9 ms·

people could not be more clear that their preference is for reliable and easy-to-use centralized services maintained by professionals, and not decentralized sys

by sixo 2y ago

people could not be more clear that their preference is for reliable and easy-to-use centralized services maintained by professionals, and not decentralized systems that require a great deal of user expertise

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ajross 2y ago
Ironically github is sort of the exception that proves the rule: decentralized in the one way that really matters (decoupled development on individual systems), but centralized for easy interaction in the way the market demands.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Similar thing that happens with crypto exchanges, also swift transfers and federal states for that matter.
  - eru 2y ago
    Yes, subsidiarity is a great principle.. in-principle, but in practice it often gets the curb. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity So far, having individual small countries seems to keep the centralisation at bay for longer than just having states in a federation. (Look at Germany, Austria, Australia, the USA for examples of the latter. Interestingly, the UK is legally not made of federal states, but in practice they have granted more autonomy to eg Scotland over the years. And everyone knows that Scotland would secede and get away with it, if there was a power grab by London. In that sense, they are more federal than the US, where secession is very much verboten.)
- nine_k 2y ago
  But it demands both. The ability to develop in a parallel, decentralized way, and the ability to integrate things at a central point, an authoritative source and a blessed official destination. It's similar to how databases allow to begin parallel, concurrent, even contradictory transactions, and also guarantee serialized, consistent database state, and rejection of invalid updates, at commit time. Both aspects are utterly important.
cyanydeez 2y ago
Thats mostly because of herdmentality not because of a considered approach. Decentralization assumes the majority are anti social.
- zuppy 2y ago
  what a convoluted way to say you do not agree with this. when you are dealing with people of all skill levels, every step that you put on the development process costs real money. over that, not everything is and has to be open source. we all have source code that is proprietary and has a value for us as it is. making that decentralized and private is not something easy to achieve (and I don't really see a benefit). the problem from my point of view is that we have a single player (github) that managed to attract a huge percent of the market and the competition, while it exists, it's minor.
  - cyanydeez 2y ago
    ...ironic
- theultdev 2y ago
  How so? Decentralization can be hidden from the user, it's an implementation detail. There's literally a popular decentralized social network. It's less about the tech, and more about the execution. Historically we can look at LimeWire or PopcornTime as an example. Both decentralized, both popular due to the ease-of-use.
  - p-e-w 2y ago
    > There's literally a popular decentralized social network. No there isn't. Not a single one. There are a few federated social networks, which is a fancy way of saying that they are centralized networks that have (or can have, in principle) more than one "center". In practice, the overwhelming majority of users of such networks gravitate towards one or a handful of large providers. And many of those providers actually refuse to federate with other providers unless they follow an ever-growing list of politically-charged rules. This is just centralization with extra steps.
eru 2y ago
I actually don't care whether it's centralised or decentralised, or who's managing it. But you are right that I want reliable and easy-to-use services. And centralisation is often one way to go there. As an interesting counterpoint: Git itself is decentralised and replaced centralised services like Subversion. And that made git easier to use, especially easier to get started with: no need for a server, no need to be online, just do `git init` in any old directory. A GitHub-clone could be more decentralised, but they'd need to use that decentralisation to drive those other features that people actually care about day to day.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rad_gruchalski 2y ago
  > no need for a server, no need to be online, just do `git init` in any old directory svn doesn’t require a server and there is no need to be online. It works perfectly fine over the file:// protocol.
  - eru 2y ago
    Interesting. Was that always the case? I remember it being quite a hassle to set up (following tutorials online), but that was about 15 to 20 years ago or so.
- ascar 2y ago
  And a `git remote add name url` and you are setup to use another remote server.
  - umvi 2y ago
    Only if your repo doesn't have any other critical integrations like CI/CD, jira, etc
    - eru 2y ago
      Why? We use github and its CI/CD system, but locally I still only need to add the git remote to work with it.
dangoodmanUT 2y ago
this, especially if it's a business
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
And I'm sure they'll continue to feel that way right up until the first time they experience "the" internet from a minority partition for more than a few days. I just hope that the distributed stuff is easy enough to limp along with if/when that happens.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  No, they'll continue to feel like that even after that. GitHub being down once in a blue moon is more acceptable to the vast majority of users than having to cobble together your own nerdy distributed version of everything.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    I was imagining something a bit more disastrous than that. A big enough solar flare could take parts of the planet offline for months. Years if they can't source enough replacement transformers. There are also political reasons that countries go offline. Then it'll be up to the nerds who manage to cobble together their own distributed version of everything--even if it's a significantly reduced definition of everything.
    - arrowsmith 2y ago
      If large parts of the planet lose their digital infrastructure for months, I really don’t think that “finding a good platform to host my code” is going to be one of my biggest problems.
      - thfuran 2y ago
        Especially if the problem was due to a lack of electric grid as they're suggesting.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ajb 2y ago
There is not actually a need to choose between a single centralised monopoly and going full-on techno-prepper and running all your own services in your garage as an individual . We could have intermediate points, such as having services run by professionals but based on portable open standards.
- alkonaut 2y ago
  git is a great portable standard. But if I were GitHub, I'd make damn sure I didn't have issues, actions, and the rest of it be based on something users could just yank out in a portable format and take elsewhere though. Portable VCS is simple. Portable anything with the integration everyone expects (issues connects to source which connects to builds which connects to releases) is hard. Git being so open and portable means it isn't a moat.
flats 2y ago
this should be on a wall somewhere

by sixo 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ajross 2y ago

Ironically github is sort of the exception that proves the rule: decentralized in the one way that really matters (decoupled development on individual systems), but centralized for easy interaction in the way the market demands.

