17 ms·

Kyoto project is moving from GitHub to Sourcehut

211 points by gkbrk 4y ago

newaccount2021 4y ago
last night I checked my billing page on sr.ht and there was a line chart that had "11.2%" to indicate that currently 11.2% of users are paying...there was also a redline at 13% which I assume is some sustainability threshold if you want viable alternatives to github, pay up! sr.ht is a nice service that allows some premium features like ssh'ing into ci instances to check failures...there is plenty worth paying for
- ok_dad 4y ago
  The red line is at 13.37 percent, so I assume it's a semi-joke. You can read about the 2021 financials here; it seems that the project is pretty successful overall: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-04-08-2021-financial-report/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-04-08-2021-financial-report/
  - ddevault 4y ago
    Yeah, it's just a joke. SourceHut is already profitable & sustainable. But, I think that it is important that we establish the expectation that users should be paying for the service. It keeps our interests aligned directly with theirs and we are accountable to no one else.
8organicbits 4y ago
> As far as a go packaging system makes host changing painful enough, there is no chance to keep old versions on the new host. > If you're using version 0.x, please, make a fork, or create a local project copy. I feel like an official mirror on GitHub would be cleaner, as the old URLs could still work, but I suppose that doesn't match the vision.
- bbkane 4y ago
  If you're starting a new Go project, I strongly recommend using a custom import path- I host go.bbkane.com with GitHub Pages and it was easy and free to set up with vangen and GitHub Pages (I already own bbkane.com). https://github.com/bbkane/go.bbkane.com https://github.com/bbkane/go.bbkane.com
swagonomixxx 4y ago
Just had this thought: are there any decentralized code hosting services? To me, I don't really see a difference between GitHub and sr.ht. Companies can start out with these "friendly" attitudes towards FOSS, but when they reel in many paying customers, they can pretty easily, and without consequence, change their policies to be more aggressive (geared towards profit) and greedy. It just seems inevitable to me. However, decentralized hosting and governance might make it so that there can't be a hostile takeover and incorrect (relative to license) usage of FOSS code. I'm thinking something akin to IPFS but more specialized towards e.g git repository hosting. Not sure how such hosting would be feasible in terms of breaking even between hosting costs, but a decentralized service hosting distributed VCS databases seems more along the lines of the philosophy of DVCS's in general. DVCS's in general do not have timeliness requirements (i.e your "git push" most of the time doesn't have to propagate worldwide immediately) and the other goodies that come with being on GitHub (e.g CI/CD) seem orthogonal to the actual code hosting itself, and I don't see why that can't be built separately without being part of the service.
- ranaexmachina 4y ago
  > To me, I don't really see a difference between GitHub and sr.ht. Companies can start out with these "friendly" attitudes towards FOSS, but when they reel in many paying customers, they can pretty easily, and without consequence, change their policies to be more aggressive (geared towards profit) and greedy. It just seems inevitable to me. But with sourcehut you can just host it yourself or find someone else who hosts that as everything is FOSS. If you don't want to use the built-in CI, wiki and issue tracker, then Git is already decentralized. You can push and pull easily from and to multiple sources. Git is already built for that exact use case.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > If you don't want to use the built-in CI, wiki and issue tracker, then Git is already decentralized. You can push and pull easily from and to multiple sources. Git is already built for that exact use case. Git is a great protocol. You can pull/push to HTTPS servers, SSH servers, even directories (so via NFS if you so wish). Really, Git is really awesome in that way. But Git itself is not a "code hosting service" that parent asked for. That requires more. Something like Fossil SCM would probably fit better, or git-ssb as I mentioned in another comment here.
sergiotapia 4y ago
I left Codeplex many years ago. I could easily leave Github as well, in fact I'll do that over the weekend. This article was pretty eye-opening. https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/
capableweb 4y ago
The title confused me at first, "they are moving from sr.ht to GitHub?", but then I realized I'm just used to reading migrations like that in a "from $serviceB to $serviceA" manner and "to $serviceA from $serviceB" made it all wrong in my brain. Funny how that works.
- phnofive 4y ago
  Had the same reaction - skipping prepositions and mashing the nouns into a trained interpretive mold. Guess I need to slow down.
- phdelightful 4y ago
  I like “from A to B” because B happens after A temporally and in the text. It also serves to emphasize A as opposed to B, which is nice because we usually wouldn’t leave A unless there was really a problem with it even if B is better in some way.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  You will love the Intel assembly dialect.
  - ternaryoperator 4y ago
    Was just going to say this. Although, it's not specific to Intel assembly. Many assembly languages use the syntax: move destination,origin
    - userbinator 4y ago
      So does the assignment statement in almost all languages I know.
      - xigoi 4y ago
        But assignment in most languages doesn't use a word that's commonly used with a particular order.
gigatexal 4y ago
Yikes. Mailing list development might work for Linus and the kernel team but the PR approach on GitHub is so much easier for developers to discover and use and even for senior or more seasoned devs I’d rather do this in the open on a PR than in some mailing list. Ugh.
- meibo 4y ago
  Yeah, I was reading this and thought "Have fun!": > I don't know much about it, but I'm going to dig into it in the near future (https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/ https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/). For now, those who want to contribute, I'll just add read/write permissions to the project.
- morpheuskafka 4y ago
