4 ms·

More and more projects are moving to Codeberg, and I'm wondering; at what point will a critical mass be reached? Or will we end up with a fragmented ecosystem?

Zardoz84 11mo ago
I prefer a pletora of code hosting sites, that one massive hub controlled by a single one. We can see how bad is when there is a monopoly or cuasi-monopoly.
pan69 11mo ago
> fragmented ecosystem This sounds a bit like an oxymoron. More diversity will only help the ecosystem IMHO.
xeonmc 11mo ago
You say fragmented I say decentralized.
- IshKebab 11mo ago
  I say "I'm not making yet another account to report this bug". Tangled is trying to solve that problem but we'll see.
  - phoronixrly 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - hinkley 11mo ago
      So how many bugs did you file on sourceforge when GitHub hadn’t quite killed it off?
      - phoronixrly 11mo ago
        Maybe I wasn't quite clear. As an open-source author, bug reports are what makes open-source feel like a job. This is because Github has created a sense of entitlement that an open-source project is supposed to take bug reports. That its authors are its 'maintainers' and are expected to fix them. No. You are the person with an issue. You have all the means to fix the issue -- the source code has been shared with you. Now go ahead and fix your bug yourself. Then share the source code with your users as per its license. Notice how I don't even care much for 'pull requests'. Another detrimental notion started with Github -- that the authors of an open-source project are expected to review change requests and merge them. Guy, open-source licenses do not require you to share the derived code with upstream. They require you to share it with your users. I, as the original author, mostly don't care as the original code I wrote works for me. Yes, sending fixes back upstream is a courtesy and a way to thank the original authors. However it is neither required, nor one must expect that the fixes will be accepted or even looked at at all.
      - cyberax 11mo ago
        I used to submit quite a few back in the day. How many projects are still actively maintained on Sourceforge? The last time I needed to go there was to get the GPC (General Polygon Clipper) library with the last modification in 2014.
    - crimsoneer 11mo ago
      Wait, how is Tangled VC controlled? As far as I Know, it's actually decentralised properly on atproto, with barely any bluesky dependencies?
      - phoronixrly 11mo ago
        Is it not backed by a registered in Finland limited liability company? Haven't they acquired pre-seed funding by Antler, a VC company?
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fsflover 11mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730417
  - myaccountonhn 11mo ago
    That's the beauty of email-based approaches. You can just clone, do your changes and `git send-email`. Done. I think it would've been far easier to build a decent GUI around that flow, with some email integration + a patch preview tool, rather than adding activitypub, but oh well.
    - boomlinde 11mo ago
      > I think it would've been far easier to build a decent GUI around that flow, with some email integration + a patch preview tool, rather than adding activitypub, but oh well. Check out Sourcehut (https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/). It uses a mailing list-based workflow so contributing code or bug reports is relatively effortless and doesn't require a Sourcehut account.
    - IshKebab 11mo ago
      Email-based approaches have far more issues than just needing to create an account. I would much rather have to create another account than deal with git send-email ever again. It's awful.
    - PunchyHamster 11mo ago
      doesn't need full fledged activitypub, just a common place to login might just do it federated way of "here is my domain, here is DNS entry pointing to my identity server to talk with", that way it isn't even tied to single identity service, but a given user will need to use only single login for all of the servers.
  - some_furry 11mo ago
    I literally logged into codeberg using my GitHub account. It's two clicks of the mouse to do this.
    - IshKebab 11mo ago
      Yeah that's good for Codeberg, but most sites haven't set things up to be so seamless. And how many clicks of the mouse was it to set up your SSH key?
sdqali 11mo ago
The D in DVCS working as expected.
hinkley 11mo ago
Oh no, our decentralized VCS will be… decentralized! Seriously though the big problem to solve will be squatters, when there are three logical places for a module to be hosted. That could create issues if you want to migrate. I would rather have this happening after a contender to git has surfaced. Something for instance with more project tracking built in so migration were simpler.
- messe 11mo ago
  > Seriously though the big problem to solve will be squatters, when there are three logical places for a module to be hosted I suspect Codeberg, which is focused on free software, will frown on them. They already disallow mirroring.
  - maccard 11mo ago
    > They already disallow mirroring. In which direction? (I'd check myself but they're down...). That doesn't sound very open to me.
    - messe 11mo ago
      I was slightly wrong. You can manually mirror things, but they have removed a feature that allowed one to automatically mirror repositories hosted elsewhere. It was originally intended as an ease of migration tool, but ended up consuming too many resources. From their FAQ: > Why can't I mirror repositories from other code-hosting websites? > Mirrors that pull content from other code hosting services were problematic for Codeberg. They ended up consuming a vast amount of resources (traffic, disk space) over time, as users that were experimenting with Codeberg would not delete those mirrors when leaving. > A detailed explanation can be found in this blog post.[1] [1]: https://blog.codeberg.org/mirror-repos-easily-created-consuming-resources-forever.html https://blog.codeberg.org/mirror-repos-easily-created-consum...
      - maccard 11mo ago
        Ah, thanks. That’s a very sensible take from them!
JoshTriplett 11mo ago
Hopefully one of the efforts to build distributed pull requests will take off, so that all the forges other than github can band together and interoperate.
- seg_lol 11mo ago
  That would be the single best thing that they could do, it would make moving off of github a gain in capabilities.
flohofwoe 11mo ago
All those different 'git forges' use git as version control system and the same issue and PR workflows. There is no fragmentation, unless you consider one git url being different from another git url 'fragmentation' ;)
irusensei 11mo ago
Git itself comes out as a very decentralized tool to me.