TZubiri 2y ago
Similar thing that happens with crypto exchanges, also swift transfers and federal states for that matter.
- eru 2y ago
  Yes, subsidiarity is a great principle.. in-principle, but in practice it often gets the curb. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity So far, having individual small countries seems to keep the centralisation at bay for longer than just having states in a federation. (Look at Germany, Austria, Australia, the USA for examples of the latter. Interestingly, the UK is legally not made of federal states, but in practice they have granted more autonomy to eg Scotland over the years. And everyone knows that Scotland would secede and get away with it, if there was a power grab by London. In that sense, they are more federal than the US, where secession is very much verboten.)
nine_k 2y ago
But it demands both. The ability to develop in a parallel, decentralized way, and the ability to integrate things at a central point, an authoritative source and a blessed official destination. It's similar to how databases allow to begin parallel, concurrent, even contradictory transactions, and also guarantee serialized, consistent database state, and rejection of invalid updates, at commit time. Both aspects are utterly important.

cyanydeez 2y ago

Thats mostly because of herdmentality not because of a considered approach. Decentralization assumes the majority are anti social.

zuppy 2y ago
what a convoluted way to say you do not agree with this. when you are dealing with people of all skill levels, every step that you put on the development process costs real money. over that, not everything is and has to be open source. we all have source code that is proprietary and has a value for us as it is. making that decentralized and private is not something easy to achieve (and I don't really see a benefit). the problem from my point of view is that we have a single player (github) that managed to attract a huge percent of the market and the competition, while it exists, it's minor.
- cyanydeez 2y ago
  ...ironic
theultdev 2y ago
How so? Decentralization can be hidden from the user, it's an implementation detail. There's literally a popular decentralized social network. It's less about the tech, and more about the execution. Historically we can look at LimeWire or PopcornTime as an example. Both decentralized, both popular due to the ease-of-use.
- p-e-w 2y ago
  > There's literally a popular decentralized social network. No there isn't. Not a single one. There are a few federated social networks, which is a fancy way of saying that they are centralized networks that have (or can have, in principle) more than one "center". In practice, the overwhelming majority of users of such networks gravitate towards one or a handful of large providers. And many of those providers actually refuse to federate with other providers unless they follow an ever-growing list of politically-charged rules. This is just centralization with extra steps.

eru 2y ago

I actually don't care whether it's centralised or decentralised, or who's managing it. But you are right that I want reliable and easy-to-use services. And centralisation is often one way to go there. As an interesting counterpoint: Git itself is decentralised and replaced centralised services like Subversion. And that made git easier to use, especially easier to get started with: no need for a server, no need to be online, just do `git init` in any old directory. A GitHub-clone could be more decentralised, but they'd need to use that decentralisation to drive those other features that people actually care about day to day.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rad_gruchalski 2y ago
> no need for a server, no need to be online, just do `git init` in any old directory svn doesn’t require a server and there is no need to be online. It works perfectly fine over the file:// protocol.
- eru 2y ago
  Interesting. Was that always the case? I remember it being quite a hassle to set up (following tutorials online), but that was about 15 to 20 years ago or so.
ascar 2y ago
And a `git remote add name url` and you are setup to use another remote server.
- umvi 2y ago
  Only if your repo doesn't have any other critical integrations like CI/CD, jira, etc
  - eru 2y ago
    Why? We use github and its CI/CD system, but locally I still only need to add the git remote to work with it.

dangoodmanUT 2y ago

this, especially if it's a business

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

And I'm sure they'll continue to feel that way right up until the first time they experience "the" internet from a minority partition for more than a few days. I just hope that the distributed stuff is easy enough to limp along with if/when that happens.

School-Cotton 2y ago
No, they'll continue to feel like that even after that. GitHub being down once in a blue moon is more acceptable to the vast majority of users than having to cobble together your own nerdy distributed version of everything.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I was imagining something a bit more disastrous than that. A big enough solar flare could take parts of the planet offline for months. Years if they can't source enough replacement transformers. There are also political reasons that countries go offline. Then it'll be up to the nerds who manage to cobble together their own distributed version of everything--even if it's a significantly reduced definition of everything.
  - arrowsmith 2y ago
    If large parts of the planet lose their digital infrastructure for months, I really don’t think that “finding a good platform to host my code” is going to be one of my biggest problems.
    - thfuran 2y ago
      Especially if the problem was due to a lack of electric grid as they're suggesting.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ajb 2y ago

There is not actually a need to choose between a single centralised monopoly and going full-on techno-prepper and running all your own services in your garage as an individual . We could have intermediate points, such as having services run by professionals but based on portable open standards.

alkonaut 2y ago
git is a great portable standard. But if I were GitHub, I'd make damn sure I didn't have issues, actions, and the rest of it be based on something users could just yank out in a portable format and take elsewhere though. Portable VCS is simple. Portable anything with the integration everyone expects (issues connects to source which connects to builds which connects to releases) is hard. Git being so open and portable means it isn't a moat.

flats 2y ago

this should be on a wall somewhere