6 ms·

GitHub is making me lazy but I like it

53 points by powdahound 16y ago

benbjohnson 16y ago
I actually wasn't involved in much open source in the past but I've been contributing something nearly every day for the past couple of months because of GitHub. Another great contribution from GitHub is the way it's founders help push better standards for coding: TomDoc, Semanic Versioning, etc.
- powdahound 16y ago
  Have you seen 'Calendar About Nothing'? It's a fun way to keep your contribution streak going. Link: http://calendaraboutnothing.com http://calendaraboutnothing.com
powdahound 16y ago
If only GitHub could solve OSS politics too. :) This 6 year old ticket asking for better logging support in Twisted is just scary: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/638 http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/638
- pyre 16y ago
  There's a ~3 year old bug in WebKit[1]. It just doesn't happen because rewriting the rich editing handling code doesn't sound fun or sexy. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15256 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15256
- jaaron 16y ago
  As I mentioned in my comment, I think it actually makes the politics worse. There's not a lot of pressure to merge code back into a single master and there's no good place for the network of forks to come together and communicate on how to collaborate.
draegtun 16y ago
Its pretty much identical reasons to why CPAN also became such a success. CPAN's infrastructure and tools is what made the telling difference and Github seems to be heading on a similar tract.
alexmchale 16y ago
I do worry about GitHub on some levels. I'm an avid user and I love it --- but there's the part of me that's really worried about it being the only real option for hosting. Would the community leave GitHub if their policies changed and it was less of an awesome place to work with your code, or would we feel trapped because it's still what everyone uses?
- pjscott 16y ago
  How easy is it to get information out of GitHub? Not just the repositories -- cloning a git repo is easy -- but the issues, wiki pages, and so on. If that's made as easy as possible, then escaping from GitHub-gone-wild shouldn't be too hard. That in itself should provide an incentive for GitHub to avoid alienating its users. It's like bringing an umbrella so it won't rain, in a world where such things actually worked.
  - alexmchale 16y ago
    Well, I'm not much concerned about the technical difficulties, as they're few. I'm also not envisioning any time in the future when I quit using GitHub. It's a fantastic piece of software written by people I respect. However, I've learned to be skeptical and cautious when there's one thing that everyone is using (Google, Facebook). I LOVE YOU GITHUB DON'T PUNISH ME!!! :-)
  - alexmchale 16y ago
    Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
  - koenigdavidmj 16y ago
    The wiki pages are just another Git repo; you can just clone it and get a full copy. Pages simply turn into files containing Markdown markup (teehee). Not sure about the issues or other things, though.
    - pjscott 16y ago
      A git-based wiki? My respect for the GitHub guys continues to grow.
cloudhead 16y ago
It's called progress, mate.
jaaron 16y ago
So, I'm not a huge GitHub fan for open source projects. Why? Because while it's a great site and tool (don't get me wrong, I can understand the attraction), GitHub can be a pain in the ass for end users. How so? I don't know how many times I've found some code I wanted to use only to find a dozen or more forks, none of which have been merged back together and a handful of which have patches I'm interested in. It's way, way too easy in GitHub for the community to get lost in the forks. There's no clear mechanism for communication (mailing list, forums, etc.) and not enough pressure to merge code back into a common repository. Sure it democratizes contributions, but it also makes a mess. There's a real need and advantage to having a canonical, master repository - something users can trust that's been properly vetted, tested and debugged. There's a lot of value in a single place for discussion with public, searchable archives so that users can learn the project history, why decisions were made and, if necessary, ask new questions. There's nothing worse than having to use Google to search blogs for outdated documentation and discussions split across little more than tweets. GitHub encourages forking but it doesn't necessarily encourage merging. Successful open source projects which a large, invested user base require a bit more structure, stability and developer support than GitHub encourages. It may be a great place to start a project, but at some point, I can see projects graduating to their own infrastructure and a real, organized community.
- alecthomas 16y ago
  You core complaint seems to be that maintainers don't maintain their software. This is sadly true in many cases, but I would argue that GitHub has actually improved the situation. First, by making it trivial to get patches to the maintainer. Prior to GitHub, if you wrote a patch for a project, you would have to track down the appropriate channel to submit the patch, then jump through any hoops required. Whether it be mail directly to the maintainer, a patch on a bugtracker (probably also requiring signup), mail to a mailing list (again probably requiring signup), patch having to be in a particular format, etc. The second problem is what to do if the maintainer doesn't respond? Sometimes you might end up forking the project and hosting it in yet another random web page. Sometimes you might just end up dumping the patch onto the net, in the vain hope that someone else would find it if they had the same problem. I have done both, a number of times. With GitHub, the patches are clearly there as forks. At least with GitHub, the barrier to writing a patch and getting it in the face of the maintainer is almost zero. This is an improvement. If they don't respond, at least it's obvious to users from the proliferation of forks, and if they're lucky they can find the particular fork that fixes their issue. Solving the human problem of maintenance is a big challenge. If GitHub solves that as well, I'll be amazed.

