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>The problem is that people want collaborative editing, and we want our files not to be tied to a single device. People also want Pringles and reality TV. Popu

>The problem is that people want collaborative editing, and we want our files not to be tied to a single device. People also want Pringles and reality TV. Popularity doesn't make something good.

spicybright 6y ago
Lmao, you're not wrong. I'm sure some people would be content with an 80's micro computer if all they do is word processing and printing, for example.
ghaff 6y ago
Collaborative editing just sort of snuck into workflows. And maybe it's not useful for you, but for me it's revolutionary compared to mailing files all over the place and having to figure out merging edits. If you don't like something like Google Docs, should probably drop GitHub too.
- samatman 6y ago
  I'm not in a position to drop GitHub, or 'Lab in our case, but I do consider them a failure of git. Yes, an email and patch based workflow is possible, and that was what git was originally developed for. But it should be flexible enough to support an issue/comment/(M|P)R based workflow that's all local, and, it isn't. Microsoft owns the de facto home of open-source software as a result of this, so it's no minor oversight.
  - josephg 6y ago
    I’m increasingly thinking the opposite - and that GitHub is a clearheaded model of the path forward. There are very few examples of p2p software like git scaling well. Servers are way too useful. The git model seems like a nice compromise. And by git model, I mean an opensource distributed protocol that anyone can run coupled with some big centralised services run by big tech - so you don’t have to. This has all the benefits of a centralised system with the all important off ramp. Email more or less works the same way now. A few years ago I moved from Gmail to fastmail and haven’t looked back. That said, I really wish more of GitHub’s features made their way back to git. Issues should be stored somewhere in the git repository - so they can be viewed offline and so competing services like gitlab can be compatible.
    - samatman 6y ago
      We're really talking about the same thing. The only way to enforce p2p is to forbid servers, it's too useful to have specialized software running somewhere with a fixed IP address, DNS, and fat fiber. Even the most successful p2p protocols, bitcoin and bittorrent, are pretty server-heavy in practice. That said, I want my version control to contain, locally, everything relevant to software development, and use some sort of pub/sub model to propagate my changes. Here, a server is helpful: gives a fixed domain, a canonical place to retrieve the repo, and so on and so forth. But it should be more like Fossil, where everything is stored locally and you can spin up your own localhost to access the GUI through the browser. Fossil is too monolithic, I reluctantly had to abandon it on that basis, but it points in the correct direction IMHO. And if the hub is down, as long as peers and backups haven't changed IP addresses since the last time we communicated, I don't see why work couldn't continue.

>The problem is that people want collaborative editing, and we want our files not to be tied to a single device. People also want Pringles and reality TV. Popularity doesn't make something good.

spicybright 6y ago

Lmao, you're not wrong. I'm sure some people would be content with an 80's micro computer if all they do is word processing and printing, for example.

ghaff 6y ago

Collaborative editing just sort of snuck into workflows. And maybe it's not useful for you, but for me it's revolutionary compared to mailing files all over the place and having to figure out merging edits. If you don't like something like Google Docs, should probably drop GitHub too.

samatman 6y ago
I'm not in a position to drop GitHub, or 'Lab in our case, but I do consider them a failure of git. Yes, an email and patch based workflow is possible, and that was what git was originally developed for. But it should be flexible enough to support an issue/comment/(M|P)R based workflow that's all local, and, it isn't. Microsoft owns the de facto home of open-source software as a result of this, so it's no minor oversight.
- josephg 6y ago
  I’m increasingly thinking the opposite - and that GitHub is a clearheaded model of the path forward. There are very few examples of p2p software like git scaling well. Servers are way too useful. The git model seems like a nice compromise. And by git model, I mean an opensource distributed protocol that anyone can run coupled with some big centralised services run by big tech - so you don’t have to. This has all the benefits of a centralised system with the all important off ramp. Email more or less works the same way now. A few years ago I moved from Gmail to fastmail and haven’t looked back. That said, I really wish more of GitHub’s features made their way back to git. Issues should be stored somewhere in the git repository - so they can be viewed offline and so competing services like gitlab can be compatible.
  - samatman 6y ago
    We're really talking about the same thing. The only way to enforce p2p is to forbid servers, it's too useful to have specialized software running somewhere with a fixed IP address, DNS, and fat fiber. Even the most successful p2p protocols, bitcoin and bittorrent, are pretty server-heavy in practice. That said, I want my version control to contain, locally, everything relevant to software development, and use some sort of pub/sub model to propagate my changes. Here, a server is helpful: gives a fixed domain, a canonical place to retrieve the repo, and so on and so forth. But it should be more like Fossil, where everything is stored locally and you can spin up your own localhost to access the GUI through the browser. Fossil is too monolithic, I reluctantly had to abandon it on that basis, but it points in the correct direction IMHO. And if the hub is down, as long as peers and backups haven't changed IP addresses since the last time we communicated, I don't see why work couldn't continue.