7 ms·

I'd still call it a leak, since GitHub is closed-source. Then again, this raises an important point: with the source code so easily acquired, why isn't it open-

by resynth1943 6y ago

I'd still call it a leak, since GitHub is closed-source. Then again, this raises an important point: with the source code so easily acquired, why isn't it open-source?

nanagojo 6y ago
Open source is another ball game license wise.
freeone3000 6y ago
Because their primary target is enterprise consumers, who care about legality. It doesn't matter how easy it is to get illegal source code, their customers can't risk it.
smnrchrds 6y ago
- If the locks can be so easily broken, why are there locks? - If it is so easy to shoplift, why don't stores just give out everything for free?
- resynth1943 6y ago
  The hyperbole contributes nothing of any value to the conversation. While folks are definitely making good counter-points, I think the question needed to be asked.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    I did not mean to exaggerate, just to demonstrate that in the world we live in, barriers to action are rarely physical, but moral and legal. It's not that people do not pick locks because locks are so secure. It's because lock is polite way to say "do not enter here" and almost everyone respects that. If someone wants not to respect it, there are a multitude of YouTube channels showing how trivially easy it is to bypass it. But then, the legal aspect kicks in and punishments follow. The same with stealing. It is trivially easy to steal. Moral code stops most people. Legal code punishes the rest. Anything in our world can be "so easily acquired" if one does not care about laws and ethics. In that sense, the question posed in the original comment seems utterly bizarre to me. If anything that could be easily acquired were to be released for free, almost everything in the world should be released for free.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I think decompilers are so good, that any binary or pcode can be reverse-engineered by anyone that wants. I generally like to open-source all my work. I'm working on a closed-source app, right now, but I think that it should be made open-source, once the embargo has passed. The backend is already open-source, as is the SDK. I like to use the MIT license, which says that you can use the code how you like, but don't come whining to me, if you pooch it. But I will, sometimes use a license that says "Here's the code for you to look at. It's not authorized for copying." I think that it's a good idea to have it available. I seriously doubt there's anything in my stuff that is so proprietary that I'm afraid it will get ripped off. I do the same stuff everyone else does; maybe not as cleverly. I just feel that it's good to show folks what's under the hood, if at all possible.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > I seriously doubt there's anything in my stuff that is so proprietary that I'm afraid it will get ripped off. It depends. Figuring out how to design a large system still takes an appreciable amount of time even if you only end up gluing a bunch of other stuff together at the end of the day. And chances are you have something original in there somewhere. If the market is particularly cutthroat it might be a bad idea to risk giving your competitors even a slight edge. I do appreciate the sentiment of proprietary source available projects though!
nemothekid 6y ago
>why isn't it open-source? Most likely support. GH probably doesn’t want to support an open source version (triaging issues, reviewing 3rd party pull requests, having an open roadmap). Likewise it would probably be bad PR if they just dumped the code base and were really slow (or didn’t) respond to bug reports. Being open source requires a lot more than just the source code being available.
- resynth1943 6y ago
  True. Reddit did that, and it definitely backfired.
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    how so?
    - hundchenkatze 6y ago
      Here's Reddit's announcement about going "closed source". They list similar challenges to that mentioned by the GP comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update_on_the_state_of_the_redditreddit_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update...
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Being open source requires a lot more than just the source code being available. Well, you don't necessarily have to do those things. See for instance Apple's XNU Kernel. :)
  - jart 6y ago
    Yes but Apple doesn't post XNU on GitHub. They publish codebase snapshots to a read-only website every once in a while. They have a GitHub mirror of the XNU codebase, but it's a few years behind and its Issue Tracker is disabled. Apple should engage more with the community. However the community needs to engage conscientiously. This leak is bad news, since it's the exact sort of behavior Apple probably wanted to avoid. It's so disrespectful. Last thing we want is for other companies like GitHub to think, "wow Apple was right, maximum engineering secrecy by default is the way to go."
chii 6y ago
> why isn't it open-source? why does anything needs to be open source in the first place? Open-sourcing something should add value. Github doesn't see any value in doing so (and i would agree). It's not like github has any secret ingredient that makes github source special - gitlab has replicated most of github's functionality, and so has many open hosting platforms. The value of github is mindshare, rather than anything code wise.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Not sure about others but I probably learn way more from reading sources of open source projects than I do from blog posts and books.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    But GitHub objective is to earn. Not help you learn.
- achn 6y ago
  There are so many issues with GitHub that could be easily addressed if open sourced. So many in fact that there are entire unofficial GitHub repos dedicated to raising issues about GitHub. They won’t see any benefit now that they are owned by MS and slowly being integrated to AzureDevOps, but they could definitely have had a much improved platform if they had opened years ago.
  - easton 6y ago
    It’s actually the opposite, Microsoft is slowly killing Azure DevOps in favor of GitHub. That’s why Actions is getting so much traction and why codespaces on Azure was killed.
- wraptile 6y ago
  It's a bit ignorant to claim that public knowledge access has no value. There's a lot to learn from reading #1 project of it's kind, don't you think?
- 6y ago
jfrunyon 6y ago
In what world is "our large, enterprise customers who are extremely risk-averse and probably under NDA could acquire source code" equivalent to "source code so easily acquired"?
thinkingemote 6y ago
Maybe if it uses some GPL/A-GPL code in there it might need to be?

