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ActivityPub is federated like git is distributed. You can add several remotes from different servers (or peers in case of single user instances hosted at home)

ActivityPub is federated like git is distributed. You can add several remotes from different servers (or peers in case of single user instances hosted at home) Even though other sites like GitLab exist that GitHub remains a near-monopoly default doesn't bode well for attempting to migrate to a completely decentralized system as default. There are decentralized extensions of git (like git-ssb). Addenda: Git is also not well suited for a lot of decentralization due to how branches are modeled. Patch-theory based systems like darcs and pijul would need more adoption before code repositories could be decentralized.

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
I understand that but there is a difference between just git and the forge, which is GitHub in this case. If I fork a project on GitHub it has a fork relationship on the platform itself. This makes it very easy to interact with the original project. However, without an actual GitHub account I can't contribute back to the project at all. If I have for example my own Gitlab server I have the ability to clone a project from GitHub and maintain my fork on my server. However, to contribute back, I will still need to bring my changes back to GitHub first. What a federated implementation of such a "git hosting/collaboration platform" would allow me to do would be to fork a project from another instance to my self-hosted instance. It would benefit every open-source project that would be willing to host their own instance. I could then easily contribute back into the main project without needing an account on their instance. It would also make it much harder to take down a project with a DMCA like this because forks of it would exist across instances, meaning claims would have to be sent to each maintainer of these instances. In this case, they were simply able to list all of the forks on GitHub and because GitHub is one website, all of them were taken down, seemingly without any further inspection wether the claim covers these forks as well. I realise that this is difficult to implement but I think mastodon is a great example of how such federation can work in practice.
SoniEx2 6y ago
What if... you kept github in the loop? What if you could make a federated/decentralized git that doesn't care whether the git repo is made available by github or my-fancy-federated-git-host?
- fabianhjr 6y ago
  > What if... you kept github in the loop? It is like wanting to keep Twitter in the loop when migrating to federated alternatives like the Fediverse. Twitter (or Github) wont federate in good faith and will actively attempt to capture as much users as possible. > What if you could make a federated/decentralized git that doesn't care whether the git repo is made available by github or my-fancy-federated-git-host? Git is distributed already; remotes work like that.
  - SoniEx2 6y ago
    Yeah Twitter doesn't work because it's not simply hosting the posts that you interact with elsewhere. Github is simply hosting the repos. Git is decentralized already. That's the key difference between Twitter and Github and why I made GAnarchy the way I did. and also why I make a point of hosting a GAnarchy instance on github pages and encouraging others to do the same. (self-hosted is better of course, but.)

djeiasbsbo 6y ago

I understand that but there is a difference between just git and the forge, which is GitHub in this case. If I fork a project on GitHub it has a fork relationship on the platform itself. This makes it very easy to interact with the original project. However, without an actual GitHub account I can't contribute back to the project at all. If I have for example my own Gitlab server I have the ability to clone a project from GitHub and maintain my fork on my server. However, to contribute back, I will still need to bring my changes back to GitHub first. What a federated implementation of such a "git hosting/collaboration platform" would allow me to do would be to fork a project from another instance to my self-hosted instance. It would benefit every open-source project that would be willing to host their own instance. I could then easily contribute back into the main project without needing an account on their instance. It would also make it much harder to take down a project with a DMCA like this because forks of it would exist across instances, meaning claims would have to be sent to each maintainer of these instances. In this case, they were simply able to list all of the forks on GitHub and because GitHub is one website, all of them were taken down, seemingly without any further inspection wether the claim covers these forks as well. I realise that this is difficult to implement but I think mastodon is a great example of how such federation can work in practice.

SoniEx2 6y ago

What if... you kept github in the loop? What if you could make a federated/decentralized git that doesn't care whether the git repo is made available by github or my-fancy-federated-git-host?

fabianhjr 6y ago
> What if... you kept github in the loop? It is like wanting to keep Twitter in the loop when migrating to federated alternatives like the Fediverse. Twitter (or Github) wont federate in good faith and will actively attempt to capture as much users as possible. > What if you could make a federated/decentralized git that doesn't care whether the git repo is made available by github or my-fancy-federated-git-host? Git is distributed already; remotes work like that.
- SoniEx2 6y ago
  Yeah Twitter doesn't work because it's not simply hosting the posts that you interact with elsewhere. Github is simply hosting the repos. Git is decentralized already. That's the key difference between Twitter and Github and why I made GAnarchy the way I did. and also why I make a point of hosting a GAnarchy instance on github pages and encouraging others to do the same. (self-hosted is better of course, but.)