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This sort of myopic, self-important, holier-than-thou perspective is why the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself

This sort of myopic, self-important, holier-than-thou perspective is why the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself. Whatever you think Github's most known or most useful featureset is, the fact of the matter is it dominates because they don't draw philosophical lines in the sand and exclude people as a result. It's a big tent, all are welcome, and as a result, it has near universal coverage in the industry, so there's no burden to ask users to sign up or familiarize themselves with the platform in order to contribute. Everyone already has a GH account, and a lot of the driver of that is the private repositories that they host for business. Of the people I've worked with, fewer than 10% of them have ever made a single FOSS contribution, but they all have Github accounts. I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS than the one I use for my daily work. I frankly do not care about the ethos of FOSS enough, neither do almost any developers, relative to the field, however overrepresented FOSS awareness is on HackerNews. I contribute back to open source when it's convenient - and not too expensive - to do so; making it _less_ convenient so the host can draw an arbitrary philosophical line in the sand is going to serve no purpose but to decrease contributions. FOSS maintainers need to understand that the FOSS ethical and philosophical perspective is not universal - it is, in fact, quite rare in the industry. They need to understand that contributions and use are driven by utility and convenience and economics, not morality. Sacrificing anything utility-wise or convenience-wise for philosophy is just shooting themselves in the foot.