  There's a huge middle ground of running your own instance of Gitlab/etc. versus going to the mailing list style of development (even that could be a lot easier with a more readable web interface and web posting support).
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  I think the mailing list approach would work for giant projects that have many bullshit PRs and issues, and you want to deter the “hello please fix it on my pc” stuff. Not really for small projects where each PR is usually helpful. I have no idea what is kyoto and if it fits there.
- 015a 4y ago
  To be honest; I think something the creator (?) commented elsewhere here is really apt: no one is born knowing how to use Github. We get used to what we're used to. I'm not asserting that as an argument for email, or PRs, but rather just that I'm certain there's people who feel, and are, extremely productive in vim, or collaborating over email, or programming in PHP, or whatever tech the younger people in the industry would claim is Yikes or Big Oof. Unless we're talking about Bitbucket. No one is productive in Bitbucket.
- xigoi 4y ago
  Personally, it took me a long time to understand how pull requests work.
202206241203 4y ago
These things are like "Why I left Google" from 2010s.
markphip 4y ago
FWIW, just as Amazon and SalesForce are already doing their version of CoPilot, there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else. If it is open source then the source is going to be available to be used for the models.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Showing a reaction is very important in my book. I’m also moving to Source Hut. Not hosting my code in servers of a company which is openly hostile to open source and Linux is a good move. Lastly, you can try to prevent scraping. It’s a cat and mouse game, but at least your servers can’t be directly accessed by the training code itself.
  - e-clinton 4y ago
    Perhaps the licenses just need to be amended to explicitly say “you may not train AI models with this source code” and then get ready for a court battle. I think Microsoft gives back to open source almost as much as they take, so I’m fine with them.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else I disagree. I think that GitHub is training Copilot on only repos currently on GitHub, because they can easily do so due to the Terms of Service [1] which allow them to "parse [user content] into a search index or otherwise analyze [user content] on our servers". They can reasonably show that an ML model fits the definition of "otherwise analyze content", regardless of the license. If code that was never hosted on GitHub to begin with starts showing up verbatim in Copilot suggestions, it might be a more legally challenging position for them. It is unfortunate grey area if people decide to upload copies of free software repos to GitHub anyway, but perhaps future versions of the GPL or other free/libre licenses could be explicit about usage in training ML models. I have no idea what Amazon or Salesforce are doing, but it would be interesting to hear what they are using for training data and how they justify compliance with the software licenses. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#3-ownership-of-content-right-to-post-and-license-grants https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
Nextgrid 4y ago
I wish Sourcehut displayed code on the repo's primary page (as opposed to a separate "tree" tab) like most mainstream services such as GitHub or GitLab.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
In another of the get-off-GitHub discussions recently, I mentioned to another FOSS project leader that they should consider taking their projects off GitHub to a forge that respects FOSS licenses. Sourcehut was one of the suggestions in addition to GitLab. I'm glad to see that some projects are leading the way in this direction. To me, this move shows that the devs are competent and not afraid of migrations away from legacy forges if necessary; similar to how people moved from Sourceforge to GitHub 10 years ago. I'll keep Kyoto framework in mind if need an SSR frontend framework in the future! I suggest others do the same. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941568
- Shadonototra 4y ago
  https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gitlab https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gitlab it's public, whatever their investor will ask, they'll comply, github is their competitor, they'll want the same product unless you self host, in that case it is debatable but for how long we need more services like sr.ht, and less like github/gitlab
- Kiro 4y ago
  I think people should do the opposite and move their code to GitHub if it helps Copilot. It's the single most important invention of my lifetime. Its existence trumps any ideological or legal hurdles.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    I'd rather keep my code away from a company and feature which disregards the licenses I prefer for my codebases, thank you.
    - williamcotton 4y ago
      You might be surprised about the limitations of your copyright claims! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...
Shadonototra 4y ago
I approve the move, congrats!
andybak 4y ago
If there's a big migration away from Github then I really worry what I'll do about discovering interesting stuff. I spend an hour or so a week looking through my Github feed. Something genuinely valuable will be lost once that is no longer a rich seam of new repos.
- apetresc 4y ago
  The likely solution to that problem is ForgeFed, a kind of ActivityPub for federated source-control systems: https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed
  - Jaxkr 4y ago
    Unfortunately this suffers from compounded niche-ness. Even with huge interest and constant public f-ups from social media companies, the Fediverse has failed to gain any real traction (likely due to the unintuitiveness of cross-server identity). GitHub is already niche for the general populace, most people haven’t heard of it. Among programmers, alternative SCM platforms outside of GitLab and Perforce are niche. When we multiply the two together we get an incredibly small set of potential users (and the UX challenges of ActivityPub are still there).
    - miloignis 4y ago
