5 ms·

Git and Github are are like philosophically opposed. Git is distributed. Who cares if a hosting server is lost? 5 minutes and you're up on a different server.

Arnt 7y ago
Distributed doesn't mean that noone makes choices. If you want to file a PR you need access to whatever the maintainer chose. If the maintainer wants PRs via github and won't accept them via email, your alternatives are to access github, not submit the PR, or have a proxy access github for you. Possibly a human proxy.
dmos62 7y ago
For practically every distributed or decentralized tech we have, there is a tech that complements it and at the same time negates it. The banal example is cryptocurrencies and centralized exchanges. Part of the reason is that there's just so much money to be made from centralization and monopolization, but it's surely not the whole story.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  There are many other parts to this story of centralization, not all of them bad. Centralized solutions are always more efficient than decentralized ones, for both graph-theory reasons and economies of scale. They also tend to be more convenient to use for typical use cases. Centralization of trust also has utility. Then there are the nefarious reasons to centralize - control and influence.
nsomaru 7y ago
Lots of people seem to derive value from Github, especially the social aspects and the exposure it gives to your project. That said, I'd love a decentralised alternative based on IPFS or somesuch. There's probably something out there already, perhaps this may be impetus enough to cause devs to move? Seems unlikely.
omginternets 7y ago
Tell me, how do you search and collaborate on code that's fully distributed (in the git sense)?
- cheschire 7y ago
  Git is not a search / discovery platform. Publish the same git repository to several platforms and you can collaborate in a distributed and decentralized way through each of those platforms. Nothing stops you from publishing the same project to both github and gitlab.
  - paranoidrobot 7y ago
    No, but it makes it more difficult. Why would a project that's already happily working with the Github ecosystem want to also have to support publishing to a platform that doesn't block China? Lots more work on project maintainers.
  - omginternets 7y ago
    >Git is not a search / discovery platform Yes, that's very much my point - GitHub is. To suggest that GitHub is somehow the same thing as git, but centralized (=> bad) is missing 99% of the value GitHub offers.
- suff 7y ago
  Answer that question and you might have a startup company...
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  Mailing lists?
- konart 7y ago
  My vote is for IRC
  - omginternets 7y ago
    IRC is definitely not a good way of searching/discovering anything.
DCoder 7y ago
Someone who needs to cooperate with you on your project cares. Someone who needs to clone your repository (e.g. you're a dependency for their project) cares. Someone tired of using an inactive repo and trying to get an overview of healthy forks cares. Someone whose project uses GitHub for more than just a raw git repo (e.g. issues, wiki, releases with precompiled/crossplatform binaries) cares. Someone searching for answers who encounters a link to some GitHub gist cares.
- mcv 7y ago
  The first two can be done without github. You can also run your own publicly accessible git repository. It might not have the friendly web interface but it will do all the git stuff.
  - paranoidrobot 7y ago
    > The first two can be done without github. Not if youre Joe Chinese Dev wanting to collaborate with an OSS project hosted on Github. "Hey, can you guys move everything to this service that doesn't block China so I can send you push requests/issues/etc" is probably going to go nowhere.
    - mcv 7y ago
      Sure, if a project insists on staying on github. But a lack of github does not mean you can't cooperate. You only miss the extra features that github adds. Which are certainly nice, but not essential to use git effectively.
      - paranoidrobot 7y ago
        Repeat after me: It's not about using git They can use git. They can use mailing lists. They can use carrier pigeons to exchange pull requests. That's not what the concern is about. If the OSS project says that all collaboration work has to happen on their Github projects, and Github's forced to block China - then Chinese devs would no longer able to collaborate. They would need someone outside China to be willing to take their pull request/log an issue/etc.
folkrav 7y ago
Your description of what GitHub is is simplistic and reductionary. These sites are not simply about git repositories, but providing features _around_ git, e.g. CI/CD, issue tracking, wikis, project management, user permissions, contribution insights, etc. Those don't really migrate "in 5 minutes".
jasode 7y ago
> Git is distributed. Git - the protocol - helps enable a distributed edit & merge ... but Git itself is not a Schelling Point. Github is a Schelling Point. (I made a previous comment about this conceptual difference.[0]) Likewise, the HTTP protocol can't be a Schelling Point but web nodes that use http like Facebook or HN can be Schelling Points. (One can get pedantic and argue that pure protocols like git/http/tcpip can also be viewed as Schelling Points on a relative basis (compared to 1960s AT&T leased-lines) but we don't have to dissect that because the social congregation around sites like Github happens at a higher layer than the protocol.) >Who cares if a hosting server is lost? 5 minutes and you're up on a different server. Google announced shutdown of Google Code on March 2015: https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/12/google-code-disables-new-project-creation-will-shut-down-on-january-25-2016/ https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/12/google-code-disables-new-... Microsoft announced shutdown of CodePlex on March 2017: https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/github-wins-microsoft-is-shutting-down-codeplex-on-december-15/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/github-wins-microsoft-is-... Not only did both Google and Microsoft abandoned their own public code collaboration websites, they also both tried to acquire Github.[1] As we now know, MS had the better offer to Github's owners in 2018. Both corporate giants had the money to run their own git-protocol compatible servers and yet they abandoned them for Github. Think about why did that. Maybe the reasons are social, not technical? Therefore, spending 5 minutes to move a git repo to an unknown server doesn't actually accomplish the same thing Github accomplishes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14894128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14894128 [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+tried+to+buy+github https://www.google.com/search?q=google+tried+to+buy+github
rienbdj 7y ago
They are complementary. GitHub provides an easy implementation of many things that are more difficult in a decentralised model.
paranoidrobot 7y ago
Because, from FTFA - they're worried about Github, not git. Huge amounts of OSS projects are hosted on Github - that's where their code is, their issues are. If you want to report issues or collaborate, you need to use Github. The issue would also spread to other related tech, which integrates with Github. Sure, there's ways around it, and more than likely Chinese devs would set up their own instances to work around the blocks - it would limit/reduce overall collaboration. A net-loss for everyone.

