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That is why I said "wherever possible". If your team is going to quit their jobs (I doubt it) because they will only deal with a web based issue tracking, then

by akudha 4y ago

That is why I said "wherever possible". If your team is going to quit their jobs (I doubt it) because they will only deal with a web based issue tracking, then sure, go for GitHub. The point I am trying to make here is - by default people spend their money with mega corps, because of brand awareness, convenience etc. Instead, it would be nice if the default is indie/small businesses. In other words instead of "the mega corps aren't working for me, let me look for smaller/indie options instead", it would be nice if we all did "smaller indie options don't fit my requirements, let me go with Microsoft/Apple/etc instead". Maybe this is too idealistic?

billythemaniam 4y ago
There is usually a reason those mega corporations became mega corporations. GitHub, in particular, is the easiest way to collaborate for most developers and they were the first one to get most things right. Absolutely vote with your wallet. If you want to support smaller companies, then do that. But realistically GitHub will be the default option until something comes along that is better. And whatever replaces Github has to be significantly better to justify the switching cost for majority of developers.
- presentation 4y ago
  At such point it will probably become a large corporation that people will consider ethically challenged.
BeetleB 4y ago
> If your team is going to quit their jobs (I doubt it) because they will only deal with a web based issue tracking, then sure, go for GitHub. No but they will quit because an ideology most members of most teams was used to justify a decision that affected their work.
nirui 4y ago
Maybe also too optimistic as well. Let me start by telling you a story about me trying to buy clothes for the first time: Back then, I have no idea of branding and the symbolism behind, I don't even have the idea of quality. After many hours of browsing and comparing, I picked what I liked based on showcase pictures and user reviews, completely brand-blindly. A week later when they arrived, I quickly discovered that few of them are false advertisments, some of them are in the wrong size and one got damaged during shipping. And for the rest items that were "just right", half of them ripped/deformed after half-year of use. So, as a normal person would do, I created a table which consist of factors such as durability, price and styles etc to help me increase my "success rate". And after few years of iteration, that table ended up points me to just few brands that happens to be well-known and big. I eventually settled on those brands with membership cards etc, and now whenever I need new clothes, I open their store page. What I learned from my experience is that discovery itself generates cost, and the cost is nonrefundable. It is reasonable for an user to settle on a trusted brand. It's not brand loyalty, it's just rational decision making. For most users, choose GitHub is rational, because it's the most trusted platform out there, and it provides good services (including the infrastructures and socials). You already knew what to expect before you even sign on, that's the level of trust GitHub delivers. It's really hard to ask users to discover and move to the alternatives once their needs are well-fulfilled by the current one, even when the alternative provides the same level of service. What makes it even harder is that services such as BitBucket, GitLab, SourceHut, Gitea etc can't provide the same level of service that GitHub offers for free. At this circumstances, the megacorp such as GitHub will always win even when the user is pro-indies by default. But we are not completely dead in the water here. GitHub succeed because they created something new at the time, something better than what SourceForge offered. I assume if someone wants to beat GitHub, they need to do the same. Don't just create alternatives, create something new that also does old things better.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Let me point out that if you go buying clothes in a physical shop you can easily assess a large part of the quality of the clothes and you have no problems with shipping. This has a cost though and it doesn't solve the discovery part happening when you clean them (shrink, discoloration etc.) I think I never bought clothes online so far.

by akudha 4y ago

billythemaniam 4y ago

There is usually a reason those mega corporations became mega corporations. GitHub, in particular, is the easiest way to collaborate for most developers and they were the first one to get most things right. Absolutely vote with your wallet. If you want to support smaller companies, then do that. But realistically GitHub will be the default option until something comes along that is better. And whatever replaces Github has to be significantly better to justify the switching cost for majority of developers.

presentation 4y ago
At such point it will probably become a large corporation that people will consider ethically challenged.

BeetleB 4y ago

> If your team is going to quit their jobs (I doubt it) because they will only deal with a web based issue tracking, then sure, go for GitHub. No but they will quit because an ideology most members of most teams was used to justify a decision that affected their work.

nirui 4y ago

Maybe also too optimistic as well. Let me start by telling you a story about me trying to buy clothes for the first time: Back then, I have no idea of branding and the symbolism behind, I don't even have the idea of quality. After many hours of browsing and comparing, I picked what I liked based on showcase pictures and user reviews, completely brand-blindly. A week later when they arrived, I quickly discovered that few of them are false advertisments, some of them are in the wrong size and one got damaged during shipping. And for the rest items that were "just right", half of them ripped/deformed after half-year of use. So, as a normal person would do, I created a table which consist of factors such as durability, price and styles etc to help me increase my "success rate". And after few years of iteration, that table ended up points me to just few brands that happens to be well-known and big. I eventually settled on those brands with membership cards etc, and now whenever I need new clothes, I open their store page. What I learned from my experience is that discovery itself generates cost, and the cost is nonrefundable. It is reasonable for an user to settle on a trusted brand. It's not brand loyalty, it's just rational decision making. For most users, choose GitHub is rational, because it's the most trusted platform out there, and it provides good services (including the infrastructures and socials). You already knew what to expect before you even sign on, that's the level of trust GitHub delivers. It's really hard to ask users to discover and move to the alternatives once their needs are well-fulfilled by the current one, even when the alternative provides the same level of service. What makes it even harder is that services such as BitBucket, GitLab, SourceHut, Gitea etc can't provide the same level of service that GitHub offers for free. At this circumstances, the megacorp such as GitHub will always win even when the user is pro-indies by default. But we are not completely dead in the water here. GitHub succeed because they created something new at the time, something better than what SourceForge offered. I assume if someone wants to beat GitHub, they need to do the same. Don't just create alternatives, create something new that also does old things better.

pmontra 4y ago
Let me point out that if you go buying clothes in a physical shop you can easily assess a large part of the quality of the clothes and you have no problems with shipping. This has a cost though and it doesn't solve the discovery part happening when you clean them (shrink, discoloration etc.) I think I never bought clothes online so far.