privacy/retention policy would be a good idea. Under the hood its pretty simple (and open source), just an AWS lambda squashing the commits and stripping metadata before pushing to Github. Potentially you could tie the commit to an IP address, but I'm not logging any of that info. I'm not really sure how I can prove that the code I'm running is the code you'll find on GH though.
  - mappu 9y ago
    >I'm not really sure how I can prove that the code I'm running is the code you'll find on GH though. I think this attestation is something Amazon (and other cloud providers) could offer in the future - they're the only ones who can really prove it. "I, Amazon AWS, do solemnly declare that the code running on {service} is {git hash}"
    - analogj 9y ago
      yeah, I guess thats how Docker does it. Automated builds tied to a github repo.
      - michaelmior 9y ago
        That lets you trust the image. Trusting software which is actually running somewhere seems harder.
    - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
      Only issue with that aspect is if they still allow configuration (I mean they'd sorta have to) and what if you could exploit a testing configuration to do whatever activity you want to hide? You could get the badge from AWS but still do what you wanted. Honestly not sure there is a good solution for that.
dbcurtis 9y ago
I can see why this is attractive in some circumstances. I don't see how this can be reconciled with copyright law. How can Anonymous Hacker show that they have auhority to transfer a clean copyright in their contribution? If you accept an anonymous patch, aren't you also accepting liability for all possible encumbrances?
- k__ 9y ago
  In Germany you can't transfer your copyright. I think an unknown crator would be the only way to make something that wasn't "owned" by him/her in this case.
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    You still hold copyright even if you don't disclose. It becomes unenforcible, though.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, how does employment and contracting work in Germany? If you pay me to make a software product, does it mean that I always keep the copyright?
    - lima 9y ago
      You keep the copyright, but you give away all rights. It's mostly semantics - the result is the same.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        So then couldn't the same apply here?
        pluma 9y ago
        No, not implicitly. You'd need to explicitly assign a transferable right to GitMask so GitMask can transfer it to the repository owner. Accepting the ToS isn't enough for that. Depending on who you ask you need an actual signature on paper to be 100% in the clear. What's worse: GitMask would need to guarantee that any given PR meets these requirements and expose this status to the repository owner. This would make GitMask liable but they could escalate to the original author -- but that in turn would jeopardise the anonymity guarantees to a degree. Imagine the following scenario: 1. Person A creates application X and publishes it under a non-permissive commercial license. 2. Person A uses GitMask to create a PR to an open source project Y of competitor B and includes source code from application X in the PR. 3. Maintainers of project Y merge the PR without being able to verify the identity of the author and publish the updated version. 4. Person A sues competitor B over the use of the source code from application X in project Y. 5. Competitor B blames GitMask for introducing the infringing code. Now depending on what GitMask has done, this could result in different outcomes. A. The status quo: GitMask provided no guarantees about the legal status of the code and retains no information about the author, so competitor B acted in negligence and is fully liable. B. GitMask does provide guarantees but requires no guarantees from the author, so GitMask is at least partly liable. If GitMask retained any information about the author they can try to sue over violation of the ToS but good luck with that. C. GitMask provides guarantees and requires formal guarantees from the author. GitMask is likely liable but they can hold the author accountable. In this scenario GitMask could demonstrate fraudulent behaviour, bad times for person A. IANAL, TINLA.
bitL 9y ago
For proper anonymization, you need to change code/naming style. Codestylommetry can easily identify most developers. Ideally, an obfuscator generates some "private key" that would guide it how exactly it should change/reverse change upon push/pull so that public repo has anonymized code whereas developer the real one. However, it won't work for multi-developer projects.
- analogj 9y ago
  I think that's pushing past the goals of GitMask. As much as possible I want to leave the code as is, as the developer intended, while stripping all personally identifiable information and metadata.
wybiral 9y ago
This webpage just shows a loading spinner with JS disabled. And after the recent bugs I intend to keep noscript on for some time. EDIT: Just saying, if you link to a main page... Make it accessible. Most serious privacy advocates probably have JS disabled by default.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I agree. Javascript should be required for simple static content.
  - kiwijamo 9y ago
    Did you mean shouldn't be required?
- jwilk 9y ago
  Archived copy, which should be viewable without JS: https://archive.is/v4bQM https://archive.is/v4bQM
Ajedi32 9y ago
For developers who truly care about anonymity, is relying on the server to strip out personal information really a good idea? If I were that paranoid, I feel like I'd greatly prefer a tool that strips everything out on the client, then establishes a connection to your site via a Tor hidden service which then publishes the PR. Another concern; isn't this a potential avenue for spam? How long before someone submits a bunch of spam PRs through the service and gets your Gitmask user account banned on GitHub as a result?
- analogj 9y ago