mort96 4y ago
Wow, entitled much? Nobody owes you anything, nobody is obliged to host your code. If you want to use the same UI for your closed/work projects and your FOSS projects, you can host your own instance; Forgejo is FOSS. Codeberg seems to be focused at providing a free service to the FOSS community, _and that's okay_. You don't get to be mad at that.
- misnome 4y ago
  You do if they are advertising as an alternative - that is specifically inviting comparisons.
  - mort96 4y ago
    They advertise themselves as an alternative to GitHub for FOSS projects. Nothing wrong with that.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      The title of this HN post doesn't reflect that, Codeberg itself is clear about that though. Instead it should be "Codeberg - Fast Open Source Github Alternative for FOSS projects"
- ipaddr 4y ago
  People are entitled to reactions to ads. This is an ad.. this is one reaction. Parent will not use.. I'm guessing you won't use them over github. If 1% readership uses them I would be shocked. 99% of the people commenting won't use them. Now you are saying people can't express themselves because nothing is owed. For every ad watched a comment is owed by the watcher. That's owed.
  - mort96 4y ago
    Sir when someone on their own volition shares a service they find useful, that's not an ad. It's an ad if Codeberg is in any way involved. Do we have a reason to believe they are? Nothing in this Oblio user's page suggest any involvement with Codeberg.
staunton 4y ago
> the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself. Strongly disagree. Given how hard decentralized collaboration seems to be in general, I'm amazed at what has been achieved. Imagine the internet and associated buisnesses without open source software.
commoner 4y ago
> I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS than the one I use for my daily work. Codeberg is an instance of the FOSS forge platform Forgejo, which is a fork of Gitea. As FOSS projects, Forgejo and Gitea can be used to host any kind of software, proprietary or open source, without restriction. It is entirely possible for a person to use Forgejo/Gitea to contribute to both work projects and off-work projects, even if the work projects are proprietary. If your employer chooses to use GitHub instead of Forgejo/Gitea, nobody else is obligated to stick with GitHub to make it more convenient for you to contribute. FOSS projects may choose Codeberg for its other advantages, such as its superior privacy policy and the fact that Codeberg does not automatically resell content from its hosted repositories as a proprietary service (like GitHub does with Copilot).
- raytube 4y ago
  I don't know how deep copilot delves, and if it has access to all repos, but I am not comfortable with that. I am not even comfortable with a major player such as MS having access to intellectual gold.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  They display the code publicly for others to read. The privacy policy has no effect on companies using these repos for the next code-assist plugin
  - commoner 4y ago
    I didn't say that Codeberg's superior privacy policy had anything to do with Copilot. My sentence was listing two separate examples of reasons why a FOSS project would pick Codeberg over GitHub. The differences between Codeberg's and GitHub's approaches to privacy are obvious. From Codeberg's privacy policy:[1] > We have a minimum-collection policy. Aside from essential data required to keep the service running, we are not collecting additional user or tracking data. From GitHub's privacy policy:[2] > We allow third parties to use analytics cookies to understand how you use our websites so we can make them better. For example, cookies are used to gather information about the pages you visit and how many clicks you need to accomplish a task. We also use some analytics cookies to provide personalized advertising. > GitHub and third parties use social media cookies to show you ads and content based on your social media profiles and activity on GitHub’s websites. This ensures that the ads and content you see on our websites and on social media will better reflect your interests. This also enables third parties to develop and improve their products, which they may use on websites that are not owned or operated by GitHub. > In addition, GitHub and third parties use advertising cookies to show you new ads based on ads you've already seen. Cookies also track which ads you click or purchases you make after clicking an ad. This is done both for payment purposes and to show you ads that are more relevant to you. For example, cookies are used to detect when you click an ad and to show you ads based on your social media interests and website browsing history. [1] https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/PrivacyPolicy.md https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/PrivacyPol... [2] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-privacy-statement#our-use-of-cookies-and-tracking-technologies https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith...
xigoi 4y ago
> all are welcome Except for those who don't want their code to be used for training proprietary AI models.
- uncleDingle 4y ago
  I read the Copilot terms, they only use public repos for AI training. Private repos are not used for training. I've since privated all of my non-forked repos.
  - EFreethought 4y ago
    Copilot should be opt-in, not opt-out.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    But maybe some of us want to share our work publicly, but still not have GitHub's proprietary models trained on our code?
    - uncleDingle 4y ago
      Right I agree, there is a class action lawsuit for exactly this reason. I believe the next court date is in May.
jraph 4y ago
What if your goal is not being successful in term of absolute number of users no matter what but instead to promote something? It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. > They need to understand that contributions and use are driven by utility and convenience and economics, not morality You are wrong. GNU's whole existence is for moral reasons, and their tools are pervasive and you "typically" depend on them. It might not be everybody, even most people, but it's still a thing. > I frankly do not care about the ethos of FOSS enough You need to understand that some people do, and will promote it. > I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS And I don't like to have to use proprietary software to contribute to FOSS [1]. How do we do? Do we please you and go for GitHub, or do we work towards this goal? I personally won't optimize for convenience no matter what. Convenience is killing our planet. We actually need to take our fingers out to make the world work. We can't live forever effortless. This is the pragmatic path, actually. I'm not arguing against convenience, I'm the first to like it, but things have various aspects worth taking in account, convenience only being one of them. Not that I don't find Forgejo not convenient. Pretty much the opposite. I like its UX. [1] https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infrastructure.html https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infras...
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  >It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. We don't all agree on what makes the world better and what makes it worse. That said, I don't have a problem with this particular project. It's absolutely fine to create a git hosting solution specifically for open source as open source is itself a very big tent spanning a wide range of ideologies and groups that are otherwise hostile towards each other. It is in fact commercial closed source software that is increasingly subject to political restrictions that are justified by supposedly making the world a better place.
  - rakoo 4y ago
    You cannot remove politics from IT infrastructure. Politics is everywhere. Politics is deciding how we live together as a society; the very fact we're having this discussion is politics. It's the fable of being apolitical that is a mistake, because in doing so you are strengthening the status quo and prevent others from thinking about the situation and changing it.
toastercat 4y ago
> the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself. What are you basing this on? I use open-source tools and products everyday for work.
natrys 4y ago
You haven't explained why drawing a philosophical line is somehow "self-important" and "holier-than-thou perspective". They are targetting like minded people which is their prerogative, if that doesn't appeal to you then that's too bad. But when you say this moral stand is why they won't ever have market reach like Github, you are presuming that they even want that (maybe because of the implicit assumption that everyone do want that). But a cursory look at their landing page shows they are a non-profit and do not want market share or your "contribution" if it's not coming from right place. Your rant assumes they don't understand the economics, but clearly they do - they just don't care. But why is that shooting themselves in the foot? To be a bit more cynical, Github alternatives are a dime a dozen. It's not clear to me that their market segmentation is hurting them. It seems to me that it's the only thing that's putting them on the map, otherwise they would just be a drop in the ocean.
PicassoCTs 4y ago
Every animal is welcome in the "yourTheSausage"-stables, as long as its willing to put in free work and pulls that AI plow.
indymike 4y ago
> This sort of myopic, self-important, holier-than-thou perspective is why the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself If the goal is to share code, between just BSD Unix and Linux, open source would be incredibly successful. When you look at languages, development tools, databases and networking, a lot of FOSS has been very successful. > Github's most known or most useful featureset is, the fact of the matter is it dominates because they don't draw philosophical lines in the sand and exclude people as a result. The people who authored Codeberg have an agenda and are very direct about it. It is their property, and their right to do what they are doing... just as it is your right to vocalize you don't like it. > I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS than the one I use for my daily work. Ok. Fair enough. I think I said roughly the same thing about git back when everything was CVS and Subversion. > They need to understand that contributions and use are driven by utility and convenience and economics, not morality. I make code all day. Some of the things I make have little monetary value to me or my company but might help others. It's not about morality, its just me doing what I want to do with my time and skills. I've made friends, built companies, and got way more out of FOSS than I've ever contributed to FOSS. > Sacrificing anything utility-wise or convenience-wise for philosophy is just shooting themselves in the foot. I think you are missing a very big point. Sharing with others isn't a "philosophy" it is an economic transaction... an exchange of value.
trallnag 4y ago
Everyone is welcome at Github? Just recently Github banned a few Russian developers. Probably to comply with sanctions.
kelnos 4y ago
> FOSS maintainers need to... This is a common misconception. We don't need to do anything. We build things on our terms, and set policies how we see fit. If that increases friction so that people like you decide not to contribute, that's a shame, but that's a trade off we're willing to make. And regardless of all that, advocating for a single platform for anything (whether proprietary or open source) is just a bad idea. GitHub does have a lot of things going for it, but it's a single point of failure, run by an entity that can decide to change the terms of the service in any way it pleases. We might hope and assume they won't do anything destructive (since most destructive things would be detrimental to themselves as well), but stranger things happen. At any rate, your complaint is fairly specious: Platforms like Gitea (which Codeberg uses) and GitLab are similar enough to GitHub that the usage flow for third-party contributions is pretty similar and requires virtually no effort to learn. (In fact, Gitea and GitLab have been criticized in the past for copying GitHub too much.) Sure, if you were going to use a Gitea- or GitLab-based provider to host your own stuff, you'd have to learn quite a bit more if you were coming from GitHub. But just making a contribution isn't much of a hurdle to jump: the main hurdle is having to create yet another account, though many Gitea and GitLab instances allow you to sign in using OAuth and your GitHub credentials. It's fine that you don't feel the desire to make principled stands on things like this, but it's unfair of you to talk down so harshly on those of us who do. I'm sure you have some causes that are important to you that I don't share, but I wouldn't criticize you for those, or for how you decide to spend your spare time.
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
[dead]