Arnt 7y ago

Distributed doesn't mean that noone makes choices. If you want to file a PR you need access to whatever the maintainer chose. If the maintainer wants PRs via github and won't accept them via email, your alternatives are to access github, not submit the PR, or have a proxy access github for you. Possibly a human proxy.

dmos62 7y ago

For practically every distributed or decentralized tech we have, there is a tech that complements it and at the same time negates it. The banal example is cryptocurrencies and centralized exchanges. Part of the reason is that there's just so much money to be made from centralization and monopolization, but it's surely not the whole story.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
There are many other parts to this story of centralization, not all of them bad. Centralized solutions are always more efficient than decentralized ones, for both graph-theory reasons and economies of scale. They also tend to be more convenient to use for typical use cases. Centralization of trust also has utility. Then there are the nefarious reasons to centralize - control and influence.

nsomaru 7y ago

Lots of people seem to derive value from Github, especially the social aspects and the exposure it gives to your project. That said, I'd love a decentralised alternative based on IPFS or somesuch. There's probably something out there already, perhaps this may be impetus enough to cause devs to move? Seems unlikely.

omginternets 7y ago

Tell me, how do you search and collaborate on code that's fully distributed (in the git sense)?

cheschire 7y ago
Git is not a search / discovery platform. Publish the same git repository to several platforms and you can collaborate in a distributed and decentralized way through each of those platforms. Nothing stops you from publishing the same project to both github and gitlab.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago
  No, but it makes it more difficult. Why would a project that's already happily working with the Github ecosystem want to also have to support publishing to a platform that doesn't block China? Lots more work on project maintainers.
- omginternets 7y ago
  >Git is not a search / discovery platform Yes, that's very much my point - GitHub is. To suggest that GitHub is somehow the same thing as git, but centralized (=> bad) is missing 99% of the value GitHub offers.
suff 7y ago
Answer that question and you might have a startup company...
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Mailing lists?
konart 7y ago
My vote is for IRC
- omginternets 7y ago
  IRC is definitely not a good way of searching/discovering anything.

