8 ms·

I am a developer, use git, but don't use too much GitHub. I am genuinely curious, are the users of GitHub really that tied in to the site? Is the cost of movi

I am a developer, use git, but don't use too much GitHub. I am genuinely curious, are the users of GitHub really that tied in to the site? Is the cost of moving to another platform, really that difficult??

ioquatix 8y ago
If you use pure git, no. If you built your company around GitHub team management, yes. If you integrate with 3rd party services that function via GitHub, yes. If you depend on an open source community which is primarily connected through GitHub, yes.
- eight_ender 8y ago
  I went to reply to the parent but you just nailed it. Microsoft isn't after your open source project git user here, they're after the multitude of companies that are heavily invested in what Github offers on top of git. If I were to tell my team right now we were moving away from Github I'm pretty sure there'd be riots and fire. We rely on the hooks to tell us when things are being merged and we rely on PRs to do code review. Even the wikis are maintained and contain relevant information. No one does that. Corporate wikis are a black hole of shit, and somehow our Github wiki isn't. The MS sales team is most likely currently engaged in some Defcon 2 sales planning in a war room bunker deep underground. Deals are going to happen, upsells will be sought. Account managers are being dropped from helicopters. Quotas are coalescing off the shoulder of Orion. Contracts are glittering at the Facebook compound gates. All of these deals will be won in time, making it rain.
airstrike 8y ago
Not difficult, but no other platform offers the same. Why would you move from Google to Bing?
bad_user 8y ago
> I am genuinely curious, are the users of GitHub really that tied in to the site? For open source projects of multiple contributors, yes, because that's where the community is, along with all relevant traces, e.g. issues, comments, PRs, all linked to their user's accounts. I've seen people here suggest that GitLab's import tool is pretty good in importing the history of issues. It's also a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen, but beyond the import, the problem is that the community isn't there. Not to mention that many projects have been uninspired enough to use GitHub as their homepage, which means that the web is littered with links to GitHub that aren't replaceable. I've seen people here downplay the difficulty of moving off GitHub. Such people do not maintain popular or multi-contributor open source projects.
- bigger_cheese 8y ago
  Aren't a lot of open source communities based around IRC channels or is that old hat now? I remember back in the day IRC was the place to be for Debian. Ditto for when I was doing stuff with Perl.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    Well now that you mention it, in the communities I care about, IRC was replaced by Gitter (https://gitter.im/ https://gitter.im/). Which is also linked to GitHub accounts and repositories. Ironically, Gitter was bought by GitLab and open sourced, but they haven't changed the implementation to allow for chat rooms linked to GitLab repos. At the glacial pace it is evolving, it wouldn't be unfair to say that Gitter is probably relying solely on OSS contributions at this point.
    - herbst 8y ago
      While gitter generally is a good idea I have yet to land in a active channel. The partly abondened IRC channels often still show a lot more activity even when they link to their gitter in their meta.
      - bad_user 8y ago
        Not my experience, it depends on the community you're talking about I guess. Here's some channels I'm on, all being so active that I have a hard time keeping up: - https://gitter.im/scala/scala https://gitter.im/scala/scala - https://gitter.im/scala-js/scala-js https://gitter.im/scala-js/scala-js - https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats - https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats-effect https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats-effect - https://gitter.im/monix/monix https://gitter.im/monix/monix - https://gitter.im/http4s/http4s https://gitter.im/http4s/http4s
  - berti 8y ago
    IRC is a good substitute for being in the same room, but you still need more formal discussions recorded in issues and pull requests (the recorded part is quite important if you project is around for more than a few weeks).
hliyan 8y ago
Question: is it possible to build basic pull request and comment information storage into the git repository itself? This way, sites like Github are merely interfaces with no data import export requirements.
- kumarvvr 8y ago
  I think the problem is with identity management. Maybe a universal identity provider is required.
  - iamtew 8y ago
    You could just GPG sign your commits, then you can know for sure where the commit is coming from.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Anyone can create a GPG key and start signing commits. GPG does not solve identity, it requires additional networking (like WoT or TOFU) before it can begin to function as an identity tool.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Yes. In fact, Joey Hess built a tool that backs all that info from the Github API to a git repository: https://github-backup.branchable.com/ https://github-backup.branchable.com/
caymanjim 8y ago
GitHub is where developers go to find the software they use on a daily basis, and find the libraries they use to build even more software, which they usually put right back on GitHub. I use the public GitHub many times a month. More importantly, every single job I've had for nearly the past decade has stored its code in GitHub. Not publicly accessible, and rarely at a private github.com account; every place I work uses a privately hosted GitHub Enterprise server. I wouldn't even consider using anything else, even though GitLab (and to a lesser extent, BitBucket) offer exactly the same functionality. GitHub was groundbreaking when it arrived. Some people are having an emotional reaction and defecting to GitLab this month (for reasons that escape me), but GitHub has all the inertia. More importantly, GitHub has a vast community. It's just where code lives now. I'm curious as to what sort of development you do or where you work that you're not a regular GitHub user. It's inescapable in every software company I've worked at since its inception, and as a consultant, that's a huge number of companies in nearly every industry. The only place I've worked in the past decade that didn't use GitHub was an all-Windows shop that used some horrible old proprietary revision control system whose name escapes me. Do you use git but not use GitHub (public or private or enterprise)?
- pmontra 8y ago
  I have some customers with repositories on Bitbucket. The reason is the pricing model for private projects. On Bitbucket you pay for developer and have infinite private projects. On GitHub is you pay for private projects and have infinite developers. If one company has many projects and few developers, Bitbucket is cheaper. I also have small customers who don't even know what a repository is. I self host with gitolite (I don't need a web interface, only push and pull) and give access to the most illuminated of them to a self hosted Redmine server for managing tickets. I write documentation in Redmine's wikis.
  - kawsper 8y ago
    > On GitHub is you pay for private projects and have infinite developers. That is the legacy pricing model. Their new pricing model matches Bitbucket: https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing
herbst 8y ago
I am part of several organisations and all my tooling is based around git and sometimes third party github extensions. I can move. But it's definitly not painless.