  To be honest, I wrote GitMask for myself. Yep,if anonymity is really important to you, a VPN and/or TOR is required. GitMask just ensures that you don't unintentionally leak personal info. GitMask is open source, so if you don't trust me to run it, just run it yourself. Spam is a potential issue. All PR's reference gitmask.com so maintainers have someone to message if they get flooded.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Are you worried about potential licensing issues? Some projects make contributors agree to certain license contribution guidelines before they can accept pull requests. If there is a question about non-OSS code coming in from Gitmask in a lawsuit, the affected project will most likely have to discard and rewrite all those contributions.
- chr15m 9y ago
  You may be interested in Gitnonymous which does not require a trusted 3rd party, and strips everything out on the client side. https://github.com/chr15m/gitnonymous https://github.com/chr15m/gitnonymous
  - ycmbntrthrwaway 9y ago
    To avoid accidents I suggest you actually create a separate user and develop from here.
- 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lima 9y ago
What's the point? Just make an anonymous GitHub account, they have no real name policy, after all. Participation in discussions is a necessity for most interactions with an open source community.
Fnoord 9y ago
Without accountability, how would you combat hidden backdoors in code? Doesn't accountability reduce the risk for hidden backdoors?
- Thiez 9y ago
  What does accountability have to do with anything? Do you think GitHub verifies who you are when you sign up? They don't. Even if they did, a person introducing backdoors may not even live in a jurisdiction where this is illegal, or where you have any chance of sueing them. Do you think the data in a git commit is accurate? You can put anybody's name and email address there, and any date you like. Please explain which part of this project ensures even less accountability than accepting code from a newly created GitHub account. In addition, I would love to hear how you would hold someone introducing a backdoor through a GitHub PR accountable even if you know exactly who they are, where they live, and have a video of them opening the pr, and a signed confession.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    Fair enough Thiez, the difference between the current situation with and without GitMask isn't a whole lot. The only difference is that GitMask invites more anonymous developers. Whether that is in the interest of other (anonymous and/or non-anonymous) developers and users is a matter of perspective, and case-by-case hindsight 20/20. As for holding someone who's known accountable for their mistakes. That's the entire point of using your real name when it comes to professional work: it increases accountability.
vivaladav 9y ago
This is the dumbest thing I have seen on the front page of HN in a long time. If I really wanted to be anonymous on GitHub I'd create a "fake" account/would not use my name.
- cutcss 9y ago
  To create a fake account you need a fake email as well and configure git to not include your email; so I can see some value in this proposition.
quadrangle 9y ago
yet another site that won't even show anything without JavaScript. :( Even though it's only static images and text!…
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cracell 9y ago
Interesting idea but this part made me cringe "Just because you think DICSS is amusing, doesn't mean you want your boss to know about it. How about your SO?" If you are writing code you need to hide from your SO you have some serious relationship problems.
- odammit 9y ago
  Never heard of DICSS, very disappointed there isn’t a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Makes me think of C Plus Equality: https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality
fishywang 9y ago
I don't understand it. If you are a project maintainer on GitHub, how could you accept a PR from an anonymous user? Let's say you accepted it, and later some company said that the code from that PR is "stolen" from their code base, and that's true, how do you deal with that?
- deanclatworthy 9y ago
  There's absolutely no way for you to verify that code submitted as a PR isn't stolen, anonymous or not. Even if I created an account with a legitimate identity and submitted a PR to your project which you accepted and then found out was stolen, what can you do about it? Slap on the wrist and move on. I hate the idea of having an identity on github. I don't want to be contacted for support, and I don't want my email being harvested by spam bots and recruiting agencies (both of which has happened).
  - fishywang 9y ago
    The absolute solution for that is force contributors to sign CLA, and I don't think there's a way to sign that anonymously. I know a lot of smaller projects won't bother with CLA, but their maintainers can still assess the possibility of stolen code and act accordingly. If I'm a maintainer and the possibility of an incoming PR is stolen (the complexity of the PR, basically) is high enough, I would look at the information associated with the contributor (the GitHub account, the email address, etc.). If it's someone contribute a lot to other open source projects I would be more likely to accept it. Actually on second thought, GitHub really should provide free CLA management service to all its users: you (as a project maintainer) can enable CLA requirement on your project, once enabled a GitHub-run CLA bot will ask new contributors sign a CLA in their first PR, and you can get all the signed CLAs when needed. If GitLab or BitBucket provide this feature before GitHub I'll move my projects over in a heartbeat.
mr_scrapey 9y ago
Throwaway account: I enjoy scraping GitHub user data and have found it a great goldmine of data. 95% of the time I can recover an email address for a user based on their commits, even when the email is not publicly visible on GitHub. Very insecure.
- kemiller2002 9y ago
  A few years ago I watched a security talk where the spearker showed how much sensitive info was in Github. There was an amazing number of passwords, and what really surprised me was that a number of them realized after they pushed the sensitive data what they did and tried to delete it. . . . . they also thought simply committing over it was the way to delete it. It is possible that several of these companies did the correct thing and changed the password after they realized their mistake, but I have a feeling not.
mraza007 9y ago
This is so cool I love this

