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It does make me think whether GitHub is fitting place for open source projects anymore. I think GitHub is fabulous. I love the service and I think its great as

It does make me think whether GitHub is fitting place for open source projects anymore. I think GitHub is fabulous. I love the service and I think its great as a central place to look for and contribute to open source projects better than options we had before. But issues like this does clearly show an area of misalignment and conflict of interests.

heavyset_go 6y ago
There's a reason I have several backups of code that I care about, hosted under different usernames on different platforms. People end up getting banned by these companies without any notice, and sometimes without cause.
ampdepolymerase 6y ago
Gitea/Gogs are great (self-hosted) alternatives. They preserve GitHub's UI and more importantly are just as fast. UI and speed are usually most people's complaints about Gitlab.
toomuchtodo 6y ago
GitHub is most definitely worthy as a node on the network of an open source project, with the caveat that in the event of loss, the project should be able to rapidly spin back up on GitLab or any other git-based project management system (my fork of youtube-dl was nuked as part of the DMCA takedown, but I was able to restore the tarball the Internet Archive had to my personal GitLab instance, for example). This isn't a call to move from GitHub wholesale (churning between git hosts isn't an effective use of resources imho), but to build more durability and resiliency into distributed version control systems (Keybase-esque identity management, signing every commit, etc). Just as the Internet Archive and others are championing a distributed web [1], technologists must champion distributed development systems. Perhaps a reasonable target is to be able to perform a "git pull" from IPFS? As Gilmore said [2], interpret censorship as damage and route around it. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=distributed+web https://www.google.com/search?q=distributed+web [2] http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-arti... (First Nation in Cyberspace, TIME International - Dec. 6, 1993, No.49)
- pabs3 6y ago
  Looks like there are a bunch of different git-remote-ipfs implementations: https://github.com/larsks/git-remote-ipfs https://github.com/larsks/git-remote-ipfs https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/git-remote-ipld https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/git-remote-ipld https://github.com/cryptix/git-remote-ipfs https://github.com/cryptix/git-remote-ipfs
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  > to build more durability and resiliency into distributed version control systems I'm following Git-SSB and Holochain. Apart from IPFS, any others you've found?
  - 3np 6y ago
    This is also based on SSB https://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/
pochamago 6y ago
It may well be the watershed moment. Microsoft wants to be seen as committed to the open ecosystem, and now we get to see the implications of what will happen with any conflicts of interest they have. I hope they're internally aware of the impact this scenario has.
pabs3 6y ago
Open Source needs open source infrastructure, so in retrospect GitHub was never really the best place for hosting open source projects. https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html
- paxys 6y ago
  What is open source infrastructure though? Can there ever be a public-owned and operated server?
  - pabs3 6y ago
    I would say that infrastructure that runs open source is a good start. Secondly you probably also want the data to be publicly available and for the configuration to be public and for there to be mechanisms to contribute changes back to all of these. Some of the Linux distros operate in this way.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    You could make a pretty good case for Sourcehut. The code is all open source, and is decently simple to self host if you feel inclined.
antpls 6y ago
Microsft and GitHub comply with the laws, there is no conflict of interest here. Open source doesn't mean illegal. The problem is not GitHub or MS, the problem is the current law about copyrighted content, tools, fair usage, counter procedures, etc.

heavyset_go 6y ago

There's a reason I have several backups of code that I care about, hosted under different usernames on different platforms. People end up getting banned by these companies without any notice, and sometimes without cause.

ampdepolymerase 6y ago

Gitea/Gogs are great (self-hosted) alternatives. They preserve GitHub's UI and more importantly are just as fast. UI and speed are usually most people's complaints about Gitlab.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

GitHub is most definitely worthy as a node on the network of an open source project, with the caveat that in the event of loss, the project should be able to rapidly spin back up on GitLab or any other git-based project management system (my fork of youtube-dl was nuked as part of the DMCA takedown, but I was able to restore the tarball the Internet Archive had to my personal GitLab instance, for example). This isn't a call to move from GitHub wholesale (churning between git hosts isn't an effective use of resources imho), but to build more durability and resiliency into distributed version control systems (Keybase-esque identity management, signing every commit, etc). Just as the Internet Archive and others are championing a distributed web [1], technologists must champion distributed development systems. Perhaps a reasonable target is to be able to perform a "git pull" from IPFS? As Gilmore said [2], interpret censorship as damage and route around it. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=distributed+web https://www.google.com/search?q=distributed+web [2] http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-arti... (First Nation in Cyberspace, TIME International - Dec. 6, 1993, No.49)

pabs3 6y ago
Looks like there are a bunch of different git-remote-ipfs implementations: https://github.com/larsks/git-remote-ipfs https://github.com/larsks/git-remote-ipfs https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/git-remote-ipld https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/git-remote-ipld https://github.com/cryptix/git-remote-ipfs https://github.com/cryptix/git-remote-ipfs
bergstromm466 6y ago
> to build more durability and resiliency into distributed version control systems I'm following Git-SSB and Holochain. Apart from IPFS, any others you've found?
- 3np 6y ago
  This is also based on SSB https://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/

pochamago 6y ago

It may well be the watershed moment. Microsoft wants to be seen as committed to the open ecosystem, and now we get to see the implications of what will happen with any conflicts of interest they have. I hope they're internally aware of the impact this scenario has.

pabs3 6y ago

Open Source needs open source infrastructure, so in retrospect GitHub was never really the best place for hosting open source projects. https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html

paxys 6y ago
What is open source infrastructure though? Can there ever be a public-owned and operated server?
- pabs3 6y ago
  I would say that infrastructure that runs open source is a good start. Secondly you probably also want the data to be publicly available and for the configuration to be public and for there to be mechanisms to contribute changes back to all of these. Some of the Linux distros operate in this way.
- Shared404 6y ago
  You could make a pretty good case for Sourcehut. The code is all open source, and is decently simple to self host if you feel inclined.

antpls 6y ago

Microsft and GitHub comply with the laws, there is no conflict of interest here. Open source doesn't mean illegal. The problem is not GitHub or MS, the problem is the current law about copyrighted content, tools, fair usage, counter procedures, etc.