      This doesn't compound though - are we trying to get the general populace who doesn't use GitHub to use something that supports ForgeFed/ActivityPub? On the other hand, it seems significantly easier - instead of trying to convert the general populace to ActivityPub, we're trying to convert technically literate developers and related peoples to use ActivityPub. Also, for what it's worth, I quite enjoy my self-hosted Mastodon account and long since stopped using Twitter and Facebook.
  - remram 4y ago
    Is there any working implementation of ForgeFed at the moment?
  - 4y ago
O__________O 4y ago
Does Kyoto license explicitly forbid the code from being cloned to GitHub? If not, seems like at best buying time until someone else does.
listenallyall 4y ago
Recently I contributed to a new project which needed repository hosting, and I was excited to suggest Sourcehut. But when we learned of the email-only collaboration, it was too uncomfortable for this particular group (and I include myself). Most devs are used to pull requests, it seems awkward that Sourcehut doesn't support them.
- Anunayj 4y ago
  sourcehut in particular was designed with email based collaboration in mind, and I like they've stuck to it. There are so many alternatives out there for Github like pull requests. There are projects like linux that don't accept PRs on github and swear on sending patches. Obligatory Linus Rant: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...
- u801e 4y ago
  > But when we learned of the email-only collaboration, it was too uncomfortable for this particular group What makes using email or certain technologies uncomfortable, but using a new language or framework comfortable? > (and I include myself) The link with the associated comment threads we are paticipating in could have easily been an email and every comment could have been a direct reply to that email or a reply to one of the comments. Would that be more or less comfortable compared to just having this discussion on the web interface on https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com?
  - kcb 4y ago
    Less comfortable, way less. Email chains that become trees are a nightmare to deal with when they happen in practice.
    - u801e 4y ago
      How is an email thread with multiple branches any different than the comment tree in this post? What makes it less comfortable and why is it a nightmare compared to how the comments are rendered? The only difference is that you could have to click on each comment to read the body of the message, but the tree structure would be the same as it is now.
bravogamma 4y ago
Questions for whoever was involved with this decision or might know: Why was Sourcehut chosen? Any specific appealing features? Any alternatives considered?
- remram 4y ago
  The fact that it's not intended to be a free service (only free during alpha [1]) is a non-starter. Asking people to change their workflow is bad enough, asking them to stop getting it for free is a joke. [1]: https://sourcehut.org/pricing/ https://sourcehut.org/pricing/
  - ddevault 4y ago
    If you don't pay, someone else will. GitHub is funded by private investors demanding a return, which incentivizes behavior like repurposing your code to facilitate mass license infringement. SourceHut is entirely funded by its users and is therefore only accountable to their needs. SourceHut's fees are very cheap ($2/mo) and users who cannot pay for any reason are offered free service. If you will only use services that you don't need to pay for, that's your choice, but you should respect the choices of others who consider these incentives and their outcomes more important.
    - remram 4y ago
      This is the tragedy of the commons all over again, and all of us in the open source space know very well how that goes. I agree with you that the world where open source code is not hosted by private companies is a better one. However if our plan is to rely on the already-insufficiently-supported/rewarded maintainers changing their workflow, changing tools, and paying their own money (however low), we won't get there. Just like I think a world where all important software is open source is a better one. To get there, we just need corporations to give maintainers some of their own money. We are not getting there.
      - ddevault 4y ago
        We think the workflow is better, and no one was born knowing how to use GitHub, either. SourceHut is very affordable and the price is well worth the cost. If you want FOSS to be sustainable, FOSS platforms have to be sustainable, too. SourceHut is a corporation that donates to FOSS projects, by the way. We sponsor many projects and we're planning on building more tools to get maintainers paid for their work.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Isn't this moving from proprietary repo provider to proprietary repo provider (albeit a smaller one)?
- ddevault 4y ago
  SourceHut is not proprietary. It is 100% free software (mostly AGPL) and provides tools to migrate your data between hosted or self-hosted instances.
  - Arnavion 4y ago
    There's no guarantee that sr.ht (the "repo provider") is running upstream SourceHut (the AGPL software). I do believe that it is, but there's simply no way to guarantee it, so it would be reasonable to consider a non-self-hosted SourceHut instance as proprietary. (Again, to be clear I'm just playing devil's advocate with the semantics. I personally don't believe that sr.ht is doing anything nefarious.)
    - ddevault 4y ago
      I don't think that's a reasonable take. We are legally obligated to publish the source code running on our servers because we have incorporated code from others under the terms of the AGPL, without asking for them to assign copyright to us. This take also seems especially outlandish considering that the context is comparing SourceHut to GitHub, which is very clearly more proprietary even in this awkward sense.
      - Arnavion 4y ago
        >We are legally obligated to publish the source code running on our servers This is not a guarantee until it is challenged in court or audited by some trusted auditor. >This take also seems especially outlandish considering that the context is comparing SourceHut to GitHub, which is very clearly more proprietary even in this awkward sense. No disagreement there.
tptacek 4y ago
