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I'm curious how does it harm anything? Did it kill any puppies? Maybe it's inefficient but harmful? Also remember GitHub is a for profit company. Its allowa

by ww520 15y ago

I'm curious how does it harm anything? Did it kill any puppies? Maybe it's inefficient but harmful? Also remember GitHub is a for profit company. Its allowance for Open Source hosting is a marketing tactic. Anytime they feel the marketing value is not there, they will shut it down. Not that I'm against GitHub. It's a great company for itself. But comparing the Apache to GitHub is like comparing apple and orange.

Legion 15y ago
Don't get caught up on GitHub specifically. GitHub is just the most popular example of how projects don't need Apache to host them anymore, yet Apache still expects to do so, and worse, expects to assert a lot of restriction over it. The point is, that is at odds with what the community wants and needs. As the author pointed out, ten years ago, rolling your own SCM hosting was a big pain. Now, it's not, partly because of GitHub and Bitbucket and others, but also because rolling your own isn't as hard either. Anyone with minimal server admin experience and knowledge of Git can run their own Git server on a VPS with something like Gitolite. I know because I succeeded in doing so myself, and I'm neither a pro server admin, nor did I have any Git experience at the time I did the initial setup of Gitolite. Prior to that, I had set up a Mercurial server with no prior Mercurial experience either. It's pretty easy now. So, yeah, GitHub is there, but GitHub could disappear tomorrow and the community still wouldn't need to turn to Apache for project hosting. In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.
- hrabago 15y ago
  GitHub isn't a new version of Apache - GitHub is a new version of SourceForge. I don't think that even 10 years ago anyone with a line (or 100 lines) of code can set up their own Apache projects. 10 years ago if you needed free SCM, you'd use SourceForge, not Apache. I don't think it would've been that big of a pain even then. GitHub projects don't necessarily come with its own community with diverse contributors, whereas Apache projects require it.
- nl 15y ago
  In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making. That wasn't the author's point at all.
rgardler 15y ago
I just want to be clear. To the best of my knowledge The Apache Software Foundation has never killed any puppies. Disclaimer: I am a Member of The Apache Software Foundation. I do not own any puppies. These two facts are not connected. (thanks for bringing some reality to this post, I don't agree with your other comments, see my comments elsewhere fore why, but your opening para is spot on)
- ww520 15y ago
  Hyperbole is best answered with hyperbole. Note that I have nothing against Git. I use it. The main difference between Apache and GitHub is one is a non-profit whose main goal to shepherd OS projects while the other one is a for-profit company out to make money. I don't think it's a fair comparison to use one to substitute another.
v21 15y ago
It harms the opportunity cost of the projects that reside within it. That's a real harm. And I think the point is that while GitHub is there, use it. If it closes off, or goes bust, migrate. You can extract all your data - keep a backup elsewhere. At worst, you can move to Gitorious. I mean, currently they use JIRA for bug tracking - that's not an open project either, that's run by Atlassian.
- rgardler 15y ago
  Projects choose to go to the ASF. Who are you, or anyone else, to tell them it is not the right choice? Billions of dollars are made and saved every year thanks to ASF software (hell it's even in space)- there is a reason for that. Can the ASF environment be improved for its projects? Of course it can - see my other comments where I address this point.
  - v21 15y ago
    You're right of course - and I should have tempered my post with caveats about "if the poster is correct", and "I don't really know much about the internal workings of the ASF". The main point I was trying to convey was just that there's a cost to not improving things, just as much as there's a cost to things getting worst.

by ww520 15y ago

Legion 15y ago

Don't get caught up on GitHub specifically. GitHub is just the most popular example of how projects don't need Apache to host them anymore, yet Apache still expects to do so, and worse, expects to assert a lot of restriction over it. The point is, that is at odds with what the community wants and needs. As the author pointed out, ten years ago, rolling your own SCM hosting was a big pain. Now, it's not, partly because of GitHub and Bitbucket and others, but also because rolling your own isn't as hard either. Anyone with minimal server admin experience and knowledge of Git can run their own Git server on a VPS with something like Gitolite. I know because I succeeded in doing so myself, and I'm neither a pro server admin, nor did I have any Git experience at the time I did the initial setup of Gitolite. Prior to that, I had set up a Mercurial server with no prior Mercurial experience either. It's pretty easy now. So, yeah, GitHub is there, but GitHub could disappear tomorrow and the community still wouldn't need to turn to Apache for project hosting. In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.

hrabago 15y ago
GitHub isn't a new version of Apache - GitHub is a new version of SourceForge. I don't think that even 10 years ago anyone with a line (or 100 lines) of code can set up their own Apache projects. 10 years ago if you needed free SCM, you'd use SourceForge, not Apache. I don't think it would've been that big of a pain even then. GitHub projects don't necessarily come with its own community with diverse contributors, whereas Apache projects require it.
nl 15y ago
In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making. That wasn't the author's point at all.

rgardler 15y ago

I just want to be clear. To the best of my knowledge The Apache Software Foundation has never killed any puppies. Disclaimer: I am a Member of The Apache Software Foundation. I do not own any puppies. These two facts are not connected. (thanks for bringing some reality to this post, I don't agree with your other comments, see my comments elsewhere fore why, but your opening para is spot on)

ww520 15y ago
Hyperbole is best answered with hyperbole. Note that I have nothing against Git. I use it. The main difference between Apache and GitHub is one is a non-profit whose main goal to shepherd OS projects while the other one is a for-profit company out to make money. I don't think it's a fair comparison to use one to substitute another.

v21 15y ago

It harms the opportunity cost of the projects that reside within it. That's a real harm. And I think the point is that while GitHub is there, use it. If it closes off, or goes bust, migrate. You can extract all your data - keep a backup elsewhere. At worst, you can move to Gitorious. I mean, currently they use JIRA for bug tracking - that's not an open project either, that's run by Atlassian.

rgardler 15y ago
Projects choose to go to the ASF. Who are you, or anyone else, to tell them it is not the right choice? Billions of dollars are made and saved every year thanks to ASF software (hell it's even in space)- there is a reason for that. Can the ASF environment be improved for its projects? Of course it can - see my other comments where I address this point.
- v21 15y ago
  You're right of course - and I should have tempered my post with caveats about "if the poster is correct", and "I don't really know much about the internal workings of the ASF". The main point I was trying to convey was just that there's a cost to not improving things, just as much as there's a cost to things getting worst.