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I did not downvote you. I think it's wonderful that people love the UI of SourceHut. You've put a lot of effort in and made a product that many people love, and

I did not downvote you. I think it's wonderful that people love the UI of SourceHut. You've put a lot of effort in and made a product that many people love, and that is fantastic and a hell of a lot more than I can say for myself. Seriously, congrats on all you've accomplished, and thank you for all you've done for the open source community, it's quite a lot and very deserving of appreciation But my point is about mass-adoption. What I personally think of the UI isn't very important - as you say, "Design is in the eye of the beholder". But I would argue that if GitHub were to release a redesign identical to SourceHut in 2020, we'd see the largest exodus of GitHub users (for personal projects at least) ever - far, far, FAR more than any other time GitHub has changed their UI. You can argue that GitHub and GitLab have UI that degrades a developer's experience. You can argue that their designs are FADs, and even that eventually they might change their design to be more similar to your's. And all of those arguments may be right. But right now, I'd argue that this design hurts mass adoption, and even though what design language is "in style" is completely a FAD, following the FAD does help adoption, and entire companies (e.g. fast-fashion like H&M) make tons of profit on FADs (even when they do horrible things - like how fast fashion is bad for the environment, some of GitHub's actions are bad for open source, the Apple example, etc). I think your numbers are great evidence that you will get users with your current design, and I think that were you to release a GitHub clone (design-wise), you'd lose most of your users and would still struggle to gain non-GitHub users. I don't think there's a way to satisfy both camps of users, but perhaps a "colorful" and "minimal" theme may help? This is not as important as other things you are doing such as the things mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25103662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25103662 but I do think it would help with mass-adoption (which may even be a non-goal, or may be far less important than other goals - that's totally fine too, I'm not trying to judge you or say you're completely wrong, just pointing out something which I feel is missed in these design discussions on HN).

systemvoltage 6y ago
You seem to be stuck with confirmation bias: Just because the way things are doesn't mean they're optimal. All things can get stuck in a local optima and it takes guts to challenge the status quo to get out of it. This "undoing" is what we call innovation. Whether it survies the undoing or not - that's upto the users who adopt this product. If it does survive, then we all progress. If it doesn't, it was a great experiment. Thanks for empathizing with what Drew is doing.
- jamescostian 6y ago
  >> You can argue that GitHub and GitLab have UI that degrades a developer's experience. [...] And all of those arguments may be right. But right now, I'd argue that this design hurts mass adoption > You seem to be stuck with confirmation bias: Just because the way things are doesn't mean they're optimal I'm afraid you haven't understood my words. I'm not talking about optimal, in fact, optimal is explicitly made a non-goal in my comment. You can tell me about VHS vs Betamax, and all I can say is I had never even heard of Betamax until I saw people talking about it on HN. You can tell me Plan 9 is better than Linux, or that (insert obscure brand here) is better than Heinz. Mass-adopted solution != optimal solution. Mass-adoption doesn't even require products to attain local optima, let alone global optima. I use an obscure toothpaste that comes in tablets in glass bottles - totally obscure, likely will never reach mass-adoption, but it is better. I was not aware that mass-adoption was not a goal of SourceHut, and I mistakenly assumed it was. Without mass-adoption as a goal, I can totally see how this mentality you expressed makes perfect sense, and I personally agree with it for less-well-adopted things that I use too: "If it does survive, then we all progress. If it doesn't, it was a great experiment"
ddevault 6y ago
>I did not downvote you. I think it's wonderful that people love the UI of SourceHut. You've put a lot of effort in and made a product that many people love, and that is fantastic and a hell of a lot more than I can say for myself. Seriously, congrats on all you've accomplished, and thank you for all you've done for the open source community, it's quite a lot and very deserving of appreciation Sure, no worries, there are no personal feelings attached to these comments. >But my point is about mass-adoption Mass adoption is not a goal of sr.ht. >if GitHub were to release a redesign identical to SourceHut in 2020, we'd see the largest exodus of GitHub users STRONG disagree.
- iso8859-1 6y ago
  I disagree with your disagreement ;) Yes, there could be an exodus, many people think they need web2.0. But given that sr.ht isn't supposed to be for everyone anyway, it doesn't matter what would provoke an exodus on GitHub. Thanks for sticking with your values! It is so refreshing. I hope to start using sr.ht soon.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    In some ways it makes me happy that great products aren't popular :) I feel like I am part of an exclusive club of exceptional people that make great products. See: https://suckless.org/ https://suckless.org/ -> Great products, but not popular.

systemvoltage 6y ago

You seem to be stuck with confirmation bias: Just because the way things are doesn't mean they're optimal. All things can get stuck in a local optima and it takes guts to challenge the status quo to get out of it. This "undoing" is what we call innovation. Whether it survies the undoing or not - that's upto the users who adopt this product. If it does survive, then we all progress. If it doesn't, it was a great experiment. Thanks for empathizing with what Drew is doing.

jamescostian 6y ago
>> You can argue that GitHub and GitLab have UI that degrades a developer's experience. [...] And all of those arguments may be right. But right now, I'd argue that this design hurts mass adoption > You seem to be stuck with confirmation bias: Just because the way things are doesn't mean they're optimal I'm afraid you haven't understood my words. I'm not talking about optimal, in fact, optimal is explicitly made a non-goal in my comment. You can tell me about VHS vs Betamax, and all I can say is I had never even heard of Betamax until I saw people talking about it on HN. You can tell me Plan 9 is better than Linux, or that (insert obscure brand here) is better than Heinz. Mass-adopted solution != optimal solution. Mass-adoption doesn't even require products to attain local optima, let alone global optima. I use an obscure toothpaste that comes in tablets in glass bottles - totally obscure, likely will never reach mass-adoption, but it is better. I was not aware that mass-adoption was not a goal of SourceHut, and I mistakenly assumed it was. Without mass-adoption as a goal, I can totally see how this mentality you expressed makes perfect sense, and I personally agree with it for less-well-adopted things that I use too: "If it does survive, then we all progress. If it doesn't, it was a great experiment"

ddevault 6y ago

>I did not downvote you. I think it's wonderful that people love the UI of SourceHut. You've put a lot of effort in and made a product that many people love, and that is fantastic and a hell of a lot more than I can say for myself. Seriously, congrats on all you've accomplished, and thank you for all you've done for the open source community, it's quite a lot and very deserving of appreciation Sure, no worries, there are no personal feelings attached to these comments. >But my point is about mass-adoption Mass adoption is not a goal of sr.ht. >if GitHub were to release a redesign identical to SourceHut in 2020, we'd see the largest exodus of GitHub users STRONG disagree.

iso8859-1 6y ago
I disagree with your disagreement ;) Yes, there could be an exodus, many people think they need web2.0. But given that sr.ht isn't supposed to be for everyone anyway, it doesn't matter what would provoke an exodus on GitHub. Thanks for sticking with your values! It is so refreshing. I hope to start using sr.ht soon.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  In some ways it makes me happy that great products aren't popular :) I feel like I am part of an exclusive club of exceptional people that make great products. See: https://suckless.org/ https://suckless.org/ -> Great products, but not popular.