285 points by josephscott 9y ago

f2n 9y ago

I wonder how long that will last until GitHub bans them for (presumably) massive amount of spam. The fact that it's PRs only, not just issues, makes it a bit harder, but I can't imagine it'd be that hard to abuse

analogj 9y ago
To be honest, I was worried about that as well. But it's been pretty good so far. Gitmask always adds a comment in the PR mentioning where the PR is comming from, so in the event of any projects/repos getting spammed, I can hopefully disable PR's being opened against those projects.
- sbarre 9y ago
  To that end, you may want to include a prominent note on the website about how to report abusive activity and what your policy is for dealing with it. Simply having that easily accessible may got a long way.
  - analogj 9y ago
    Good point.
    - datamingle 9y ago
      Could also rate limit 1 PR for a given repo per day. Perhaps even have a queue.
      - analogj 9y ago
        I don't really want to go down the rate limit route quite yet, but it could be an option.
- jarofgreen 9y ago
  Can I also suggest making this opt-in per repo? I don't want this in my repos at all. Oddly enough, just last week I got in a row with someone else with exactly the same idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7kp73c/anonymous_pull_request_on_github/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7kp73c/anonymo...
jarofgreen 9y ago
Not sure why this is getting downvoted; given what we know about abuse online, especially in anonymous systems, I'd question if this project should even exist. GitHub put a lot of work into their anti-spam systems and this basically let's people bypass that completely. If I was them I'd shut it down right now.
- wybiral 9y ago
  Because unfortunately people don't take kindly to critique around here.
- jwilk 9y ago
  From the HN guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

analogj 9y ago

woah, this is my project. Glad you guys find it interesting. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

everdev 9y ago
Cool project! I've thought about this before and ended up making throw away accounts. I really like this approach though.
- analogj 9y ago
  Thanks!
napsterbr 9y ago
Feedback: not sure what your site is doing, but it appears to have an overlay over the content and it takes several seconds to load. Granted, I have a terrible connection, but I could not read the site (which was loaded) due to a blank layer on top of it.
- analogj 9y ago
  weird. What browser are you using?
  - napsterbr 9y ago
    Ah, figured it out. It's due to a really bad connection. There's a spinner with white background. The underlying page loads (I can see parts of it if quickly scrolling), but the spinner div won't go away. Minor issue that wouldn't affect most of your visitors. Print: https://imgur.com/UqSUUTA https://imgur.com/UqSUUTA On a faster connection it worked fine. Not sure what this spinner is (can't debug on mobile). Ordinarily I wouldn't bother much making my service accessible for those with extremely crappy connection, but given your service might be used by people on 3rd world countries, behind proxies and so on, it might be a good idea to simulate slow connections on your landing page :) Maybe adding a "close" button would solve

ktpsns 9y ago

I did not really understand the benefit in comparison with a sock-puppet account linked to a throw-away e-mail address. That's the universal way for any web registration form.