mort96 4y ago

Wow, entitled much? Nobody owes you anything, nobody is obliged to host your code. If you want to use the same UI for your closed/work projects and your FOSS projects, you can host your own instance; Forgejo is FOSS. Codeberg seems to be focused at providing a free service to the FOSS community, _and that's okay_. You don't get to be mad at that.

misnome 4y ago
You do if they are advertising as an alternative - that is specifically inviting comparisons.
- mort96 4y ago
  They advertise themselves as an alternative to GitHub for FOSS projects. Nothing wrong with that.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    The title of this HN post doesn't reflect that, Codeberg itself is clear about that though. Instead it should be "Codeberg - Fast Open Source Github Alternative for FOSS projects"
ipaddr 4y ago
People are entitled to reactions to ads. This is an ad.. this is one reaction. Parent will not use.. I'm guessing you won't use them over github. If 1% readership uses them I would be shocked. 99% of the people commenting won't use them. Now you are saying people can't express themselves because nothing is owed. For every ad watched a comment is owed by the watcher. That's owed.
- mort96 4y ago
  Sir when someone on their own volition shares a service they find useful, that's not an ad. It's an ad if Codeberg is in any way involved. Do we have a reason to believe they are? Nothing in this Oblio user's page suggest any involvement with Codeberg.

staunton 4y ago

> the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself. Strongly disagree. Given how hard decentralized collaboration seems to be in general, I'm amazed at what has been achieved. Imagine the internet and associated buisnesses without open source software.