It would be useful to know what this project is. Lots of projects are on other code hosting services. Is this is a particularly important project? Go has been my daily driver for almost a decade and this is the first I've heard of it.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  The move is more of interest to commenters than the project itself, as an instance of an explicit action to move code away from GitHub, which seems to have gained the general status of "place where source code on <any project> is found" over the past decade. > Lots of projects are on other code hosting services. Yes, and they usually tend to stay there, unless the code hosting service starts doing unusual things with your code. The README of the linked project is quite explicit about all this.
- ddevault 4y ago
  Just click through to their new readme on sourcehut: https://sr.ht/~kyoto-framework/kyoto-framework/ https://sr.ht/~kyoto-framework/kyoto-framework/
  - tptacek 4y ago
    I did. Do lots of people use this library? I guess I'm wondering what the relative "newsworthiness" of this announcement is, because, like I said, people move things off Github all the time.
    - ddevault 4y ago
      Well, it had 515 magic GitHub popularity points before the move, if that matters to you. There's no notoriety condition on HN -- it's newsworthy if HN voters decide it is. I figured you'd know better than to drag out the old "why is this on the front page" standard.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        That's not at all what I'm doing. I don't care whether things move off Github, but I am a Go programmer, and this is a Go library, and I'm curious if I missed out on some important library. That's all. As the guidelines say: "assume good faith".
akudha 4y ago
As a rule of thumb, it is a good idea to support smaller and indie companies than mega corporations, IMHO - even if those mega corporations aren't doing anything that is ethically dubious. That is doubtful, as it is likely not possible to become that big without trampling on some toes or bending some rules. Why support Github when there is st.ht? Why support Starbucks when you can support a mom & pop coffee shop? Why buy books from Amazon when you can buy from a Indie book store? Granted, not everyone has the patience, time and money to vote with wallet, but we can try wherever possible. I hope more people ditch Github
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Last time I checked, sr.ht was mostly an email based workflow, and many teams wanted an issue tracking system that is web based
  - ddevault 4y ago
    SourceHut offers an email-based workflow with a web application built on top of it. You can file tickets via email, but you can also file tickets on the web: https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare The same goes for patches. You can submit changes directly via email, but you can also use our web interface. We're also working on web-based tools for code review built on top of our mailing lists, which will provide a complete experience similar to GitHub's pull requests, but built on top of the decentralized, standardized protocol that git was designed for.
    - hunterb123 4y ago
      Hello, kinda offtopic, but are there plans for ForgeFed / ActivityPub support? That really seems the best way to dethrone GitHub, as it's moat is mainly carved via a social network. The git repo is already decentralized, ForgeFed is a great way to integrate and decentralize the social part. In the future gitea, srht, and many other implementations could interact with each other's users.
      - 4y ago
nathants 4y ago
git-remote-gcrypt + rclone + s3.
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: Give up GitHub: The time has come - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932250 - June 2022 (544 comments)
armchairhacker 4y ago
Any good reason(s) why SourceHut and not Gitlab? SourceHut is missing a lot of features from GitHub, I'm not even sure if SourceHut has a file tree. It's interface is also much different than GitHub's. Meanwhile GitLab is almost an exact clone of GitHub. It has discussion boards, pull requests ("merge requests"), even CI which replaces GitHub actions. I figure SourceHut is more FOSS-friendly than GitLab. But GitLab still supports self-hosting, and AFAIK is open-source and FOSS-freindly itself. The KDE and GNOME project even have their own hosted GitLab versions. All-in-all I just think migrating from GitHub to GitLab seems much easier than migrating to SourceHut.
- michz 4y ago
  Can't speak for others but I would choose sourcehut over gitlab any day; having used gitlab at work, it's a hot mess of JavaScript that tries to replace command line workflows that work-- it's terribly slow, and once even used 60GB of memory on my machine. On the other hand, sourcehut promotes better workflows, in favor of a really snappy web interface. For those who are attached to forks and PRs there's also a web UI for submitting a "patch set" which basically walks you through the process the same way as a pull request.
CoastalCoder 4y ago
Something I've been unclear on for a while, and I'd be grateful if anyone can explain it. The project points to [0] as its rationale for leaving Github. One of that document's complaints about Github is that they do business with the US's ICE department. It's not the only group from which I've heard such thorough contempt for ICE. I understand why people might have problems with some aspects of ICE's activities, e.g. charges of inhumane treatment of people crossing the border without authorization. So it makes sense to me that they'd protest those particular behaviors. But protesting all of ICE makes no more sense to me than un-nuanced calls to entirely defund the police, or abolish the entire DoD. I.e., it seems obvious that totally eliminating any of those government functions would cause problems that almost nobody would find acceptable. Is there something I'm missing? [0] https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/
- MaxLeiter 4y ago
  People want a spectrum of things. Often, “defund the police/ICE” means “replace them with something better”, not eliminating them and forgetting about their original purpose. A few (or many, depending who you ask) bad apples spoiled the batch.
karaterobot 4y ago
For what it's worth, none of the reasons listed for switching away from Github in that SFC article are persuasive to me, but that's my choice. Kyoto project is free to choose what's best for them.
tus666 4y ago
lifeplusplus 4y ago
Copilot shouldn't be paid service of it's based on someone else work
thinkpad13 4y ago
this makes me want gitlab to focus more on the software development side instead ci cd devops

