3 ms·

I do have a sense of unease about most smaller hosting services and self-hosting solutions, in that I don't trust them to stay up in the long term, once no one

I do have a sense of unease about most smaller hosting services and self-hosting solutions, in that I don't trust them to stay up in the long term, once no one is left to care about projects on them, or at least not about the old versions. (This isn't so big an issue for something as big as FFmpeg, but I'm talking about the general case.) Just try to download some old version of a minor library from the late 90s or early 2000s: unless it's been continuously using the same source control repo, the odds are better than not that the files disappeared during the intervening decades. In contrast, whatever its faults, I fully expect public repos on GitHub to last for the next 10 years, likely the next 20, barring active removal by the author. (The biggest medium-term risk is a "GitHub is evil, take down all your repos" campaign a la Reddit.) Of course, it's not foolproof, the only way to get that would be to replicate the project in dozens of places, but I find it much better than the old status quo of files slipping away once forgotten.

jraph 1y ago
That's a totally valid concern that I also have and that does need to be addressed. I'm thinking of setting up mirrors for my stuff for this exact reason. Now that codeberg exists, that could be the solution and why not accept contributions from codeberg too if it doesn't make the development process too messy. OTOH GitHub is a huge SPOF. I also trust that my stuff that matters is checked out by other people who will reupload somewhere else should something happen.
omnimus 1y ago
I think it is OK that repos and content in general disappear. It is healthy. If somebody is caring about hosting the thing it most likely means it is healthy project. If not you shouldn't probably be using it. This obsession with saving everything forever leads to information overload. In 20 years the github namespaces will be so full that finding good name for a project will be impossible. People often bring up social media but i think that's even worse. If you like some of photos just keep and save them yourself. I don't think it's healthy to be randomly reminded (what facebook does) about what somebody was doing 8 years ago on this day. People are unable to forget and forgive. We should allow for this to happen automatically like our memories.

jraph 1y ago

That's a totally valid concern that I also have and that does need to be addressed. I'm thinking of setting up mirrors for my stuff for this exact reason. Now that codeberg exists, that could be the solution and why not accept contributions from codeberg too if it doesn't make the development process too messy. OTOH GitHub is a huge SPOF. I also trust that my stuff that matters is checked out by other people who will reupload somewhere else should something happen.

omnimus 1y ago

I think it is OK that repos and content in general disappear. It is healthy. If somebody is caring about hosting the thing it most likely means it is healthy project. If not you shouldn't probably be using it. This obsession with saving everything forever leads to information overload. In 20 years the github namespaces will be so full that finding good name for a project will be impossible. People often bring up social media but i think that's even worse. If you like some of photos just keep and save them yourself. I don't think it's healthy to be randomly reminded (what facebook does) about what somebody was doing 8 years ago on this day. People are unable to forget and forgive. We should allow for this to happen automatically like our memories.