commoner 4y ago

> I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS than the one I use for my daily work. Codeberg is an instance of the FOSS forge platform Forgejo, which is a fork of Gitea. As FOSS projects, Forgejo and Gitea can be used to host any kind of software, proprietary or open source, without restriction. It is entirely possible for a person to use Forgejo/Gitea to contribute to both work projects and off-work projects, even if the work projects are proprietary. If your employer chooses to use GitHub instead of Forgejo/Gitea, nobody else is obligated to stick with GitHub to make it more convenient for you to contribute. FOSS projects may choose Codeberg for its other advantages, such as its superior privacy policy and the fact that Codeberg does not automatically resell content from its hosted repositories as a proprietary service (like GitHub does with Copilot).

raytube 4y ago
I don't know how deep copilot delves, and if it has access to all repos, but I am not comfortable with that. I am not even comfortable with a major player such as MS having access to intellectual gold.
ipaddr 4y ago
They display the code publicly for others to read. The privacy policy has no effect on companies using these repos for the next code-assist plugin
- commoner 4y ago
  I didn't say that Codeberg's superior privacy policy had anything to do with Copilot. My sentence was listing two separate examples of reasons why a FOSS project would pick Codeberg over GitHub. The differences between Codeberg's and GitHub's approaches to privacy are obvious. From Codeberg's privacy policy:[1] > We have a minimum-collection policy. Aside from essential data required to keep the service running, we are not collecting additional user or tracking data. From GitHub's privacy policy:[2] > We allow third parties to use analytics cookies to understand how you use our websites so we can make them better. For example, cookies are used to gather information about the pages you visit and how many clicks you need to accomplish a task. We also use some analytics cookies to provide personalized advertising. > GitHub and third parties use social media cookies to show you ads and content based on your social media profiles and activity on GitHub’s websites. This ensures that the ads and content you see on our websites and on social media will better reflect your interests. This also enables third parties to develop and improve their products, which they may use on websites that are not owned or operated by GitHub. > In addition, GitHub and third parties use advertising cookies to show you new ads based on ads you've already seen. Cookies also track which ads you click or purchases you make after clicking an ad. This is done both for payment purposes and to show you ads that are more relevant to you. For example, cookies are used to detect when you click an ad and to show you ads based on your social media interests and website browsing history. [1] https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/PrivacyPolicy.md https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/PrivacyPol... [2] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-privacy-statement#our-use-of-cookies-and-tracking-technologies https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith...

xigoi 4y ago

> all are welcome Except for those who don't want their code to be used for training proprietary AI models.

uncleDingle 4y ago
I read the Copilot terms, they only use public repos for AI training. Private repos are not used for training. I've since privated all of my non-forked repos.
- EFreethought 4y ago
  Copilot should be opt-in, not opt-out.
- kelnos 4y ago
  But maybe some of us want to share our work publicly, but still not have GitHub's proprietary models trained on our code?
  - uncleDingle 4y ago
    Right I agree, there is a class action lawsuit for exactly this reason. I believe the next court date is in May.

jraph 4y ago

What if your goal is not being successful in term of absolute number of users no matter what but instead to promote something? It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. > They need to understand that contributions and use are driven by utility and convenience and economics, not morality You are wrong. GNU's whole existence is for moral reasons, and their tools are pervasive and you "typically" depend on them. It might not be everybody, even most people, but it's still a thing. > I frankly do not care about the ethos of FOSS enough You need to understand that some people do, and will promote it. > I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS And I don't like to have to use proprietary software to contribute to FOSS [1]. How do we do? Do we please you and go for GitHub, or do we work towards this goal? I personally won't optimize for convenience no matter what. Convenience is killing our planet. We actually need to take our fingers out to make the world work. We can't live forever effortless. This is the pragmatic path, actually. I'm not arguing against convenience, I'm the first to like it, but things have various aspects worth taking in account, convenience only being one of them. Not that I don't find Forgejo not convenient. Pretty much the opposite. I like its UX. [1] https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infrastructure.html https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infras...