analogj 9y ago
creating another account is an option, but Gitmask also strips github comments, strips the author info (which comes from your ENV and .git config), and squashes the commits. Just in case there's any data leakage.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
If you're not paying attention, git pulls information out of your OS and sticks it into your git commits without asking you. It does at least tell you it's done that, but it doesn't ask you before hand, it just goes ahead and does it, then begs forgiveness. I see a lot of value in having a tool in my workflow that strips all of that without my having to think about it.
- anowlcalledjosh 9y ago
  > git pulls information out of your OS and sticks it into your git commits without asking you Really? The only information I know of that gets into a commit is your name & email and the current time, and the first two have to be configured before you can commit.
  - Sir_Substance 9y ago
    It depends on whether it can pull your email address out of the OS. If you're on a linux machine, usually it can't, so it pops up the "set your global user and email" prompt without committing things. If you're on a domain windows machine though, often it can. When that's the case, it does the commit first, and then asks you to set the config explicitly. You then swear, change the config to be blank, and then go amend the commit you just made. In any case, the whole thing is a pain that adds mental overhead I'd rather spend on programming.
9y ago

carussell 9y ago

This is cool. I've been looking for an "open relay" to help with collaborating on GitHub-hosted projects that's easier than doing account resets.[1] I'll check it out later. Side note: the Git project is enforcing the Git trademark now.[2] If you want to use "Git" for your branding, you'll need to get approval. 1. https://www.colbyrussell.com/2016/02/13/keeping-a-low-profile-on-github.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2016/02/13/keeping-a-low-profil... 2. https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw@sigill.intra.peff.net/ https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

analogj 9y ago
hmm, good to know. I'll have to look into that
username223 9y ago
Hm... TIL: > Don't just create one account for each contribution you plan to make through github.com, e.g., so that you don't have to worry about deleting them. Unless you're paying for all those accounts, this is also against the GitHub terms. I've always created throwaway accounts in the rare cases where a maintainer won't accept an emailed patch. As for hosting/mirroring hobby projects, http://repo.or.cz http://repo.or.cz is nice.
f2n 9y ago
>If you have an account and you're participating in a project in any way through github.com, you're part of its social network. What part of GitHub does this person have a problem with? It's entirely unclear what they mean by social network. Is that like, showing the commits you make on your profile? Having a page that shows what you've worked on at all? This seems like good ways to be difficult to work with in open source projects for zero benefit.
- carussell 9y ago
  The person who wrote that post is me. > Is that like, showing the commits you make on your profile? Yes. > Having a page that shows what you've worked on at all? Yes. > This seems like good ways to be difficult to work with in open source projects First, open source doesn't start and end with GitHub. Second, I prefer not to publish anything to Facebook or Twitter feeds, either. That's a position that folks seem to find palatable. (In fact, it's one that programmers appear to be disproportionately sympathetic to.) I don't see why it shouldn't remain so if the subject of the conversation is GitHub. > for zero benefit Opting out of the same kinds of personal broadcasting on GitHub isn't "zero benefit" to me. And if it is zero-benefit, it means the service linked here is zero-value. I feel differently. We don't have to agree.

JoshTriplett 9y ago

> Just because you think DICSS is amusing, doesn't mean you want your boss to know about it. How about your girlfriend? It's 2018. Dick jokes and "your girlfriend" examples have no place in software engineering, not that they ever did. That holds doubly true for a project whose target audience potentially includes people who have reasons to protect their identity. As potentially better examples: contributions to the bitcoin repository tend to result in spam from random people who think that the list of every contributor to bitcoin is the right list to send random cryptocurrency spam to. Or, you might want to contribute to the https-everywhere repository without revealing sensitive sites you're contributing entries for. ("Potentially sensitive" here could mean a wide variety of things, such as sites for sufferers of a particular medical condition, sites for organizations whose members regularly get targeted, etc.)