Zardoz84 11mo ago

I prefer a pletora of code hosting sites, that one massive hub controlled by a single one. We can see how bad is when there is a monopoly or cuasi-monopoly.

pan69 11mo ago

> fragmented ecosystem This sounds a bit like an oxymoron. More diversity will only help the ecosystem IMHO.

xeonmc 11mo ago

You say fragmented I say decentralized.

IshKebab 11mo ago
I say "I'm not making yet another account to report this bug". Tangled is trying to solve that problem but we'll see.
- phoronixrly 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - hinkley 11mo ago
    So how many bugs did you file on sourceforge when GitHub hadn’t quite killed it off?
    - phoronixrly 11mo ago
      Maybe I wasn't quite clear. As an open-source author, bug reports are what makes open-source feel like a job. This is because Github has created a sense of entitlement that an open-source project is supposed to take bug reports. That its authors are its 'maintainers' and are expected to fix them. No. You are the person with an issue. You have all the means to fix the issue -- the source code has been shared with you. Now go ahead and fix your bug yourself. Then share the source code with your users as per its license. Notice how I don't even care much for 'pull requests'. Another detrimental notion started with Github -- that the authors of an open-source project are expected to review change requests and merge them. Guy, open-source licenses do not require you to share the derived code with upstream. They require you to share it with your users. I, as the original author, mostly don't care as the original code I wrote works for me. Yes, sending fixes back upstream is a courtesy and a way to thank the original authors. However it is neither required, nor one must expect that the fixes will be accepted or even looked at at all.
    - cyberax 11mo ago
      I used to submit quite a few back in the day. How many projects are still actively maintained on Sourceforge? The last time I needed to go there was to get the GPC (General Polygon Clipper) library with the last modification in 2014.
  - crimsoneer 11mo ago
    Wait, how is Tangled VC controlled? As far as I Know, it's actually decentralised properly on atproto, with barely any bluesky dependencies?
    - phoronixrly 11mo ago
      Is it not backed by a registered in Finland limited liability company? Haven't they acquired pre-seed funding by Antler, a VC company?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- fsflover 11mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730417
- myaccountonhn 11mo ago
  That's the beauty of email-based approaches. You can just clone, do your changes and `git send-email`. Done. I think it would've been far easier to build a decent GUI around that flow, with some email integration + a patch preview tool, rather than adding activitypub, but oh well.
  - boomlinde 11mo ago
    > I think it would've been far easier to build a decent GUI around that flow, with some email integration + a patch preview tool, rather than adding activitypub, but oh well. Check out Sourcehut (https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/). It uses a mailing list-based workflow so contributing code or bug reports is relatively effortless and doesn't require a Sourcehut account.
  - IshKebab 11mo ago
    Email-based approaches have far more issues than just needing to create an account. I would much rather have to create another account than deal with git send-email ever again. It's awful.
  - PunchyHamster 11mo ago
    doesn't need full fledged activitypub, just a common place to login might just do it federated way of "here is my domain, here is DNS entry pointing to my identity server to talk with", that way it isn't even tied to single identity service, but a given user will need to use only single login for all of the servers.
- some_furry 11mo ago
  I literally logged into codeberg using my GitHub account. It's two clicks of the mouse to do this.
  - IshKebab 11mo ago
    Yeah that's good for Codeberg, but most sites haven't set things up to be so seamless. And how many clicks of the mouse was it to set up your SSH key?

sdqali 11mo ago

The D in DVCS working as expected.

hinkley 11mo ago

Oh no, our decentralized VCS will be… decentralized! Seriously though the big problem to solve will be squatters, when there are three logical places for a module to be hosted. That could create issues if you want to migrate. I would rather have this happening after a contender to git has surfaced. Something for instance with more project tracking built in so migration were simpler.

messe 11mo ago
> Seriously though the big problem to solve will be squatters, when there are three logical places for a module to be hosted I suspect Codeberg, which is focused on free software, will frown on them. They already disallow mirroring.
- maccard 11mo ago
  > They already disallow mirroring. In which direction? (I'd check myself but they're down...). That doesn't sound very open to me.
  - messe 11mo ago
    I was slightly wrong. You can manually mirror things, but they have removed a feature that allowed one to automatically mirror repositories hosted elsewhere. It was originally intended as an ease of migration tool, but ended up consuming too many resources. From their FAQ: > Why can't I mirror repositories from other code-hosting websites? > Mirrors that pull content from other code hosting services were problematic for Codeberg. They ended up consuming a vast amount of resources (traffic, disk space) over time, as users that were experimenting with Codeberg would not delete those mirrors when leaving. > A detailed explanation can be found in this blog post.[1] [1]: https://blog.codeberg.org/mirror-repos-easily-created-consuming-resources-forever.html https://blog.codeberg.org/mirror-repos-easily-created-consum...
    - maccard 11mo ago
      Ah, thanks. That’s a very sensible take from them!

JoshTriplett 11mo ago

Hopefully one of the efforts to build distributed pull requests will take off, so that all the forges other than github can band together and interoperate.

seg_lol 11mo ago
That would be the single best thing that they could do, it would make moving off of github a gain in capabilities.

flohofwoe 11mo ago

All those different 'git forges' use git as version control system and the same issue and PR workflows. There is no fragmentation, unless you consider one git url being different from another git url 'fragmentation' ;)

irusensei 11mo ago

Git itself comes out as a very decentralized tool to me.