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It's terrible that these people want alternatives to MS owning all of our infrastructure! /s When did the hatred for anything with a token turn into outright b

It's terrible that these people want alternatives to MS owning all of our infrastructure! /s When did the hatred for anything with a token turn into outright bootlicking? Do we not remember MS of the 90s?

malermeister 4y ago
Git already is decentralized as a core design principle. No reason to bring dumb crypto stuff into it.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  To be fair, he's not suggesting an alternative to git.
- Touche 4y ago
  Nostr is not crypto. The bounty is, but the tech is not.
- codetrotter 4y ago
  This is not about decentralising git itself, which is already decentralised. This is about a decentralised alternative to GitHub. All of the other parts that they have on top of the git hosting. Issues, PRs, stars, followers, everything. GitHub the social network. The thing that MS paid $$$ to buy. The reason that people centralise themselves on GitHub. That’s what we need a decentralised alternative for. So that everything everyone is doing on GitHub can be done without involvement and rule from a giant corporation and their commercial interests.
  - hellisothers 4y ago
    So that eventually it gets recentralized under something like Opensea or Coinbase?
    - leesalminen 4y ago
      Nostr does not use a blockchain, nor NFTs, nor tokens, etc. The fact that someone is offering to pay a bounty in BTC for the creation of a Github alternative using the Nostr protocol does not make Nostr, nor this Github alternative, a crypto token.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    What's wrong with self-hosted gitlab?
    - codetrotter 4y ago
      If you self-host GitLab and I come across your repo, and I want to submit an issue I’ve found with your code. I then have to go through the trouble of making a new account for me on your instance, assuming that your instance even allows me to create an account. Don’t get me wrong, self-hosted GitLab is very useful too. But it is different from the goal of replacing GitHub with a decentralised alternative. The decentralised alternative to GitHub should work such that there is no one party that decides over accounts. You should be able to float freely around the network of instances. You should be able to follow other people and star their repositories. People, and code, should exist independently of the individual instances in the network. Any instance could ban you, and any instance could ban some of the people you follow or repositories you are following. But the network as a whole can still allow you to continue to follow others and others to follow you. Your identity is not tied to the instance. Your repositories are not tied to the instance. If one instance bans you, you can access the same network with the same identity from another instance. And others can still find you with that same identity over the network.
      - zmnd 4y ago
        How much time account creation realistically takes? How does that compare to the actual PR creation time? You will need to spend significantly more time on writing code, debugging, testing, creating PR that follows all the guidelines, potentially signing legal docs etc. If you can’t spend 15s on creating a new account I’m not sure I would be interested in accepting such PR.
        mhluongo 4y ago
        If hosted Gitlab is so easy for contribution, why is the larger social graph on GitHub?
- adolph 4y ago
  Hmmm, “dumb crypto stuff” you say? At a high level, a git commit hash is a SHA1 hash of the state of the git repository at the time of the commit. https://medium.com/@jonathan_finch/git-commit-hash-number-theory-770f67ec492d https://medium.com/@jonathan_finch/git-commit-hash-number-th...
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > Git already is decentralized as a core design principle. No reason to bring dumb crypto stuff into it. You do realize that github != git, right?
Ensorceled 4y ago
> When did the hatred for anything with a token turn into outright bootlicking? Do we not remember MS of the 90s? When the "thing" that is going to replace "MS of the 90s" is actually a grift with the intent of propping up another grift; how is it bootlicking to be incredulous?
- mmastrac 4y ago
  I'm so tired of this constant crypto grift. I just hope one day we finally get back to building things of utility. If you want to build an alternative to GitHub, sure, but keep the tuplip bulb fake money out of it.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    The only thing we can do is to continuously ostracize the hucksters. Make them understand they're not welcome in polite society. This site has been getting a lot better at that, but it's all of our duty to give pushback wherever we can.
    - leesalminen 4y ago
      Except in this case, the proposed project doesn't use a crypto token, nft, or blockchain. It's just the bounty is denominated in BTC instead of USD. You could say that this dissuades many talented developers from taking on the bounty, which is true, sure. That doesn't make it a crypto project.
  - LightHugger 4y ago
    Nostr isn't crypto, what are you talking about? Are you just unhappy btc is being used as the reward? It's not a grift to use a currency as a currency. That's the actually worthwhile purpose, you being able to send money to people without messing with payment processors who are themselves grifts.
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
GitHub is only as strong as people want it to be. GitLab is their most important competitor with one important advantage: they offer an open source version whereas GitHub is totally closed (maybe their runners are open, I don't know). Which is paradoxical when you think of it. For smaller projects you have Gitea which is ultralight and works perfectly if you don't need CI/CD.
acdha 4y ago
Scams won’t solve problems, but they can distract from real solutions. Git is a fully decentralized protocol and there are multiple GitHub alternatives which are reasonably good so the first question should be why most users actively want to centralize onto GitHub. This is driven by a desire to boost cryptocurrency which is understandable given that investors are realizing how little value has been created with all of the billions spent, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sound or even coherent idea. For example, what is “permissionless” other than a marketing slogan when you’re talking about a real decentralized protocol which has been that way since its beginning 17 years ago?
- Touche 4y ago
  Nostr is not crypto. It doesn't use crypto or blockchains in any way. Crypto is the reward for the bounty.
  - acdha 4y ago
    No, but I’ve only ever heard it promoted by cryptocurrency people and it shares the wooly thinking about privacy, censorship, etc. common in that space. In this case, you can see that both from the bitcoin people pushing the idea and their signature tendency to push complicated technology as the solution to a social dynamic.
    - Touche 4y ago
      Regardless of who likes the idea, nostr becoming successful would do nothing to boost cryptocurrency.
    - mhluongo 4y ago
      Wooly thinking begets wooly thinking, I see. Even if you hate all cryptocurrencies and financial use cases, the space has spurred a ton of new and interesting applied research. Ignoring eg BLS signatures and multiparty computation because of affinity with cryptocurrency isn't rational.
      - 4y ago