211 points by gkbrk 4y ago

newaccount2021 4y ago

last night I checked my billing page on sr.ht and there was a line chart that had "11.2%" to indicate that currently 11.2% of users are paying...there was also a redline at 13% which I assume is some sustainability threshold if you want viable alternatives to github, pay up! sr.ht is a nice service that allows some premium features like ssh'ing into ci instances to check failures...there is plenty worth paying for

ok_dad 4y ago
The red line is at 13.37 percent, so I assume it's a semi-joke. You can read about the 2021 financials here; it seems that the project is pretty successful overall: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-04-08-2021-financial-report/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-04-08-2021-financial-report/
- ddevault 4y ago
  Yeah, it's just a joke. SourceHut is already profitable & sustainable. But, I think that it is important that we establish the expectation that users should be paying for the service. It keeps our interests aligned directly with theirs and we are accountable to no one else.

8organicbits 4y ago

> As far as a go packaging system makes host changing painful enough, there is no chance to keep old versions on the new host. > If you're using version 0.x, please, make a fork, or create a local project copy. I feel like an official mirror on GitHub would be cleaner, as the old URLs could still work, but I suppose that doesn't match the vision.

bbkane 4y ago
If you're starting a new Go project, I strongly recommend using a custom import path- I host go.bbkane.com with GitHub Pages and it was easy and free to set up with vangen and GitHub Pages (I already own bbkane.com). https://github.com/bbkane/go.bbkane.com https://github.com/bbkane/go.bbkane.com

swagonomixxx 4y ago

Just had this thought: are there any decentralized code hosting services? To me, I don't really see a difference between GitHub and sr.ht. Companies can start out with these "friendly" attitudes towards FOSS, but when they reel in many paying customers, they can pretty easily, and without consequence, change their policies to be more aggressive (geared towards profit) and greedy. It just seems inevitable to me. However, decentralized hosting and governance might make it so that there can't be a hostile takeover and incorrect (relative to license) usage of FOSS code. I'm thinking something akin to IPFS but more specialized towards e.g git repository hosting. Not sure how such hosting would be feasible in terms of breaking even between hosting costs, but a decentralized service hosting distributed VCS databases seems more along the lines of the philosophy of DVCS's in general. DVCS's in general do not have timeliness requirements (i.e your "git push" most of the time doesn't have to propagate worldwide immediately) and the other goodies that come with being on GitHub (e.g CI/CD) seem orthogonal to the actual code hosting itself, and I don't see why that can't be built separately without being part of the service.

ranaexmachina 4y ago
> To me, I don't really see a difference between GitHub and sr.ht. Companies can start out with these "friendly" attitudes towards FOSS, but when they reel in many paying customers, they can pretty easily, and without consequence, change their policies to be more aggressive (geared towards profit) and greedy. It just seems inevitable to me. But with sourcehut you can just host it yourself or find someone else who hosts that as everything is FOSS. If you don't want to use the built-in CI, wiki and issue tracker, then Git is already decentralized. You can push and pull easily from and to multiple sources. Git is already built for that exact use case.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > If you don't want to use the built-in CI, wiki and issue tracker, then Git is already decentralized. You can push and pull easily from and to multiple sources. Git is already built for that exact use case. Git is a great protocol. You can pull/push to HTTPS servers, SSH servers, even directories (so via NFS if you so wish). Really, Git is really awesome in that way. But Git itself is not a "code hosting service" that parent asked for. That requires more. Something like Fossil SCM would probably fit better, or git-ssb as I mentioned in another comment here.

sergiotapia 4y ago

I left Codeplex many years ago. I could easily leave Github as well, in fact I'll do that over the weekend. This article was pretty eye-opening. https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

capableweb 4y ago

The title confused me at first, "they are moving from sr.ht to GitHub?", but then I realized I'm just used to reading migrations like that in a "from $serviceB to $serviceA" manner and "to $serviceA from $serviceB" made it all wrong in my brain. Funny how that works.

phnofive 4y ago
Had the same reaction - skipping prepositions and mashing the nouns into a trained interpretive mold. Guess I need to slow down.
phdelightful 4y ago
I like “from A to B” because B happens after A temporally and in the text. It also serves to emphasize A as opposed to B, which is nice because we usually wouldn’t leave A unless there was really a problem with it even if B is better in some way.
29athrowaway 4y ago
You will love the Intel assembly dialect.
- ternaryoperator 4y ago
  Was just going to say this. Although, it's not specific to Intel assembly. Many assembly languages use the syntax: move destination,origin
  - userbinator 4y ago
    So does the assignment statement in almost all languages I know.
    - xigoi 4y ago
      But assignment in most languages doesn't use a word that's commonly used with a particular order.

gigatexal 4y ago

Yikes. Mailing list development might work for Linus and the kernel team but the PR approach on GitHub is so much easier for developers to discover and use and even for senior or more seasoned devs I’d rather do this in the open on a PR than in some mailing list. Ugh.

