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Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for free software

Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for free software. They considerably lowered the bar for making a project available. SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. With GitHub, anyone could start a project and no-one would look down on you and tell you that your project is not novel enough or whatever. GitHub also drastically lowered the bar for contributing to free software. Contributing to a project used to mean subscribing to a mailing list, submitting a patch there, and not much would usually happen. With GitHub you fork, submit a PR, get your PR automatically built and unit tested with CI, the project owner can merge your PR with a single button click. It's fine to prefer an e-mail patch workflow, but GitHub has shown that for most of the population, submitting patches through PRs is a much lower bar. At this point, GitHub is largely unnecessary. Most of the features have been copied and reimplemented better in FLOSS alternatives such as GitLab, Gitea, Gogs, etc. But since they were one of the first, people will stay due to network effects.

viraptor 7y ago
> SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. Did it? I remember starting two projects which made not much sense at all. I vaguely remember the process was automatic then. Has it changed with time?
- danieldk 7y ago
  Maybe it has changed later. In the mid 2000s, you definitely had to wait for approval. Some of my projects were rejected. There is still some documentation around the net about approval: Once you complete your registration, you must wait a few days for the SourceForge administrators to review your request and set up the infrastructure. You should receive an email response informing you of the project's creation when it is ready. You can check the status of any of your project requests by visiting your SourceForge home page: http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ . There, you can view all of your SourceForge projects. Also, on the 'my projects' page you can see all your projects regardless of their approval status. Source: https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-SourceForge/sourceforge.html https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-Sourc...

viraptor 7y ago

> SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. Did it? I remember starting two projects which made not much sense at all. I vaguely remember the process was automatic then. Has it changed with time?

danieldk 7y ago
Maybe it has changed later. In the mid 2000s, you definitely had to wait for approval. Some of my projects were rejected. There is still some documentation around the net about approval: Once you complete your registration, you must wait a few days for the SourceForge administrators to review your request and set up the infrastructure. You should receive an email response informing you of the project's creation when it is ready. You can check the status of any of your project requests by visiting your SourceForge home page: http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/ . There, you can view all of your SourceForge projects. Also, on the 'my projects' page you can see all your projects regardless of their approval status. Source: https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-SourceForge/sourceforge.html https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-Sourc...