ioquatix 8y ago

If you use pure git, no. If you built your company around GitHub team management, yes. If you integrate with 3rd party services that function via GitHub, yes. If you depend on an open source community which is primarily connected through GitHub, yes.

eight_ender 8y ago
I went to reply to the parent but you just nailed it. Microsoft isn't after your open source project git user here, they're after the multitude of companies that are heavily invested in what Github offers on top of git. If I were to tell my team right now we were moving away from Github I'm pretty sure there'd be riots and fire. We rely on the hooks to tell us when things are being merged and we rely on PRs to do code review. Even the wikis are maintained and contain relevant information. No one does that. Corporate wikis are a black hole of shit, and somehow our Github wiki isn't. The MS sales team is most likely currently engaged in some Defcon 2 sales planning in a war room bunker deep underground. Deals are going to happen, upsells will be sought. Account managers are being dropped from helicopters. Quotas are coalescing off the shoulder of Orion. Contracts are glittering at the Facebook compound gates. All of these deals will be won in time, making it rain.

airstrike 8y ago

Not difficult, but no other platform offers the same. Why would you move from Google to Bing?

bad_user 8y ago

> I am genuinely curious, are the users of GitHub really that tied in to the site? For open source projects of multiple contributors, yes, because that's where the community is, along with all relevant traces, e.g. issues, comments, PRs, all linked to their user's accounts. I've seen people here suggest that GitLab's import tool is pretty good in importing the history of issues. It's also a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen, but beyond the import, the problem is that the community isn't there. Not to mention that many projects have been uninspired enough to use GitHub as their homepage, which means that the web is littered with links to GitHub that aren't replaceable. I've seen people here downplay the difficulty of moving off GitHub. Such people do not maintain popular or multi-contributor open source projects.