meibo 4y ago
Yeah, I was reading this and thought "Have fun!": > I don't know much about it, but I'm going to dig into it in the near future (https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/ https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/). For now, those who want to contribute, I'll just add read/write permissions to the project.
morpheuskafka 4y ago
There's a huge middle ground of running your own instance of Gitlab/etc. versus going to the mailing list style of development (even that could be a lot easier with a more readable web interface and web posting support).
shp0ngle 4y ago
I think the mailing list approach would work for giant projects that have many bullshit PRs and issues, and you want to deter the “hello please fix it on my pc” stuff. Not really for small projects where each PR is usually helpful. I have no idea what is kyoto and if it fits there.
015a 4y ago
To be honest; I think something the creator (?) commented elsewhere here is really apt: no one is born knowing how to use Github. We get used to what we're used to. I'm not asserting that as an argument for email, or PRs, but rather just that I'm certain there's people who feel, and are, extremely productive in vim, or collaborating over email, or programming in PHP, or whatever tech the younger people in the industry would claim is Yikes or Big Oof. Unless we're talking about Bitbucket. No one is productive in Bitbucket.
xigoi 4y ago
Personally, it took me a long time to understand how pull requests work.

202206241203 4y ago

These things are like "Why I left Google" from 2010s.

markphip 4y ago

FWIW, just as Amazon and SalesForce are already doing their version of CoPilot, there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else. If it is open source then the source is going to be available to be used for the models.

bayindirh 4y ago
Showing a reaction is very important in my book. I’m also moving to Source Hut. Not hosting my code in servers of a company which is openly hostile to open source and Linux is a good move. Lastly, you can try to prevent scraping. It’s a cat and mouse game, but at least your servers can’t be directly accessed by the training code itself.
- e-clinton 4y ago
  Perhaps the licenses just need to be amended to explicitly say “you may not train AI models with this source code” and then get ready for a court battle. I think Microsoft gives back to open source almost as much as they take, so I’m fine with them.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
quadrifoliate 4y ago
> there is nothing to prevent GitHub from training its models off open source that is hosted on sr.ht or GitLab or anywhere else I disagree. I think that GitHub is training Copilot on only repos currently on GitHub, because they can easily do so due to the Terms of Service [1] which allow them to "parse [user content] into a search index or otherwise analyze [user content] on our servers". They can reasonably show that an ML model fits the definition of "otherwise analyze content", regardless of the license. If code that was never hosted on GitHub to begin with starts showing up verbatim in Copilot suggestions, it might be a more legally challenging position for them. It is unfortunate grey area if people decide to upload copies of free software repos to GitHub anyway, but perhaps future versions of the GPL or other free/libre licenses could be explicit about usage in training ML models. I have no idea what Amazon or Salesforce are doing, but it would be interesting to hear what they are using for training data and how they justify compliance with the software licenses. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#3-ownership-of-content-right-to-post-and-license-grants https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

Nextgrid 4y ago

I wish Sourcehut displayed code on the repo's primary page (as opposed to a separate "tree" tab) like most mainstream services such as GitHub or GitLab.

quadrifoliate 4y ago

In another of the get-off-GitHub discussions recently, I mentioned to another FOSS project leader that they should consider taking their projects off GitHub to a forge that respects FOSS licenses. Sourcehut was one of the suggestions in addition to GitLab. I'm glad to see that some projects are leading the way in this direction. To me, this move shows that the devs are competent and not afraid of migrations away from legacy forges if necessary; similar to how people moved from Sourceforge to GitHub 10 years ago. I'll keep Kyoto framework in mind if need an SSR frontend framework in the future! I suggest others do the same. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941568

Shadonototra 4y ago
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gitlab https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gitlab it's public, whatever their investor will ask, they'll comply, github is their competitor, they'll want the same product unless you self host, in that case it is debatable but for how long we need more services like sr.ht, and less like github/gitlab
Kiro 4y ago
I think people should do the opposite and move their code to GitHub if it helps Copilot. It's the single most important invention of my lifetime. Its existence trumps any ideological or legal hurdles.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  I'd rather keep my code away from a company and feature which disregards the licenses I prefer for my codebases, thank you.
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    You might be surprised about the limitations of your copyright claims! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...

Shadonototra 4y ago

I approve the move, congrats!

andybak 4y ago

If there's a big migration away from Github then I really worry what I'll do about discovering interesting stuff. I spend an hour or so a week looking through my Github feed. Something genuinely valuable will be lost once that is no longer a rich seam of new repos.

apetresc 4y ago
The likely solution to that problem is ForgeFed, a kind of ActivityPub for federated source-control systems: https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed
- Jaxkr 4y ago
  Unfortunately this suffers from compounded niche-ness. Even with huge interest and constant public f-ups from social media companies, the Fediverse has failed to gain any real traction (likely due to the unintuitiveness of cross-server identity). GitHub is already niche for the general populace, most people haven’t heard of it. Among programmers, alternative SCM platforms outside of GitLab and Perforce are niche. When we multiply the two together we get an incredibly small set of potential users (and the UX challenges of ActivityPub are still there).
  - miloignis 4y ago
    This doesn't compound though - are we trying to get the general populace who doesn't use GitHub to use something that supports ForgeFed/ActivityPub? On the other hand, it seems significantly easier - instead of trying to convert the general populace to ActivityPub, we're trying to convert technically literate developers and related peoples to use ActivityPub. Also, for what it's worth, I quite enjoy my self-hosted Mastodon account and long since stopped using Twitter and Facebook.
- remram 4y ago
  Is there any working implementation of ForgeFed at the moment?
- 4y ago