fauigerzigerk 4y ago
>It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. We don't all agree on what makes the world better and what makes it worse. That said, I don't have a problem with this particular project. It's absolutely fine to create a git hosting solution specifically for open source as open source is itself a very big tent spanning a wide range of ideologies and groups that are otherwise hostile towards each other. It is in fact commercial closed source software that is increasingly subject to political restrictions that are justified by supposedly making the world a better place.
- rakoo 4y ago
  You cannot remove politics from IT infrastructure. Politics is everywhere. Politics is deciding how we live together as a society; the very fact we're having this discussion is politics. It's the fable of being apolitical that is a mistake, because in doing so you are strengthening the status quo and prevent others from thinking about the situation and changing it.

toastercat 4y ago

> the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself. What are you basing this on? I use open-source tools and products everyday for work.

natrys 4y ago

You haven't explained why drawing a philosophical line is somehow "self-important" and "holier-than-thou perspective". They are targetting like minded people which is their prerogative, if that doesn't appeal to you then that's too bad. But when you say this moral stand is why they won't ever have market reach like Github, you are presuming that they even want that (maybe because of the implicit assumption that everyone do want that). But a cursory look at their landing page shows they are a non-profit and do not want market share or your "contribution" if it's not coming from right place. Your rant assumes they don't understand the economics, but clearly they do - they just don't care. But why is that shooting themselves in the foot? To be a bit more cynical, Github alternatives are a dime a dozen. It's not clear to me that their market segmentation is hurting them. It seems to me that it's the only thing that's putting them on the map, otherwise they would just be a drop in the ocean.

PicassoCTs 4y ago

Every animal is welcome in the "yourTheSausage"-stables, as long as its willing to put in free work and pulls that AI plow.

indymike 4y ago

> This sort of myopic, self-important, holier-than-thou perspective is why the open source community is so rarely successful in anything it tries to do for itself If the goal is to share code, between just BSD Unix and Linux, open source would be incredibly successful. When you look at languages, development tools, databases and networking, a lot of FOSS has been very successful. > Github's most known or most useful featureset is, the fact of the matter is it dominates because they don't draw philosophical lines in the sand and exclude people as a result. The people who authored Codeberg have an agenda and are very direct about it. It is their property, and their right to do what they are doing... just as it is your right to vocalize you don't like it. > I don't want to learn a different UI for contributing to FOSS than the one I use for my daily work. Ok. Fair enough. I think I said roughly the same thing about git back when everything was CVS and Subversion. > They need to understand that contributions and use are driven by utility and convenience and economics, not morality. I make code all day. Some of the things I make have little monetary value to me or my company but might help others. It's not about morality, its just me doing what I want to do with my time and skills. I've made friends, built companies, and got way more out of FOSS than I've ever contributed to FOSS. > Sacrificing anything utility-wise or convenience-wise for philosophy is just shooting themselves in the foot. I think you are missing a very big point. Sharing with others isn't a "philosophy" it is an economic transaction... an exchange of value.

trallnag 4y ago

Everyone is welcome at Github? Just recently Github banned a few Russian developers. Probably to comply with sanctions.

kelnos 4y ago

> FOSS maintainers need to... This is a common misconception. We don't need to do anything. We build things on our terms, and set policies how we see fit. If that increases friction so that people like you decide not to contribute, that's a shame, but that's a trade off we're willing to make. And regardless of all that, advocating for a single platform for anything (whether proprietary or open source) is just a bad idea. GitHub does have a lot of things going for it, but it's a single point of failure, run by an entity that can decide to change the terms of the service in any way it pleases. We might hope and assume they won't do anything destructive (since most destructive things would be detrimental to themselves as well), but stranger things happen. At any rate, your complaint is fairly specious: Platforms like Gitea (which Codeberg uses) and GitLab are similar enough to GitHub that the usage flow for third-party contributions is pretty similar and requires virtually no effort to learn. (In fact, Gitea and GitLab have been criticized in the past for copying GitHub too much.) Sure, if you were going to use a Gitea- or GitLab-based provider to host your own stuff, you'd have to learn quite a bit more if you were coming from GitHub. But just making a contribution isn't much of a hurdle to jump: the main hurdle is having to create yet another account, though many Gitea and GitLab instances allow you to sign in using OAuth and your GitHub credentials. It's fine that you don't feel the desire to make principled stands on things like this, but it's unfair of you to talk down so harshly on those of us who do. I'm sure you have some causes that are important to you that I don't share, but I wouldn't criticize you for those, or for how you decide to spend your spare time.

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

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