DCoder 7y ago

Someone who needs to cooperate with you on your project cares. Someone who needs to clone your repository (e.g. you're a dependency for their project) cares. Someone tired of using an inactive repo and trying to get an overview of healthy forks cares. Someone whose project uses GitHub for more than just a raw git repo (e.g. issues, wiki, releases with precompiled/crossplatform binaries) cares. Someone searching for answers who encounters a link to some GitHub gist cares.

mcv 7y ago
The first two can be done without github. You can also run your own publicly accessible git repository. It might not have the friendly web interface but it will do all the git stuff.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago
  > The first two can be done without github. Not if youre Joe Chinese Dev wanting to collaborate with an OSS project hosted on Github. "Hey, can you guys move everything to this service that doesn't block China so I can send you push requests/issues/etc" is probably going to go nowhere.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Sure, if a project insists on staying on github. But a lack of github does not mean you can't cooperate. You only miss the extra features that github adds. Which are certainly nice, but not essential to use git effectively.
    - paranoidrobot 7y ago
      Repeat after me: It's not about using git They can use git. They can use mailing lists. They can use carrier pigeons to exchange pull requests. That's not what the concern is about. If the OSS project says that all collaboration work has to happen on their Github projects, and Github's forced to block China - then Chinese devs would no longer able to collaborate. They would need someone outside China to be willing to take their pull request/log an issue/etc.

folkrav 7y ago

Your description of what GitHub is is simplistic and reductionary. These sites are not simply about git repositories, but providing features _around_ git, e.g. CI/CD, issue tracking, wikis, project management, user permissions, contribution insights, etc. Those don't really migrate "in 5 minutes".

jasode 7y ago

> Git is distributed. Git - the protocol - helps enable a distributed edit & merge ... but Git itself is not a Schelling Point. Github is a Schelling Point. (I made a previous comment about this conceptual difference.[0]) Likewise, the HTTP protocol can't be a Schelling Point but web nodes that use http like Facebook or HN can be Schelling Points. (One can get pedantic and argue that pure protocols like git/http/tcpip can also be viewed as Schelling Points on a relative basis (compared to 1960s AT&T leased-lines) but we don't have to dissect that because the social congregation around sites like Github happens at a higher layer than the protocol.) >Who cares if a hosting server is lost? 5 minutes and you're up on a different server. Google announced shutdown of Google Code on March 2015: https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/12/google-code-disables-new-project-creation-will-shut-down-on-january-25-2016/ https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/12/google-code-disables-new-... Microsoft announced shutdown of CodePlex on March 2017: https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/github-wins-microsoft-is-shutting-down-codeplex-on-december-15/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/github-wins-microsoft-is-... Not only did both Google and Microsoft abandoned their own public code collaboration websites, they also both tried to acquire Github.[1] As we now know, MS had the better offer to Github's owners in 2018. Both corporate giants had the money to run their own git-protocol compatible servers and yet they abandoned them for Github. Think about why did that. Maybe the reasons are social, not technical? Therefore, spending 5 minutes to move a git repo to an unknown server doesn't actually accomplish the same thing Github accomplishes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14894128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14894128 [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+tried+to+buy+github https://www.google.com/search?q=google+tried+to+buy+github

rienbdj 7y ago

They are complementary. GitHub provides an easy implementation of many things that are more difficult in a decentralised model.

paranoidrobot 7y ago

Because, from FTFA - they're worried about Github, not git. Huge amounts of OSS projects are hosted on Github - that's where their code is, their issues are. If you want to report issues or collaborate, you need to use Github. The issue would also spread to other related tech, which integrates with Github. Sure, there's ways around it, and more than likely Chinese devs would set up their own instances to work around the blocks - it would limit/reduce overall collaboration. A net-loss for everyone.