53 points by powdahound 16y ago

I actually wasn't involved in much open source in the past but I've been contributing something nearly every day for the past couple of months because of GitHub. Another great contribution from GitHub is the way it's founders help push better standards for coding: TomDoc, Semanic Versioning, etc.

powdahound 16y ago
Have you seen 'Calendar About Nothing'? It's a fun way to keep your contribution streak going. Link: http://calendaraboutnothing.com http://calendaraboutnothing.com

powdahound 16y ago

If only GitHub could solve OSS politics too. :) This 6 year old ticket asking for better logging support in Twisted is just scary: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/638 http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/638

pyre 16y ago
There's a ~3 year old bug in WebKit[1]. It just doesn't happen because rewriting the rich editing handling code doesn't sound fun or sexy. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15256 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15256
jaaron 16y ago
As I mentioned in my comment, I think it actually makes the politics worse. There's not a lot of pressure to merge code back into a single master and there's no good place for the network of forks to come together and communicate on how to collaborate.

draegtun 16y ago

Its pretty much identical reasons to why CPAN also became such a success. CPAN's infrastructure and tools is what made the telling difference and Github seems to be heading on a similar tract.

alexmchale 16y ago

I do worry about GitHub on some levels. I'm an avid user and I love it --- but there's the part of me that's really worried about it being the only real option for hosting. Would the community leave GitHub if their policies changed and it was less of an awesome place to work with your code, or would we feel trapped because it's still what everyone uses?

pjscott 16y ago
How easy is it to get information out of GitHub? Not just the repositories -- cloning a git repo is easy -- but the issues, wiki pages, and so on. If that's made as easy as possible, then escaping from GitHub-gone-wild shouldn't be too hard. That in itself should provide an incentive for GitHub to avoid alienating its users. It's like bringing an umbrella so it won't rain, in a world where such things actually worked.
- alexmchale 16y ago
  Well, I'm not much concerned about the technical difficulties, as they're few. I'm also not envisioning any time in the future when I quit using GitHub. It's a fantastic piece of software written by people I respect. However, I've learned to be skeptical and cautious when there's one thing that everyone is using (Google, Facebook). I LOVE YOU GITHUB DON'T PUNISH ME!!! :-)
- alexmchale 16y ago
  Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
- koenigdavidmj 16y ago
  The wiki pages are just another Git repo; you can just clone it and get a full copy. Pages simply turn into files containing Markdown markup (teehee). Not sure about the issues or other things, though.
  - pjscott 16y ago
    A git-based wiki? My respect for the GitHub guys continues to grow.

cloudhead 16y ago

It's called progress, mate.

jaaron 16y ago

So, I'm not a huge GitHub fan for open source projects. Why? Because while it's a great site and tool (don't get me wrong, I can understand the attraction), GitHub can be a pain in the ass for end users. How so? I don't know how many times I've found some code I wanted to use only to find a dozen or more forks, none of which have been merged back together and a handful of which have patches I'm interested in. It's way, way too easy in GitHub for the community to get lost in the forks. There's no clear mechanism for communication (mailing list, forums, etc.) and not enough pressure to merge code back into a common repository. Sure it democratizes contributions, but it also makes a mess. There's a real need and advantage to having a canonical, master repository - something users can trust that's been properly vetted, tested and debugged. There's a lot of value in a single place for discussion with public, searchable archives so that users can learn the project history, why decisions were made and, if necessary, ask new questions. There's nothing worse than having to use Google to search blogs for outdated documentation and discussions split across little more than tweets. GitHub encourages forking but it doesn't necessarily encourage merging. Successful open source projects which a large, invested user base require a bit more structure, stability and developer support than GitHub encourages. It may be a great place to start a project, but at some point, I can see projects graduating to their own infrastructure and a real, organized community.

alecthomas 16y ago
You core complaint seems to be that maintainers don't maintain their software. This is sadly true in many cases, but I would argue that GitHub has actually improved the situation. First, by making it trivial to get patches to the maintainer. Prior to GitHub, if you wrote a patch for a project, you would have to track down the appropriate channel to submit the patch, then jump through any hoops required. Whether it be mail directly to the maintainer, a patch on a bugtracker (probably also requiring signup), mail to a mailing list (again probably requiring signup), patch having to be in a particular format, etc. The second problem is what to do if the maintainer doesn't respond? Sometimes you might end up forking the project and hosting it in yet another random web page. Sometimes you might just end up dumping the patch onto the net, in the vain hope that someone else would find it if they had the same problem. I have done both, a number of times. With GitHub, the patches are clearly there as forks. At least with GitHub, the barrier to writing a patch and getting it in the face of the maintainer is almost zero. This is an improvement. If they don't respond, at least it's obvious to users from the proliferation of forks, and if they're lucky they can find the particular fork that fixes their issue. Solving the human problem of maintenance is a big challenge. If GitHub solves that as well, I'll be amazed.