malermeister 4y ago

Git already is decentralized as a core design principle. No reason to bring dumb crypto stuff into it.

nkozyra 4y ago
To be fair, he's not suggesting an alternative to git.
Touche 4y ago
Nostr is not crypto. The bounty is, but the tech is not.
codetrotter 4y ago
This is not about decentralising git itself, which is already decentralised. This is about a decentralised alternative to GitHub. All of the other parts that they have on top of the git hosting. Issues, PRs, stars, followers, everything. GitHub the social network. The thing that MS paid $$$ to buy. The reason that people centralise themselves on GitHub. That’s what we need a decentralised alternative for. So that everything everyone is doing on GitHub can be done without involvement and rule from a giant corporation and their commercial interests.
- hellisothers 4y ago
  So that eventually it gets recentralized under something like Opensea or Coinbase?
  - leesalminen 4y ago
    Nostr does not use a blockchain, nor NFTs, nor tokens, etc. The fact that someone is offering to pay a bounty in BTC for the creation of a Github alternative using the Nostr protocol does not make Nostr, nor this Github alternative, a crypto token.
- malermeister 4y ago
  What's wrong with self-hosted gitlab?
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    If you self-host GitLab and I come across your repo, and I want to submit an issue I’ve found with your code. I then have to go through the trouble of making a new account for me on your instance, assuming that your instance even allows me to create an account. Don’t get me wrong, self-hosted GitLab is very useful too. But it is different from the goal of replacing GitHub with a decentralised alternative. The decentralised alternative to GitHub should work such that there is no one party that decides over accounts. You should be able to float freely around the network of instances. You should be able to follow other people and star their repositories. People, and code, should exist independently of the individual instances in the network. Any instance could ban you, and any instance could ban some of the people you follow or repositories you are following. But the network as a whole can still allow you to continue to follow others and others to follow you. Your identity is not tied to the instance. Your repositories are not tied to the instance. If one instance bans you, you can access the same network with the same identity from another instance. And others can still find you with that same identity over the network.
    - zmnd 4y ago
      How much time account creation realistically takes? How does that compare to the actual PR creation time? You will need to spend significantly more time on writing code, debugging, testing, creating PR that follows all the guidelines, potentially signing legal docs etc. If you can’t spend 15s on creating a new account I’m not sure I would be interested in accepting such PR.
      - mhluongo 4y ago
        If hosted Gitlab is so easy for contribution, why is the larger social graph on GitHub?
adolph 4y ago
Hmmm, “dumb crypto stuff” you say? At a high level, a git commit hash is a SHA1 hash of the state of the git repository at the time of the commit. https://medium.com/@jonathan_finch/git-commit-hash-number-theory-770f67ec492d https://medium.com/@jonathan_finch/git-commit-hash-number-th...
ekianjo 4y ago
> Git already is decentralized as a core design principle. No reason to bring dumb crypto stuff into it. You do realize that github != git, right?

