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> I'm in perpetuity forced to use GitHub because open source companies and projects choose Frankly, calling this "forced" comes over to me as a selfish and ent

> I'm in perpetuity forced to use GitHub because open source companies and projects choose Frankly, calling this "forced" comes over to me as a selfish and entitled view of "freedom". Freedom is not unlimited or without conflict. Someone else's freedom to park at a spot means that you can't park there. Someone else's freedom to choose Github means that you can't choose it for them. > I want open source infrastructure for the open source world [1]. GitHub could put their actions where their mouth is and be and actually open source company. Okay. Great aspiration. But someone has to do it, and there must be sufficient political power from multiple parties to do it. Github owes you nothing. Unless you pay, in which case they owe you what is specified in the contract. The alternative is that either you build this open source infrastructure yourself, or you fund someone to do it. That seems to me like a much better use of your time than complaining that Github isn't doing it for free. There's a reason why such an open source infra that's superior to the Github ecosystem doesn't exist: because it's hard to build and it takes time and resources. Nobody owes the community this: the community has to be lucky that enough people happen to have the right scratch that they're itching for themselves.

jraph 4y ago
> That seems to me like a much better use of your time than complaining that Github isn't doing it for free Advocacy, raising issues and awareness is one of the necessary steps towards such a thing. If I'm helping build such an infra / ecosystem, I want people to use it because they think it's the right thing, not because it's technically better. Now, of course it would be nice if it is technically better and that's also necessary. I also can't be everywhere. I'm already giving my time to other stuff, including in the open source ecosystem. "Build it yourself" is not an acceptable / sufficient answer to a raised issue if you think it is legitimate. It's only a way to dismiss it if you don't care. FWIW, there are good alternatives to GitHub, like codeberg.org / forgejo. Worth checking out. There, here's my second constructive contribution toward this goal in this thread.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I've participated in the open source community for 20 years and it seems to me that many people hold an opinion out of selfish reasons. Nothing wrong per se with being selfish, but it bothers me that people dress this up as something else. Your attitude reminds me of the GPL vs BSD discussion. The philosophy behind Free Software is that all software should be Free (libre), hence the "viral" nature of GPL. But in the 2000s people started building companies based on open source technology, and many people started complaining about the GPL's "virality" as being a bad thing. They argued that this is not "truly free" because it demanded something in return, namely that your own work is also GPL-compatible. They argued that the BSD license is "truly free" but it didn't demand anything in return. Now, 15-20 years later, the Free Software philosophy has declined in popularity, and the use of GPL has declined greatly. Nearly everything uses some sort of BSD license. But what we also see is that lots of companies build proprietary technology based on BSD-like open source technology. These companies capture a lot of value without releasing that value back to the open source community under open source terms. And now we see an increasing number of people complaining about that. Guys... what did you expect? Then why did people complain so loudly about the GPL's virality? Looks like "freedom" and "virality" were just rationalizations behind more selfish thoughts: "I want the world to be like whatever benefits me most". Rather than true believers in certain principles due to philosophy, many merely support these principles for their own benefit. A lot of people are not being honest with themselves.
  - jraph 4y ago
    The GPL and copyleft licenses are not about "getting in return" and selfishness. They are tools for a strategy meant to ensure end user's rights. Now, is this strategy working? Maybe. Yes for several ecosystems actually: R, QGis, WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki… extensions are free software under GPL. De facto, or because it's a requirement. And it works, healthy businesses exist while end users enjoy the benefits of open source. There are licenses that force you to contribute your changes back to the authors, and they are considered non-free. GPL only forces you to provide the sources to your users. GitHub are the one benefiting from open source while not contributing their core business code. Who is selfish now? Let's not swap roles. GPL authors always have contributed their code. It feels bizarre to call them selfish. GitHub is not giving free space and bandwidth out of their heart. It's a business strategy. It's a call product for their Enterprise edition and also a way to control the open source community like Google controls the web using Chrome. It's convenient. Even Microsoft's competitors are tied to Microsoft products. There's no mystery why they bought GitHub and about the fact they'll keep this ecosystem closed.

jraph 4y ago

> That seems to me like a much better use of your time than complaining that Github isn't doing it for free Advocacy, raising issues and awareness is one of the necessary steps towards such a thing. If I'm helping build such an infra / ecosystem, I want people to use it because they think it's the right thing, not because it's technically better. Now, of course it would be nice if it is technically better and that's also necessary. I also can't be everywhere. I'm already giving my time to other stuff, including in the open source ecosystem. "Build it yourself" is not an acceptable / sufficient answer to a raised issue if you think it is legitimate. It's only a way to dismiss it if you don't care. FWIW, there are good alternatives to GitHub, like codeberg.org / forgejo. Worth checking out. There, here's my second constructive contribution toward this goal in this thread.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
I've participated in the open source community for 20 years and it seems to me that many people hold an opinion out of selfish reasons. Nothing wrong per se with being selfish, but it bothers me that people dress this up as something else. Your attitude reminds me of the GPL vs BSD discussion. The philosophy behind Free Software is that all software should be Free (libre), hence the "viral" nature of GPL. But in the 2000s people started building companies based on open source technology, and many people started complaining about the GPL's "virality" as being a bad thing. They argued that this is not "truly free" because it demanded something in return, namely that your own work is also GPL-compatible. They argued that the BSD license is "truly free" but it didn't demand anything in return. Now, 15-20 years later, the Free Software philosophy has declined in popularity, and the use of GPL has declined greatly. Nearly everything uses some sort of BSD license. But what we also see is that lots of companies build proprietary technology based on BSD-like open source technology. These companies capture a lot of value without releasing that value back to the open source community under open source terms. And now we see an increasing number of people complaining about that. Guys... what did you expect? Then why did people complain so loudly about the GPL's virality? Looks like "freedom" and "virality" were just rationalizations behind more selfish thoughts: "I want the world to be like whatever benefits me most". Rather than true believers in certain principles due to philosophy, many merely support these principles for their own benefit. A lot of people are not being honest with themselves.
- jraph 4y ago
  The GPL and copyleft licenses are not about "getting in return" and selfishness. They are tools for a strategy meant to ensure end user's rights. Now, is this strategy working? Maybe. Yes for several ecosystems actually: R, QGis, WordPress, Nextcloud, XWiki… extensions are free software under GPL. De facto, or because it's a requirement. And it works, healthy businesses exist while end users enjoy the benefits of open source. There are licenses that force you to contribute your changes back to the authors, and they are considered non-free. GPL only forces you to provide the sources to your users. GitHub are the one benefiting from open source while not contributing their core business code. Who is selfish now? Let's not swap roles. GPL authors always have contributed their code. It feels bizarre to call them selfish. GitHub is not giving free space and bandwidth out of their heart. It's a business strategy. It's a call product for their Enterprise edition and also a way to control the open source community like Google controls the web using Chrome. It's convenient. Even Microsoft's competitors are tied to Microsoft products. There's no mystery why they bought GitHub and about the fact they'll keep this ecosystem closed.