analogj 9y ago
Fair enough, the examples could use some work. I kinda just threw the landing page together without thinking about it much. I'll take another pass at it.
- meuk 9y ago
  I don't understand the problem to be honest.
- 18nleung 9y ago
  Unrelated to the GP, but I really like the design of the landing page — did you put it together yourself?
jdc0589 9y ago
as a perpetual man-child with a 13 year old's sense of humor....I resent this, but accept its accuracy.
DINKDINK 9y ago
>As potentially better examples: contributions to the bitcoin repository tend to How about a better example: contributors to the bitcoin repository tend to be targets of digital theft.

shykes 9y ago

This is fantastic. I have been doing all my personal open-source work anonymously, and it requires a surprising amount of tooling to get it right. I will give gitmask a try.

analogj 9y ago
haha I can understand that. Thanks for the support.
Walkman 9y ago
May I ask why? Why did you feel you have to hide your identity?
- hnzix 9y ago
  Why should they disclose their identity and leave a permanent digital footprint? Some of us are private people by nature. Some of us have stalkers, sensitive employment situations etc. I miss the pseudonym era of the internet. Uploading my nudes to Facebook so they can ID me is so dystopian.

houli 9y ago

Not sure that many OSS projects are going to be interested in merging a patch where a conversation with the patch author for review/feedback can't happen

analogj 9y ago
I get that, but at the same time, there's a ton of reasons why a developer might not want their name attached to a bunch of code. As a maintainer myself, I can respect that. If the PR is important enough, I'm more than happy to merge it without knowing the author (with some additional tweaking if necessary).
- Walkman 9y ago
  Can you tell me one real example of why somebody would do that? I mean REAL, not some random reason you just think of.
  - deanclatworthy 9y ago
    Legally questionable projects. There's plenty of projects on github which can be used for nefarious purposes with disclaimers that it shouldn't be used as such.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
Eh, you'd be surprised. Big projects? no. But I sometimes submit patches to small projects that I've integrated into personal projects, and pretty much every patch I've ever submitted has been accepted without comment. I set my git username and email to "<>" at the global level, which completely breaks githubs UI, and people /still/ accept the pull requests.

insomniacity 9y ago

I like this, but it does make it difficult to discuss the PR. Perhaps you could issue a private key or token in response to the POST and then add comments with that key/token?

analogj 9y ago
that's an interesting idea, thanks :)

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

Interesting project but I didn't see any information regarding data collection and retention on your site. Granted that's unlikely to come up but in theory I would imagine someone could subpoena your for information regarding who that person was that created the PR, no? Also curious how this does with, say, updating a PR.

analogj 9y ago
Yeah, adding a privacy/retention policy would be a good idea. Under the hood its pretty simple (and open source), just an AWS lambda squashing the commits and stripping metadata before pushing to Github. Potentially you could tie the commit to an IP address, but I'm not logging any of that info. I'm not really sure how I can prove that the code I'm running is the code you'll find on GH though.
- mappu 9y ago
  >I'm not really sure how I can prove that the code I'm running is the code you'll find on GH though. I think this attestation is something Amazon (and other cloud providers) could offer in the future - they're the only ones who can really prove it. "I, Amazon AWS, do solemnly declare that the code running on {service} is {git hash}"
  - analogj 9y ago
    yeah, I guess thats how Docker does it. Automated builds tied to a github repo.
    - michaelmior 9y ago
      That lets you trust the image. Trusting software which is actually running somewhere seems harder.
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    Only issue with that aspect is if they still allow configuration (I mean they'd sorta have to) and what if you could exploit a testing configuration to do whatever activity you want to hide? You could get the badge from AWS but still do what you wanted. Honestly not sure there is a good solution for that.

dbcurtis 9y ago

I can see why this is attractive in some circumstances. I don't see how this can be reconciled with copyright law. How can Anonymous Hacker show that they have auhority to transfer a clean copyright in their contribution? If you accept an anonymous patch, aren't you also accepting liability for all possible encumbrances?

