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It’s not a conspiracy. If customers demanded decentralized, companies would be pushed down that path. They don’t. Customers demand ease of use, features, and sp

by api 6y ago

It’s not a conspiracy. If customers demanded decentralized, companies would be pushed down that path. They don’t. Customers demand ease of use, features, and speed, and all that is technically easier to deliver with a centralized model. Why impose extra engineering cost for decentralization almost nobody cares about? GitHub’s largest value add IMHO is search, and that is probably the hardest thing to decentralize.

homarp 6y ago
can you elaborate on the 'indexing git repo for search is hard to decentralize' part?
- api 6y ago
  Fast search over huge data sets in distributed networks of unreliable and possibly untrustworthy nodes is really really hard. Nobody has all the data in one place and the indices are huge and cross cut the data. It can be done, but making it perform like GitHub search with sub-second returns on most queries and with full coverage of the entire data set would be an amazing achievement. The CAP theorem means you can’t do it without making some sacrifices. There is a reason nobody has even seriously attempted a decentralized web search engine despite the obvious motivations.
Tarq0n 6y ago
The whole point of "extend" is that the extensions are proprietary. If GitHub's fork and pull request features were standards that are portable and that other repository vendors could implement this wouldn't be a problem.
- DenseComet 6y ago
  I see the same interface present on GitLab and Gitea, both great open source projects that provide selfhosted (and hosted) alternatives to Github. It was pretty novel when it was introduced, but not anymore.
  - Tarq0n 6y ago
    Just because others have copied the interface doesn't make it 1) portable 2) part of the standard 3) a protocol. You'd ideally want all three for a viable alternative to email-based patches.
    - sreevisakh 6y ago
      That's exactly what is needed. But we will likely just reinvent SMTP. Why not just build better interfaces (web, gui and cli) around SMTP? On the other hand, SMTP is starting to show its age - too many parts, lack of privacy and abuse. Wish there was a new protocol in the spirit of SMTP, but modern design - something like what Matrix is to IRC.
bccdee 6y ago
Github absolutely would not make itself interoperable just because users wanted it to. That would be a terrible business move -- it would lead to Github hemorrhaging users and projects as they left to other, smaller competitors while still begin able to interact with the users and projects that remain on Github. It's not Github's job to do what customers want. It's Github's job to do whatever will make them money, whether it's good for customers & the broader tech community or not. You're right that it's not a conspiracy though -- there's nothing secret about this at all. It's just business.
- api 6y ago
  You can already mirror a repo easily to/from GitHub, and moving is pretty easy unless you are deeply invested in GitHub proprietary features. People use GitHub because people use GitHub. It’s a classic network effect.
  - bccdee 6y ago
    I mean like me forking your Github repo to Gitlab and then submitting a PR from my Gitlab fork to your Github repo. Can't do that. If I want to contribute to a Github project, I need a Github account. That doesn't apply to interoperable protocols like email -- you can use gmail and I can use yahoo mail, or even a self-hosted mail server, and we can still send messages to each other. This would certainly be doable, but they wouldn't do it, because it would damage their market share.

by api 6y ago

homarp 6y ago

can you elaborate on the 'indexing git repo for search is hard to decentralize' part?

api 6y ago
Fast search over huge data sets in distributed networks of unreliable and possibly untrustworthy nodes is really really hard. Nobody has all the data in one place and the indices are huge and cross cut the data. It can be done, but making it perform like GitHub search with sub-second returns on most queries and with full coverage of the entire data set would be an amazing achievement. The CAP theorem means you can’t do it without making some sacrifices. There is a reason nobody has even seriously attempted a decentralized web search engine despite the obvious motivations.

Tarq0n 6y ago

The whole point of "extend" is that the extensions are proprietary. If GitHub's fork and pull request features were standards that are portable and that other repository vendors could implement this wouldn't be a problem.

DenseComet 6y ago
I see the same interface present on GitLab and Gitea, both great open source projects that provide selfhosted (and hosted) alternatives to Github. It was pretty novel when it was introduced, but not anymore.
- Tarq0n 6y ago
  Just because others have copied the interface doesn't make it 1) portable 2) part of the standard 3) a protocol. You'd ideally want all three for a viable alternative to email-based patches.
  - sreevisakh 6y ago
    That's exactly what is needed. But we will likely just reinvent SMTP. Why not just build better interfaces (web, gui and cli) around SMTP? On the other hand, SMTP is starting to show its age - too many parts, lack of privacy and abuse. Wish there was a new protocol in the spirit of SMTP, but modern design - something like what Matrix is to IRC.

bccdee 6y ago

Github absolutely would not make itself interoperable just because users wanted it to. That would be a terrible business move -- it would lead to Github hemorrhaging users and projects as they left to other, smaller competitors while still begin able to interact with the users and projects that remain on Github. It's not Github's job to do what customers want. It's Github's job to do whatever will make them money, whether it's good for customers & the broader tech community or not. You're right that it's not a conspiracy though -- there's nothing secret about this at all. It's just business.

api 6y ago
You can already mirror a repo easily to/from GitHub, and moving is pretty easy unless you are deeply invested in GitHub proprietary features. People use GitHub because people use GitHub. It’s a classic network effect.
- bccdee 6y ago
  I mean like me forking your Github repo to Gitlab and then submitting a PR from my Gitlab fork to your Github repo. Can't do that. If I want to contribute to a Github project, I need a Github account. That doesn't apply to interoperable protocols like email -- you can use gmail and I can use yahoo mail, or even a self-hosted mail server, and we can still send messages to each other. This would certainly be doable, but they wouldn't do it, because it would damage their market share.