5 ms·

The GH monoculture isn't great, but it's less of a problem than other monoculture threats we've faced, due to git's distributed nature. Thus far GH has not chan

by gspr 6y ago

The GH monoculture isn't great, but it's less of a problem than other monoculture threats we've faced, due to git's distributed nature. Thus far GH has not changed git itself, and since every repository is canonical, it's easy to change what the "main" repository is at the snap of a finger. Self host, move to sr.ht, whatever. I try to think of GH as a convenient mirror service that happens to provide a lot of discoverability. Nice, but in no way essential.

kortilla 6y ago
This is only true if you don’t use GitHub for reviews/issue tracking/etc. You’re correct that it’s trivial to move the code, but that’s only a fraction of the critical history and tooling for a large collaborative project.
- Macha 6y ago
  Many of the projects that are on github were once on Google Code and migrated over issues.
- acoard 6y ago
  True, but I've seen many projects that use both GitHub and JIRA (i.e. not BitBucket). Those work totally fine for issue tracking, project management, etc. It's the same amount of friction for what you're proposing. The main thing you are missing out on is a UI for merging and PRs, which is nontrivial but not a moat that can keep a monopoly afloat. Of course if JIRA shut down that'd be annoying too, but I could re-create my project in another project manager. To me, the bigger impact is things like GitHub Actions and your CI/CD pipeline. Issue tracking and PRs don't seem like big issues to me.
  - gspr 6y ago
    > To me, the bigger impact is things like GitHub Actions and your CI/CD pipeline. Sure, and these are definitely important – but your project isn't directly threatened if they are pulled out from under you. You'll just be operating with degraded CI quality for a while.
- grayhatter 6y ago
  I get emails for all comments and PRs. It would be annoying to lose the GH interface but not repo ending. Allowing issues or pulls to exist only on GH is equivalent to having only a single copy of a something important on an old laptop. Basic backups of any kind solves this issue.
- bradly 6y ago
  I believe iTerm uses GitLab for issues and GitHub for source control. GitHub issues didn't have a core feature they needed issues, but it was already canonical for code.
- 8note 6y ago
  It feels like there's a missing product to go with git: a free and distributed issue management and review system. GitHub should be a view on the data rather than the sole owner of the data
  - gaius_baltar 6y ago
    There is git-bug ( https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug ). Not at the same level as Bugzilla, but usable. Issues are stored in hidden branches in the git repo itself.
syshum 6y ago
Well they have changed Git, but it has been in a mostly open and upstream way, though they have used their market dominance for force changes inside of the Git project "google style" where by they tell upstream what they are doing and if upstream wants to continue to be "Github compatible" well upstream better adopt it as well.... Also the idea that mono-culture is less of a threat because git is a DVCS ignores all of the data in issues, wiki, network effect, and all of the other non-git things that make up github, none of these are distributed or really portable and for many projects this makes them decidedly not a "mirror service with discoverability"
- whymarrh 6y ago
  > where by they tell upstream what they are doing and if upstream wants to continue to be "Github compatible" well upstream better adopt it as well.... Do you have an example of this? This seems like it would be a hard sell as there haven't been many (any?) breaking changes to Git itself in a long while.
  - syshum 6y ago
    Most recent would be the master / main controversy And while not git proper, you could point to Git-LFS as this example as well.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Well they have changed Git, but it has been in a mostly open and upstream way, though they have used their market dominance for force changes inside of the Git project I haven't heard of this, got an example?
lxgr 6y ago
Arguably, email is as distributed/standards-based as it gets, and we still ended up with Gmail – RFC compliant and all.

by gspr 6y ago

kortilla 6y ago

This is only true if you don’t use GitHub for reviews/issue tracking/etc. You’re correct that it’s trivial to move the code, but that’s only a fraction of the critical history and tooling for a large collaborative project.

Macha 6y ago
Many of the projects that are on github were once on Google Code and migrated over issues.
acoard 6y ago
True, but I've seen many projects that use both GitHub and JIRA (i.e. not BitBucket). Those work totally fine for issue tracking, project management, etc. It's the same amount of friction for what you're proposing. The main thing you are missing out on is a UI for merging and PRs, which is nontrivial but not a moat that can keep a monopoly afloat. Of course if JIRA shut down that'd be annoying too, but I could re-create my project in another project manager. To me, the bigger impact is things like GitHub Actions and your CI/CD pipeline. Issue tracking and PRs don't seem like big issues to me.
- gspr 6y ago
  > To me, the bigger impact is things like GitHub Actions and your CI/CD pipeline. Sure, and these are definitely important – but your project isn't directly threatened if they are pulled out from under you. You'll just be operating with degraded CI quality for a while.
grayhatter 6y ago
I get emails for all comments and PRs. It would be annoying to lose the GH interface but not repo ending. Allowing issues or pulls to exist only on GH is equivalent to having only a single copy of a something important on an old laptop. Basic backups of any kind solves this issue.
bradly 6y ago
I believe iTerm uses GitLab for issues and GitHub for source control. GitHub issues didn't have a core feature they needed issues, but it was already canonical for code.
8note 6y ago
It feels like there's a missing product to go with git: a free and distributed issue management and review system. GitHub should be a view on the data rather than the sole owner of the data
- gaius_baltar 6y ago
  There is git-bug ( https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug ). Not at the same level as Bugzilla, but usable. Issues are stored in hidden branches in the git repo itself.

syshum 6y ago

Well they have changed Git, but it has been in a mostly open and upstream way, though they have used their market dominance for force changes inside of the Git project "google style" where by they tell upstream what they are doing and if upstream wants to continue to be "Github compatible" well upstream better adopt it as well.... Also the idea that mono-culture is less of a threat because git is a DVCS ignores all of the data in issues, wiki, network effect, and all of the other non-git things that make up github, none of these are distributed or really portable and for many projects this makes them decidedly not a "mirror service with discoverability"

whymarrh 6y ago
> where by they tell upstream what they are doing and if upstream wants to continue to be "Github compatible" well upstream better adopt it as well.... Do you have an example of this? This seems like it would be a hard sell as there haven't been many (any?) breaking changes to Git itself in a long while.
- syshum 6y ago
  Most recent would be the master / main controversy And while not git proper, you could point to Git-LFS as this example as well.
nerdponx 6y ago
Well they have changed Git, but it has been in a mostly open and upstream way, though they have used their market dominance for force changes inside of the Git project I haven't heard of this, got an example?

lxgr 6y ago

Arguably, email is as distributed/standards-based as it gets, and we still ended up with Gmail – RFC compliant and all.