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I completely understand your frustration. It's a dick move to delete your content without (at least) giving you a chance to archive that work. At the same tim

I completely understand your frustration. It's a dick move to delete your content without (at least) giving you a chance to archive that work. At the same time this situation points up an important issue: if you don't own/control the infrastructure where your data lives, you don't own that data. Full stop. If you host your data "in the cloud" (i.e., on someone else's servers) then you don't own that data, or at least not any copies stored there). I'm not advocating for any specific action/solution in this comment (see my comment history for more about centralization vs. decentralization and "the cloud"), but the above is an important consideration, especially WRT long-term storage of your data.

kaushikc 4y ago
It's simple! Maintain the control and the capability to retrieve your important data at all times. The internet is a wild place and everything you don't save could potentially be gone forever.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >It's simple! Maintain the control and the capability to retrieve your important data at all times. An excellent point, but I'd go further and say that one should maintain multiple copies of important data, with at least one of those on hardware/infrastructure you control and have physical access to.
ben0x539 4y ago
> At the same time this situation points up an important issue: if you don't own/control the infrastructure where your data lives, you don't own that data. Full stop. We've known about this for many years!! And yet we for many varied reasons choose to make use of services anyway!! That doesn't mean we shouldn't get to complain about those services and giving people shit for that is really weird!!
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >We've known about this for many years!! And yet we for many varied reasons choose to make use of services anyway!! That doesn't mean we shouldn't get to complain about those services and giving people shit for that is really weird!! I don't disagree at all. I just find it a little surprising that on a site where "not your keys, not your coins" is accepted wisdom, that "not your storage, not your data" isn't as well accepted. That said, I am biased and have an agenda: 1. The centralization of network resources is a recipe for disaster; 2. There are many factors which have pushed us toward more centralization, and most of those factors (asymmetric bandwidth on consumer internet links, abusive terms of service, e.g., port blocking/traffic throttling, crappy consumer networking gear, etc., etc., etc) rarely get addressed; 3. The issues in (2) create perverse incentives for commercial entities to further abuse their "customers" (for "free" services that should read "product"); 4. Those perverse incentives have morphed outside of paid and "free" SaaS and subscription tech services, encouraging manufacturers of all manner of products (cars, appliances, computers, communication devices and a raft of other products to employ these abusive, rent-seeking tactics as well; 5. Resolving the issues detailed in (2) (as well as those not detailed) could enable both libre and commercial self-hosting products to become a viable, profitable industry, both for products and support services. Thus enabling us (broadly, humans who use the global internet) to actually own and control our data, PII and privacy; 6. Solutions are plentiful, but the perverse incentives cut across the entire OSI stack and beyond, making the reversal of such incentives complex and difficult, especially because the hoi polloi either don't know or have been convinced that they shouldn't care about ownership (of physical products like phones, cars and appliances) of their data and PII. I don't have a comprehensive set of solutions, but creating competition (municipal last-mile broadband, interoperability requirements, etc.) and providing consumers with the tools they need to decide for themselves (symmetric bandwidth on internet links, "dumb" internet pipes, non-abusive TOS, etc.) how they should host/manage/control their data and possessions will be important steps forward in reversing such incentives. I rant about this every so often (this being my latest offering), and while it's not specific to Github or how their TOS treats various data storage offerings (repos), it's absolutely an example of how these perverse incentives harm and abuse consumers. In my view, that's wrong. Edit: Clarified my prose.
- layer8 4y ago
  This is an endless rabbit hole though, unless and until, I guess, this gets regulated into a law that makes cloud service providers accountable for the data stored under the user accounts they provide, or something along those lines. Until then, you can (rightfully!) complain about one thing, but then the next feature of the next service you use may again have similar issues.
hgsgm 4y ago
OP specifically asked GitHub to keep the code private! It's silly to be upset about that, after refusing to make any backups or distribute any copies of this "publicly licensed" software.

kaushikc 4y ago

It's simple! Maintain the control and the capability to retrieve your important data at all times. The internet is a wild place and everything you don't save could potentially be gone forever.

nobody9999 4y ago
>It's simple! Maintain the control and the capability to retrieve your important data at all times. An excellent point, but I'd go further and say that one should maintain multiple copies of important data, with at least one of those on hardware/infrastructure you control and have physical access to.

ben0x539 4y ago

> At the same time this situation points up an important issue: if you don't own/control the infrastructure where your data lives, you don't own that data. Full stop. We've known about this for many years!! And yet we for many varied reasons choose to make use of services anyway!! That doesn't mean we shouldn't get to complain about those services and giving people shit for that is really weird!!

nobody9999 4y ago
>We've known about this for many years!! And yet we for many varied reasons choose to make use of services anyway!! That doesn't mean we shouldn't get to complain about those services and giving people shit for that is really weird!! I don't disagree at all. I just find it a little surprising that on a site where "not your keys, not your coins" is accepted wisdom, that "not your storage, not your data" isn't as well accepted. That said, I am biased and have an agenda: 1. The centralization of network resources is a recipe for disaster; 2. There are many factors which have pushed us toward more centralization, and most of those factors (asymmetric bandwidth on consumer internet links, abusive terms of service, e.g., port blocking/traffic throttling, crappy consumer networking gear, etc., etc., etc) rarely get addressed; 3. The issues in (2) create perverse incentives for commercial entities to further abuse their "customers" (for "free" services that should read "product"); 4. Those perverse incentives have morphed outside of paid and "free" SaaS and subscription tech services, encouraging manufacturers of all manner of products (cars, appliances, computers, communication devices and a raft of other products to employ these abusive, rent-seeking tactics as well; 5. Resolving the issues detailed in (2) (as well as those not detailed) could enable both libre and commercial self-hosting products to become a viable, profitable industry, both for products and support services. Thus enabling us (broadly, humans who use the global internet) to actually own and control our data, PII and privacy; 6. Solutions are plentiful, but the perverse incentives cut across the entire OSI stack and beyond, making the reversal of such incentives complex and difficult, especially because the hoi polloi either don't know or have been convinced that they shouldn't care about ownership (of physical products like phones, cars and appliances) of their data and PII. I don't have a comprehensive set of solutions, but creating competition (municipal last-mile broadband, interoperability requirements, etc.) and providing consumers with the tools they need to decide for themselves (symmetric bandwidth on internet links, "dumb" internet pipes, non-abusive TOS, etc.) how they should host/manage/control their data and possessions will be important steps forward in reversing such incentives. I rant about this every so often (this being my latest offering), and while it's not specific to Github or how their TOS treats various data storage offerings (repos), it's absolutely an example of how these perverse incentives harm and abuse consumers. In my view, that's wrong. Edit: Clarified my prose.
layer8 4y ago
This is an endless rabbit hole though, unless and until, I guess, this gets regulated into a law that makes cloud service providers accountable for the data stored under the user accounts they provide, or something along those lines. Until then, you can (rightfully!) complain about one thing, but then the next feature of the next service you use may again have similar issues.

hgsgm 4y ago

OP specifically asked GitHub to keep the code private! It's silly to be upset about that, after refusing to make any backups or distribute any copies of this "publicly licensed" software.