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Git is designed as distributed VCS, so an outage of a centralized server should not matter too much. So far, the theory. Using Github excessively is the way bac

Git is designed as distributed VCS, so an outage of a centralized server should not matter too much. So far, the theory. Using Github excessively is the way back to centralization, nowadays handing control over to Microsoft. Everybody who is concerned (probably not too much) should have a look into alternatives.

dspillett 7y ago
Git itself is decentralised, but many (most? (all?)) of the workflows people build around it are not. Individuals and teams who already have what they need in the local repos can continue to work through an outage of the VCS part of github, but at the points where they need to collaborate (merging each other's changes, issue tracking, etc.) the workflows break down. Yes you could share changes in a more distributed manner, or workaround the outage in other ways, but in reality people will stop and wait for the central repo to be available again. Also, pulling changes from my repo to yours directly to avoid that part of the downed service doesn't solve the issue tracker or CI manager also being down. The clue is in the name: git HUB. That said, the issue is similar to how people see the results of aviation accidents: a jumbo going down takes out a lot of people but statistically, considering all air journeys, that is a lot less than the deaths that would happen due to equivalent car journeys. I suspect that everyone being a bit inconvenienced for a while when github/gitlab/other-centralised-service has issues like today doesn't add up to as much as the many small individual inconveniences they'd experience over time with their own local instances of, for example, gitlab, especially if including the routine maintenance time required which doesn't exist as much when using github, or gitlab managed instead of self-hosted - the outage just feels bigger than all the little problems because everyone is affected at once.
reacweb 7y ago
There are so many ways we become dependent of github, that nobody will shame on us because we are impacted by a github outage. In this context, is it useful to protect against outages ? It may be cheaper to do nothing.
csomar 7y ago
Yea because the alternative (hosting git yourself on your own servers) will have better availability and few issues (UX just came to mind!)
- xtracto 7y ago
  https://about.gitlab.com/install/ https://about.gitlab.com/install/ So the UX point is moot. From there, it is just a matter of how much do you want to pay for availability (multizone replication, etc)

dspillett 7y ago

Git itself is decentralised, but many (most? (all?)) of the workflows people build around it are not. Individuals and teams who already have what they need in the local repos can continue to work through an outage of the VCS part of github, but at the points where they need to collaborate (merging each other's changes, issue tracking, etc.) the workflows break down. Yes you could share changes in a more distributed manner, or workaround the outage in other ways, but in reality people will stop and wait for the central repo to be available again. Also, pulling changes from my repo to yours directly to avoid that part of the downed service doesn't solve the issue tracker or CI manager also being down. The clue is in the name: git HUB. That said, the issue is similar to how people see the results of aviation accidents: a jumbo going down takes out a lot of people but statistically, considering all air journeys, that is a lot less than the deaths that would happen due to equivalent car journeys. I suspect that everyone being a bit inconvenienced for a while when github/gitlab/other-centralised-service has issues like today doesn't add up to as much as the many small individual inconveniences they'd experience over time with their own local instances of, for example, gitlab, especially if including the routine maintenance time required which doesn't exist as much when using github, or gitlab managed instead of self-hosted - the outage just feels bigger than all the little problems because everyone is affected at once.

reacweb 7y ago

There are so many ways we become dependent of github, that nobody will shame on us because we are impacted by a github outage. In this context, is it useful to protect against outages ? It may be cheaper to do nothing.

csomar 7y ago

Yea because the alternative (hosting git yourself on your own servers) will have better availability and few issues (UX just came to mind!)

xtracto 7y ago
https://about.gitlab.com/install/ https://about.gitlab.com/install/ So the UX point is moot. From there, it is just a matter of how much do you want to pay for availability (multizone replication, etc)