bigger_cheese 8y ago
Aren't a lot of open source communities based around IRC channels or is that old hat now? I remember back in the day IRC was the place to be for Debian. Ditto for when I was doing stuff with Perl.
- bad_user 8y ago
  Well now that you mention it, in the communities I care about, IRC was replaced by Gitter (https://gitter.im/ https://gitter.im/). Which is also linked to GitHub accounts and repositories. Ironically, Gitter was bought by GitLab and open sourced, but they haven't changed the implementation to allow for chat rooms linked to GitLab repos. At the glacial pace it is evolving, it wouldn't be unfair to say that Gitter is probably relying solely on OSS contributions at this point.
  - herbst 8y ago
    While gitter generally is a good idea I have yet to land in a active channel. The partly abondened IRC channels often still show a lot more activity even when they link to their gitter in their meta.
    - bad_user 8y ago
      Not my experience, it depends on the community you're talking about I guess. Here's some channels I'm on, all being so active that I have a hard time keeping up: - https://gitter.im/scala/scala https://gitter.im/scala/scala - https://gitter.im/scala-js/scala-js https://gitter.im/scala-js/scala-js - https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats - https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats-effect https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats-effect - https://gitter.im/monix/monix https://gitter.im/monix/monix - https://gitter.im/http4s/http4s https://gitter.im/http4s/http4s
- berti 8y ago
  IRC is a good substitute for being in the same room, but you still need more formal discussions recorded in issues and pull requests (the recorded part is quite important if you project is around for more than a few weeks).

hliyan 8y ago

Question: is it possible to build basic pull request and comment information storage into the git repository itself? This way, sites like Github are merely interfaces with no data import export requirements.

kumarvvr 8y ago
I think the problem is with identity management. Maybe a universal identity provider is required.
- iamtew 8y ago
  You could just GPG sign your commits, then you can know for sure where the commit is coming from.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Anyone can create a GPG key and start signing commits. GPG does not solve identity, it requires additional networking (like WoT or TOFU) before it can begin to function as an identity tool.
icebraining 8y ago
Yes. In fact, Joey Hess built a tool that backs all that info from the Github API to a git repository: https://github-backup.branchable.com/ https://github-backup.branchable.com/

caymanjim 8y ago

GitHub is where developers go to find the software they use on a daily basis, and find the libraries they use to build even more software, which they usually put right back on GitHub. I use the public GitHub many times a month. More importantly, every single job I've had for nearly the past decade has stored its code in GitHub. Not publicly accessible, and rarely at a private github.com account; every place I work uses a privately hosted GitHub Enterprise server. I wouldn't even consider using anything else, even though GitLab (and to a lesser extent, BitBucket) offer exactly the same functionality. GitHub was groundbreaking when it arrived. Some people are having an emotional reaction and defecting to GitLab this month (for reasons that escape me), but GitHub has all the inertia. More importantly, GitHub has a vast community. It's just where code lives now. I'm curious as to what sort of development you do or where you work that you're not a regular GitHub user. It's inescapable in every software company I've worked at since its inception, and as a consultant, that's a huge number of companies in nearly every industry. The only place I've worked in the past decade that didn't use GitHub was an all-Windows shop that used some horrible old proprietary revision control system whose name escapes me. Do you use git but not use GitHub (public or private or enterprise)?

pmontra 8y ago
I have some customers with repositories on Bitbucket. The reason is the pricing model for private projects. On Bitbucket you pay for developer and have infinite private projects. On GitHub is you pay for private projects and have infinite developers. If one company has many projects and few developers, Bitbucket is cheaper. I also have small customers who don't even know what a repository is. I self host with gitolite (I don't need a web interface, only push and pull) and give access to the most illuminated of them to a self hosted Redmine server for managing tickets. I write documentation in Redmine's wikis.
- kawsper 8y ago
  > On GitHub is you pay for private projects and have infinite developers. That is the legacy pricing model. Their new pricing model matches Bitbucket: https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing

herbst 8y ago

I am part of several organisations and all my tooling is based around git and sometimes third party github extensions. I can move. But it's definitly not painless.