k__ 9y ago
In Germany you can't transfer your copyright. I think an unknown crator would be the only way to make something that wasn't "owned" by him/her in this case.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  You still hold copyright even if you don't disclose. It becomes unenforcible, though.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, how does employment and contracting work in Germany? If you pay me to make a software product, does it mean that I always keep the copyright?
  - lima 9y ago
    You keep the copyright, but you give away all rights. It's mostly semantics - the result is the same.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      So then couldn't the same apply here?
      - pluma 9y ago
        No, not implicitly. You'd need to explicitly assign a transferable right to GitMask so GitMask can transfer it to the repository owner. Accepting the ToS isn't enough for that. Depending on who you ask you need an actual signature on paper to be 100% in the clear. What's worse: GitMask would need to guarantee that any given PR meets these requirements and expose this status to the repository owner. This would make GitMask liable but they could escalate to the original author -- but that in turn would jeopardise the anonymity guarantees to a degree. Imagine the following scenario: 1. Person A creates application X and publishes it under a non-permissive commercial license. 2. Person A uses GitMask to create a PR to an open source project Y of competitor B and includes source code from application X in the PR. 3. Maintainers of project Y merge the PR without being able to verify the identity of the author and publish the updated version. 4. Person A sues competitor B over the use of the source code from application X in project Y. 5. Competitor B blames GitMask for introducing the infringing code. Now depending on what GitMask has done, this could result in different outcomes. A. The status quo: GitMask provided no guarantees about the legal status of the code and retains no information about the author, so competitor B acted in negligence and is fully liable. B. GitMask does provide guarantees but requires no guarantees from the author, so GitMask is at least partly liable. If GitMask retained any information about the author they can try to sue over violation of the ToS but good luck with that. C. GitMask provides guarantees and requires formal guarantees from the author. GitMask is likely liable but they can hold the author accountable. In this scenario GitMask could demonstrate fraudulent behaviour, bad times for person A. IANAL, TINLA.

bitL 9y ago

For proper anonymization, you need to change code/naming style. Codestylommetry can easily identify most developers. Ideally, an obfuscator generates some "private key" that would guide it how exactly it should change/reverse change upon push/pull so that public repo has anonymized code whereas developer the real one. However, it won't work for multi-developer projects.

analogj 9y ago
I think that's pushing past the goals of GitMask. As much as possible I want to leave the code as is, as the developer intended, while stripping all personally identifiable information and metadata.

wybiral 9y ago

This webpage just shows a loading spinner with JS disabled. And after the recent bugs I intend to keep noscript on for some time. EDIT: Just saying, if you link to a main page... Make it accessible. Most serious privacy advocates probably have JS disabled by default.

djsumdog 9y ago
I agree. Javascript should be required for simple static content.
- kiwijamo 9y ago
  Did you mean shouldn't be required?
jwilk 9y ago
Archived copy, which should be viewable without JS: https://archive.is/v4bQM https://archive.is/v4bQM

Ajedi32 9y ago

For developers who truly care about anonymity, is relying on the server to strip out personal information really a good idea? If I were that paranoid, I feel like I'd greatly prefer a tool that strips everything out on the client, then establishes a connection to your site via a Tor hidden service which then publishes the PR. Another concern; isn't this a potential avenue for spam? How long before someone submits a bunch of spam PRs through the service and gets your Gitmask user account banned on GitHub as a result?

analogj 9y ago
To be honest, I wrote GitMask for myself. Yep,if anonymity is really important to you, a VPN and/or TOR is required. GitMask just ensures that you don't unintentionally leak personal info. GitMask is open source, so if you don't trust me to run it, just run it yourself. Spam is a potential issue. All PR's reference gitmask.com so maintainers have someone to message if they get flooded.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Are you worried about potential licensing issues? Some projects make contributors agree to certain license contribution guidelines before they can accept pull requests. If there is a question about non-OSS code coming in from Gitmask in a lawsuit, the affected project will most likely have to discard and rewrite all those contributions.
chr15m 9y ago
You may be interested in Gitnonymous which does not require a trusted 3rd party, and strips everything out on the client side. https://github.com/chr15m/gitnonymous https://github.com/chr15m/gitnonymous
- ycmbntrthrwaway 9y ago
  To avoid accidents I suggest you actually create a separate user and develop from here.
9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lima 9y ago

What's the point? Just make an anonymous GitHub account, they have no real name policy, after all. Participation in discussions is a necessity for most interactions with an open source community.