I'd still call it a leak, since GitHub is closed-source. Then again, this raises an important point: with the source code so easily acquired, why isn't it open-source?

nanagojo 6y ago

Open source is another ball game license wise.

freeone3000 6y ago

Because their primary target is enterprise consumers, who care about legality. It doesn't matter how easy it is to get illegal source code, their customers can't risk it.

smnrchrds 6y ago

- If the locks can be so easily broken, why are there locks? - If it is so easy to shoplift, why don't stores just give out everything for free?

resynth1943 6y ago
The hyperbole contributes nothing of any value to the conversation. While folks are definitely making good counter-points, I think the question needed to be asked.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  I did not mean to exaggerate, just to demonstrate that in the world we live in, barriers to action are rarely physical, but moral and legal. It's not that people do not pick locks because locks are so secure. It's because lock is polite way to say "do not enter here" and almost everyone respects that. If someone wants not to respect it, there are a multitude of YouTube channels showing how trivially easy it is to bypass it. But then, the legal aspect kicks in and punishments follow. The same with stealing. It is trivially easy to steal. Moral code stops most people. Legal code punishes the rest. Anything in our world can be "so easily acquired" if one does not care about laws and ethics. In that sense, the question posed in the original comment seems utterly bizarre to me. If anything that could be easily acquired were to be released for free, almost everything in the world should be released for free.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I think decompilers are so good, that any binary or pcode can be reverse-engineered by anyone that wants. I generally like to open-source all my work. I'm working on a closed-source app, right now, but I think that it should be made open-source, once the embargo has passed. The backend is already open-source, as is the SDK. I like to use the MIT license, which says that you can use the code how you like, but don't come whining to me, if you pooch it. But I will, sometimes use a license that says "Here's the code for you to look at. It's not authorized for copying." I think that it's a good idea to have it available. I seriously doubt there's anything in my stuff that is so proprietary that I'm afraid it will get ripped off. I do the same stuff everyone else does; maybe not as cleverly. I just feel that it's good to show folks what's under the hood, if at all possible.
- Reelin 6y ago
  > I seriously doubt there's anything in my stuff that is so proprietary that I'm afraid it will get ripped off. It depends. Figuring out how to design a large system still takes an appreciable amount of time even if you only end up gluing a bunch of other stuff together at the end of the day. And chances are you have something original in there somewhere. If the market is particularly cutthroat it might be a bad idea to risk giving your competitors even a slight edge. I do appreciate the sentiment of proprietary source available projects though!

nemothekid 6y ago

>why isn't it open-source? Most likely support. GH probably doesn’t want to support an open source version (triaging issues, reviewing 3rd party pull requests, having an open roadmap). Likewise it would probably be bad PR if they just dumped the code base and were really slow (or didn’t) respond to bug reports. Being open source requires a lot more than just the source code being available.

resynth1943 6y ago
True. Reddit did that, and it definitely backfired.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  how so?
  - hundchenkatze 6y ago
    Here's Reddit's announcement about going "closed source". They list similar challenges to that mentioned by the GP comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update_on_the_state_of_the_redditreddit_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update...
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Being open source requires a lot more than just the source code being available. Well, you don't necessarily have to do those things. See for instance Apple's XNU Kernel. :)
- jart 6y ago
  Yes but Apple doesn't post XNU on GitHub. They publish codebase snapshots to a read-only website every once in a while. They have a GitHub mirror of the XNU codebase, but it's a few years behind and its Issue Tracker is disabled. Apple should engage more with the community. However the community needs to engage conscientiously. This leak is bad news, since it's the exact sort of behavior Apple probably wanted to avoid. It's so disrespectful. Last thing we want is for other companies like GitHub to think, "wow Apple was right, maximum engineering secrecy by default is the way to go."

chii 6y ago

> why isn't it open-source? why does anything needs to be open source in the first place? Open-sourcing something should add value. Github doesn't see any value in doing so (and i would agree). It's not like github has any secret ingredient that makes github source special - gitlab has replicated most of github's functionality, and so has many open hosting platforms. The value of github is mindshare, rather than anything code wise.

ignoramous 6y ago
Not sure about others but I probably learn way more from reading sources of open source projects than I do from blog posts and books.
- edoceo 6y ago
  But GitHub objective is to earn. Not help you learn.
achn 6y ago
There are so many issues with GitHub that could be easily addressed if open sourced. So many in fact that there are entire unofficial GitHub repos dedicated to raising issues about GitHub. They won’t see any benefit now that they are owned by MS and slowly being integrated to AzureDevOps, but they could definitely have had a much improved platform if they had opened years ago.
- easton 6y ago
  It’s actually the opposite, Microsoft is slowly killing Azure DevOps in favor of GitHub. That’s why Actions is getting so much traction and why codespaces on Azure was killed.
wraptile 6y ago
It's a bit ignorant to claim that public knowledge access has no value. There's a lot to learn from reading #1 project of it's kind, don't you think?
6y ago

jfrunyon 6y ago

In what world is "our large, enterprise customers who are extremely risk-averse and probably under NDA could acquire source code" equivalent to "source code so easily acquired"?

thinkingemote 6y ago

Maybe if it uses some GPL/A-GPL code in there it might need to be?