Ensorceled 4y ago

> When did the hatred for anything with a token turn into outright bootlicking? Do we not remember MS of the 90s? When the "thing" that is going to replace "MS of the 90s" is actually a grift with the intent of propping up another grift; how is it bootlicking to be incredulous?

mmastrac 4y ago
I'm so tired of this constant crypto grift. I just hope one day we finally get back to building things of utility. If you want to build an alternative to GitHub, sure, but keep the tuplip bulb fake money out of it.
- malermeister 4y ago
  The only thing we can do is to continuously ostracize the hucksters. Make them understand they're not welcome in polite society. This site has been getting a lot better at that, but it's all of our duty to give pushback wherever we can.
  - leesalminen 4y ago
    Except in this case, the proposed project doesn't use a crypto token, nft, or blockchain. It's just the bounty is denominated in BTC instead of USD. You could say that this dissuades many talented developers from taking on the bounty, which is true, sure. That doesn't make it a crypto project.
- LightHugger 4y ago
  Nostr isn't crypto, what are you talking about? Are you just unhappy btc is being used as the reward? It's not a grift to use a currency as a currency. That's the actually worthwhile purpose, you being able to send money to people without messing with payment processors who are themselves grifts.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

GitHub is only as strong as people want it to be. GitLab is their most important competitor with one important advantage: they offer an open source version whereas GitHub is totally closed (maybe their runners are open, I don't know). Which is paradoxical when you think of it. For smaller projects you have Gitea which is ultralight and works perfectly if you don't need CI/CD.

acdha 4y ago

Scams won’t solve problems, but they can distract from real solutions. Git is a fully decentralized protocol and there are multiple GitHub alternatives which are reasonably good so the first question should be why most users actively want to centralize onto GitHub. This is driven by a desire to boost cryptocurrency which is understandable given that investors are realizing how little value has been created with all of the billions spent, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sound or even coherent idea. For example, what is “permissionless” other than a marketing slogan when you’re talking about a real decentralized protocol which has been that way since its beginning 17 years ago?

Touche 4y ago
Nostr is not crypto. It doesn't use crypto or blockchains in any way. Crypto is the reward for the bounty.
- acdha 4y ago
  No, but I’ve only ever heard it promoted by cryptocurrency people and it shares the wooly thinking about privacy, censorship, etc. common in that space. In this case, you can see that both from the bitcoin people pushing the idea and their signature tendency to push complicated technology as the solution to a social dynamic.
  - Touche 4y ago
    Regardless of who likes the idea, nostr becoming successful would do nothing to boost cryptocurrency.
  - mhluongo 4y ago
    Wooly thinking begets wooly thinking, I see. Even if you hate all cryptocurrencies and financial use cases, the space has spurred a ton of new and interesting applied research. Ignoring eg BLS signatures and multiparty computation because of affinity with cryptocurrency isn't rational.
    - 4y ago