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I'm very much in favor of leveraging the advantages of version control software for legal text. Git seems perfect for this, but GitHub is a terrible choice to

by skohan 8y ago

I'm very much in favor of leveraging the advantages of version control software for legal text. Git seems perfect for this, but GitHub is a terrible choice to host it. Surely we don't want a large corporation owning the platform on which our laws are enshrined. It seems like it would be much better for this to be self-hosted.

speleding 8y ago
Github does not own git, it only owns the UI that they've built on top of it. You can simply clone the repo and take it somewhere else and you can find an open source UI replacement to put on top too (e.g. Gitlab). Github is free to use for open source projects, self-hosting by the government would only make it more expensive for the tax payer.
- skohan 8y ago
  > Github ... owns the UI that they've built on top of it That's the problem though. In principal, if they only use pure-git operations in the process, it would be easy to move at any point. But if they leverage the entire Github platform, i.e. PR discussion, issue tracking etc, then important parts of the legal history will be bound to the github platform. And that's not great. Github is free for public projects for now, but as with any publicly traded tech company, they're able to change the terms of use of their product at any time to suit the needs of the company. When we're talking about enshrining the laws of society, we're talking about a very long-term proposition. Technology companies pivot and or kill products all the time. What if we decided to record legislative history on Google Flow?
  - dgreisen 8y ago
    We take long-term access to the law very seriously. For the reasons you give, we rely only on native git operations. PRs are a convenient interface, nothing more.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    There are technical solutions that could be used here. You can JSON dump the PR contents and Issue contents, for example, into another repository (or a branch in the same repository). It wouldn't be hard to automate that process with the GitHub API. That doesn't solve the interop problem that would exist in trying to implement secondary UI systems that can redisplay that information usefully, but ETL of that sort is full of options and developers with experience. JSON dumps of GitHub information would be useful to more open source projects beyond legislative history. I think a good automated solution could be generally useful, if someone wanted to invest in it.
- gambler 8y ago
  What stops GitHub from banning certain IPs from accessing their service?
  - sushid 8y ago
    Presumably a federal government contract can have these clauses built-in. They also have self-hosted enterprise contracts so I'm sure something like that could be done if the government were interested.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
captainwhoreal 8y ago
To be fair GitHub should be nationalised. This way people could be given accounts as future mean of production and also use them to participate in the Democratic process. It is a no brainer if you ask me.
dalore 8y ago
Git is decentralized so it doesn't really matter where it's hosted. Github works since it's free, but everyone who checks out the source will have the full git history and so also becomes another repository. Easy to move a git repo to somewhere else.
- giobox 8y ago
  While this can be argued to be true of git in a technical sense, virtually all git projects in practice have a central source of truth repository. GitHub’s entire business model is largely predicated on the fact projects will use it as their primary repository. If we are talking about accepting PRs for drafting legislation in git, where it is hosted and who hosts it becomes extremely important. Sure anyone can clone/fork, but only the appointed central repo could become law. A clone that you or I make will likely never have this ability.
  - dalore 8y ago
    Yes, need to agree on a central place to push/pull and create PRs from. But my point is that right now people are using GitHub but if any point they want to change, or GitHub go down (or change licensing etc), they aren't beholden to them. Just push the git repository to somewhere else and agree to that. Other developers would confirm the git repo is the same.

by skohan 8y ago

speleding 8y ago

Github does not own git, it only owns the UI that they've built on top of it. You can simply clone the repo and take it somewhere else and you can find an open source UI replacement to put on top too (e.g. Gitlab). Github is free to use for open source projects, self-hosting by the government would only make it more expensive for the tax payer.

skohan 8y ago
> Github ... owns the UI that they've built on top of it That's the problem though. In principal, if they only use pure-git operations in the process, it would be easy to move at any point. But if they leverage the entire Github platform, i.e. PR discussion, issue tracking etc, then important parts of the legal history will be bound to the github platform. And that's not great. Github is free for public projects for now, but as with any publicly traded tech company, they're able to change the terms of use of their product at any time to suit the needs of the company. When we're talking about enshrining the laws of society, we're talking about a very long-term proposition. Technology companies pivot and or kill products all the time. What if we decided to record legislative history on Google Flow?
- dgreisen 8y ago
  We take long-term access to the law very seriously. For the reasons you give, we rely only on native git operations. PRs are a convenient interface, nothing more.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  There are technical solutions that could be used here. You can JSON dump the PR contents and Issue contents, for example, into another repository (or a branch in the same repository). It wouldn't be hard to automate that process with the GitHub API. That doesn't solve the interop problem that would exist in trying to implement secondary UI systems that can redisplay that information usefully, but ETL of that sort is full of options and developers with experience. JSON dumps of GitHub information would be useful to more open source projects beyond legislative history. I think a good automated solution could be generally useful, if someone wanted to invest in it.
gambler 8y ago
What stops GitHub from banning certain IPs from accessing their service?
- sushid 8y ago
  Presumably a federal government contract can have these clauses built-in. They also have self-hosted enterprise contracts so I'm sure something like that could be done if the government were interested.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

captainwhoreal 8y ago

To be fair GitHub should be nationalised. This way people could be given accounts as future mean of production and also use them to participate in the Democratic process. It is a no brainer if you ask me.

dalore 8y ago

Git is decentralized so it doesn't really matter where it's hosted. Github works since it's free, but everyone who checks out the source will have the full git history and so also becomes another repository. Easy to move a git repo to somewhere else.

giobox 8y ago
While this can be argued to be true of git in a technical sense, virtually all git projects in practice have a central source of truth repository. GitHub’s entire business model is largely predicated on the fact projects will use it as their primary repository. If we are talking about accepting PRs for drafting legislation in git, where it is hosted and who hosts it becomes extremely important. Sure anyone can clone/fork, but only the appointed central repo could become law. A clone that you or I make will likely never have this ability.
- dalore 8y ago
  Yes, need to agree on a central place to push/pull and create PRs from. But my point is that right now people are using GitHub but if any point they want to change, or GitHub go down (or change licensing etc), they aren't beholden to them. Just push the git repository to somewhere else and agree to that. Other developers would confirm the git repo is the same.