O__________O 4y ago

Does Kyoto license explicitly forbid the code from being cloned to GitHub? If not, seems like at best buying time until someone else does.

listenallyall 4y ago

Recently I contributed to a new project which needed repository hosting, and I was excited to suggest Sourcehut. But when we learned of the email-only collaboration, it was too uncomfortable for this particular group (and I include myself). Most devs are used to pull requests, it seems awkward that Sourcehut doesn't support them.

Anunayj 4y ago
sourcehut in particular was designed with email based collaboration in mind, and I like they've stuck to it. There are so many alternatives out there for Github like pull requests. There are projects like linux that don't accept PRs on github and swear on sending patches. Obligatory Linus Rant: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...
u801e 4y ago
> But when we learned of the email-only collaboration, it was too uncomfortable for this particular group What makes using email or certain technologies uncomfortable, but using a new language or framework comfortable? > (and I include myself) The link with the associated comment threads we are paticipating in could have easily been an email and every comment could have been a direct reply to that email or a reply to one of the comments. Would that be more or less comfortable compared to just having this discussion on the web interface on https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com?
- kcb 4y ago
  Less comfortable, way less. Email chains that become trees are a nightmare to deal with when they happen in practice.
  - u801e 4y ago
    How is an email thread with multiple branches any different than the comment tree in this post? What makes it less comfortable and why is it a nightmare compared to how the comments are rendered? The only difference is that you could have to click on each comment to read the body of the message, but the tree structure would be the same as it is now.

bravogamma 4y ago

Questions for whoever was involved with this decision or might know: Why was Sourcehut chosen? Any specific appealing features? Any alternatives considered?

remram 4y ago
The fact that it's not intended to be a free service (only free during alpha [1]) is a non-starter. Asking people to change their workflow is bad enough, asking them to stop getting it for free is a joke. [1]: https://sourcehut.org/pricing/ https://sourcehut.org/pricing/
- ddevault 4y ago
  If you don't pay, someone else will. GitHub is funded by private investors demanding a return, which incentivizes behavior like repurposing your code to facilitate mass license infringement. SourceHut is entirely funded by its users and is therefore only accountable to their needs. SourceHut's fees are very cheap ($2/mo) and users who cannot pay for any reason are offered free service. If you will only use services that you don't need to pay for, that's your choice, but you should respect the choices of others who consider these incentives and their outcomes more important.
  - remram 4y ago
    This is the tragedy of the commons all over again, and all of us in the open source space know very well how that goes. I agree with you that the world where open source code is not hosted by private companies is a better one. However if our plan is to rely on the already-insufficiently-supported/rewarded maintainers changing their workflow, changing tools, and paying their own money (however low), we won't get there. Just like I think a world where all important software is open source is a better one. To get there, we just need corporations to give maintainers some of their own money. We are not getting there.
    - ddevault 4y ago
      We think the workflow is better, and no one was born knowing how to use GitHub, either. SourceHut is very affordable and the price is well worth the cost. If you want FOSS to be sustainable, FOSS platforms have to be sustainable, too. SourceHut is a corporation that donates to FOSS projects, by the way. We sponsor many projects and we're planning on building more tools to get maintainers paid for their work.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Isn't this moving from proprietary repo provider to proprietary repo provider (albeit a smaller one)?

ddevault 4y ago
SourceHut is not proprietary. It is 100% free software (mostly AGPL) and provides tools to migrate your data between hosted or self-hosted instances.
- Arnavion 4y ago
  There's no guarantee that sr.ht (the "repo provider") is running upstream SourceHut (the AGPL software). I do believe that it is, but there's simply no way to guarantee it, so it would be reasonable to consider a non-self-hosted SourceHut instance as proprietary. (Again, to be clear I'm just playing devil's advocate with the semantics. I personally don't believe that sr.ht is doing anything nefarious.)
  - ddevault 4y ago
    I don't think that's a reasonable take. We are legally obligated to publish the source code running on our servers because we have incorporated code from others under the terms of the AGPL, without asking for them to assign copyright to us. This take also seems especially outlandish considering that the context is comparing SourceHut to GitHub, which is very clearly more proprietary even in this awkward sense.
    - Arnavion 4y ago
      >We are legally obligated to publish the source code running on our servers This is not a guarantee until it is challenged in court or audited by some trusted auditor. >This take also seems especially outlandish considering that the context is comparing SourceHut to GitHub, which is very clearly more proprietary even in this awkward sense. No disagreement there.

tptacek 4y ago

It would be useful to know what this project is. Lots of projects are on other code hosting services. Is this is a particularly important project? Go has been my daily driver for almost a decade and this is the first I've heard of it.