Fnoord 9y ago

Without accountability, how would you combat hidden backdoors in code? Doesn't accountability reduce the risk for hidden backdoors?

Thiez 9y ago
What does accountability have to do with anything? Do you think GitHub verifies who you are when you sign up? They don't. Even if they did, a person introducing backdoors may not even live in a jurisdiction where this is illegal, or where you have any chance of sueing them. Do you think the data in a git commit is accurate? You can put anybody's name and email address there, and any date you like. Please explain which part of this project ensures even less accountability than accepting code from a newly created GitHub account. In addition, I would love to hear how you would hold someone introducing a backdoor through a GitHub PR accountable even if you know exactly who they are, where they live, and have a video of them opening the pr, and a signed confession.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Fair enough Thiez, the difference between the current situation with and without GitMask isn't a whole lot. The only difference is that GitMask invites more anonymous developers. Whether that is in the interest of other (anonymous and/or non-anonymous) developers and users is a matter of perspective, and case-by-case hindsight 20/20. As for holding someone who's known accountable for their mistakes. That's the entire point of using your real name when it comes to professional work: it increases accountability.

vivaladav 9y ago

This is the dumbest thing I have seen on the front page of HN in a long time. If I really wanted to be anonymous on GitHub I'd create a "fake" account/would not use my name.

cutcss 9y ago
To create a fake account you need a fake email as well and configure git to not include your email; so I can see some value in this proposition.

quadrangle 9y ago

yet another site that won't even show anything without JavaScript. :( Even though it's only static images and text!…

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cracell 9y ago

Interesting idea but this part made me cringe "Just because you think DICSS is amusing, doesn't mean you want your boss to know about it. How about your SO?" If you are writing code you need to hide from your SO you have some serious relationship problems.

odammit 9y ago
Never heard of DICSS, very disappointed there isn’t a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Makes me think of C Plus Equality: https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality

fishywang 9y ago

I don't understand it. If you are a project maintainer on GitHub, how could you accept a PR from an anonymous user? Let's say you accepted it, and later some company said that the code from that PR is "stolen" from their code base, and that's true, how do you deal with that?

deanclatworthy 9y ago
There's absolutely no way for you to verify that code submitted as a PR isn't stolen, anonymous or not. Even if I created an account with a legitimate identity and submitted a PR to your project which you accepted and then found out was stolen, what can you do about it? Slap on the wrist and move on. I hate the idea of having an identity on github. I don't want to be contacted for support, and I don't want my email being harvested by spam bots and recruiting agencies (both of which has happened).
- fishywang 9y ago
  The absolute solution for that is force contributors to sign CLA, and I don't think there's a way to sign that anonymously. I know a lot of smaller projects won't bother with CLA, but their maintainers can still assess the possibility of stolen code and act accordingly. If I'm a maintainer and the possibility of an incoming PR is stolen (the complexity of the PR, basically) is high enough, I would look at the information associated with the contributor (the GitHub account, the email address, etc.). If it's someone contribute a lot to other open source projects I would be more likely to accept it. Actually on second thought, GitHub really should provide free CLA management service to all its users: you (as a project maintainer) can enable CLA requirement on your project, once enabled a GitHub-run CLA bot will ask new contributors sign a CLA in their first PR, and you can get all the signed CLAs when needed. If GitLab or BitBucket provide this feature before GitHub I'll move my projects over in a heartbeat.

mr_scrapey 9y ago

Throwaway account: I enjoy scraping GitHub user data and have found it a great goldmine of data. 95% of the time I can recover an email address for a user based on their commits, even when the email is not publicly visible on GitHub. Very insecure.

kemiller2002 9y ago
A few years ago I watched a security talk where the spearker showed how much sensitive info was in Github. There was an amazing number of passwords, and what really surprised me was that a number of them realized after they pushed the sensitive data what they did and tried to delete it. . . . . they also thought simply committing over it was the way to delete it. It is possible that several of these companies did the correct thing and changed the password after they realized their mistake, but I have a feeling not.

mraza007 9y ago

This is so cool I love this