quadrifoliate 4y ago
The move is more of interest to commenters than the project itself, as an instance of an explicit action to move code away from GitHub, which seems to have gained the general status of "place where source code on <any project> is found" over the past decade. > Lots of projects are on other code hosting services. Yes, and they usually tend to stay there, unless the code hosting service starts doing unusual things with your code. The README of the linked project is quite explicit about all this.
ddevault 4y ago
Just click through to their new readme on sourcehut: https://sr.ht/~kyoto-framework/kyoto-framework/ https://sr.ht/~kyoto-framework/kyoto-framework/
- tptacek 4y ago
  I did. Do lots of people use this library? I guess I'm wondering what the relative "newsworthiness" of this announcement is, because, like I said, people move things off Github all the time.
  - ddevault 4y ago
    Well, it had 515 magic GitHub popularity points before the move, if that matters to you. There's no notoriety condition on HN -- it's newsworthy if HN voters decide it is. I figured you'd know better than to drag out the old "why is this on the front page" standard.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      That's not at all what I'm doing. I don't care whether things move off Github, but I am a Go programmer, and this is a Go library, and I'm curious if I missed out on some important library. That's all. As the guidelines say: "assume good faith".

akudha 4y ago

As a rule of thumb, it is a good idea to support smaller and indie companies than mega corporations, IMHO - even if those mega corporations aren't doing anything that is ethically dubious. That is doubtful, as it is likely not possible to become that big without trampling on some toes or bending some rules. Why support Github when there is st.ht? Why support Starbucks when you can support a mom & pop coffee shop? Why buy books from Amazon when you can buy from a Indie book store? Granted, not everyone has the patience, time and money to vote with wallet, but we can try wherever possible. I hope more people ditch Github

BeetleB 4y ago
Last time I checked, sr.ht was mostly an email based workflow, and many teams wanted an issue tracking system that is web based
- ddevault 4y ago
  SourceHut offers an email-based workflow with a web application built on top of it. You can file tickets via email, but you can also file tickets on the web: https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare The same goes for patches. You can submit changes directly via email, but you can also use our web interface. We're also working on web-based tools for code review built on top of our mailing lists, which will provide a complete experience similar to GitHub's pull requests, but built on top of the decentralized, standardized protocol that git was designed for.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    Hello, kinda offtopic, but are there plans for ForgeFed / ActivityPub support? That really seems the best way to dethrone GitHub, as it's moat is mainly carved via a social network. The git repo is already decentralized, ForgeFed is a great way to integrate and decentralize the social part. In the future gitea, srht, and many other implementations could interact with each other's users.
    - 4y ago

nathants 4y ago

git-remote-gcrypt + rclone + s3.

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: Give up GitHub: The time has come - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932250 - June 2022 (544 comments)

armchairhacker 4y ago

Any good reason(s) why SourceHut and not Gitlab? SourceHut is missing a lot of features from GitHub, I'm not even sure if SourceHut has a file tree. It's interface is also much different than GitHub's. Meanwhile GitLab is almost an exact clone of GitHub. It has discussion boards, pull requests ("merge requests"), even CI which replaces GitHub actions. I figure SourceHut is more FOSS-friendly than GitLab. But GitLab still supports self-hosting, and AFAIK is open-source and FOSS-freindly itself. The KDE and GNOME project even have their own hosted GitLab versions. All-in-all I just think migrating from GitHub to GitLab seems much easier than migrating to SourceHut.

michz 4y ago
Can't speak for others but I would choose sourcehut over gitlab any day; having used gitlab at work, it's a hot mess of JavaScript that tries to replace command line workflows that work-- it's terribly slow, and once even used 60GB of memory on my machine. On the other hand, sourcehut promotes better workflows, in favor of a really snappy web interface. For those who are attached to forks and PRs there's also a web UI for submitting a "patch set" which basically walks you through the process the same way as a pull request.

CoastalCoder 4y ago

Something I've been unclear on for a while, and I'd be grateful if anyone can explain it. The project points to [0] as its rationale for leaving Github. One of that document's complaints about Github is that they do business with the US's ICE department. It's not the only group from which I've heard such thorough contempt for ICE. I understand why people might have problems with some aspects of ICE's activities, e.g. charges of inhumane treatment of people crossing the border without authorization. So it makes sense to me that they'd protest those particular behaviors. But protesting all of ICE makes no more sense to me than un-nuanced calls to entirely defund the police, or abolish the entire DoD. I.e., it seems obvious that totally eliminating any of those government functions would cause problems that almost nobody would find acceptable. Is there something I'm missing? [0] https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

MaxLeiter 4y ago
People want a spectrum of things. Often, “defund the police/ICE” means “replace them with something better”, not eliminating them and forgetting about their original purpose. A few (or many, depending who you ask) bad apples spoiled the batch.

karaterobot 4y ago

For what it's worth, none of the reasons listed for switching away from Github in that SFC article are persuasive to me, but that's my choice. Kyoto project is free to choose what's best for them.

tus666 4y ago

lifeplusplus 4y ago

Copilot shouldn't be paid service of it's based on someone else work

thinkpad13 4y ago

this makes me want gitlab to focus more on the software development side instead ci cd devops