4 ms·

I'm increasingly thinking that the biggest competitor we have isn't other forum software (who aren't innovating), but Github. Our startup ( http://microco.sm/

by buro9 13y ago

I'm increasingly thinking that the biggest competitor we have isn't other forum software (who aren't innovating), but Github. Our startup ( http://microco.sm/ http://microco.sm/ ) is working on improving communities, which most people read as vBulletin, phpBB, Discourse... but my view is simply that if you have a group of people together around some interest (topic, locality, project) that they want to communicate, share, transact at every level. And that, the fragmented experience of going to Google Maps, Facebook Events or Eventbrite, Wikipedia, review sites, eBay, etc... just to bring the last 5% into a community... well that's frustrating and a poor user experience. Instead the first 60-80% of the functionality elsewhere should just be in the tool. Where the community already is. And we're starting with forums and going outward, in every direction (it feels). And here is github, starting with the code, and also heading outward, in every direction. I've a great deal of love for Github (as a dev, how could I not)... so I wish them well. They're solving things from a dev/work perspective, and we're aiming at consumers/users/hobbies/interests... but still, I've no doubt that we've a lot to learn from them, and when we're up to speed perhaps we can teach them a thing or two.

kondro 13y ago
Whilst I have no insider knowledge, I highly doubt GitHub has any desire to expand outside of the development community.
- jmduke 13y ago
  They already have expanded outside of the development community. https://github.com/Chicago https://github.com/Chicago
  - yellowbkpk 13y ago
    I suggested the City of Chicago use Github because it is the only place to put open data that both (a) allows contributions back to the dataset (pull requests) and (b) allows for community feedback (issues and comments). It's by no means ideal (the building footprints dataset is hidden behind a 2GB compressed JSON blob) but it's still useful and a step in the right direction. It's still aimed squarely at developers using the data, though. Asking a "normal citizen" to submit a pull request is still a pretty big ask.
asperous 13y ago
People forget this, but even though git was developed for programming version control, there isn't a lot that makes it useful strictly for programming only. Git is a powerful version control and collaboration system for any plain text (or maybe even binary) files. There's nothing special about programmers that makes it so they are the only ones that can learn about these tools and use them. With something like TortoiseGit (or Github's app) I can totally see people you would never expect start taking advantage of this. Authors, mathematicians, research agents, cartographers, government agents (all those legal documents need version control badly), lawyers, etc. As the world trusts computers with more and more of their files, they might start picking up the tools that programmers have held so dear. Why not empower them?
- derleth 13y ago
  Torvalds, in classic Unix hacker fashion, designed git to be so stupid it doesn't care what it's being used for, which goes quite a long way to making it all things to all people. Similar is how the Linux filesystem code flatly refuses to care about what encoding scheme filenames use as long as the byte 0x2F (ASCII '/') is only used to separate pathname components, the byte sequences 0x2E (".") and 0x2E 0x2E ("..") appearing alone in a component are special, and the byte 0x00 (ASCII nul) is only used to terminate the entire pathname. The kernel is so stupid it only sees byte sequences and only cares about those specific values and sequences; as a direct result, users can use any character encoding which guarantees those values will only be used for their respective purposes, and rely on easily-configurable applications to sort it out. Here's Torvalds, Viro, and Ts'o chewing out someone who thought the kernel should enforce UTF-8 file and directory names: http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/utf8.html http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/utf8.html
  - rmc 13y ago
    I thought ".." was a hardlink to the parent directory created when a directory was created? Hence the kernel doesn't actually have to treat ".." as anything special, since, due to hardlinks, "it'll all work out"?
    - 13y ago

by buro9 13y ago

kondro 13y ago

Whilst I have no insider knowledge, I highly doubt GitHub has any desire to expand outside of the development community.

jmduke 13y ago
They already have expanded outside of the development community. https://github.com/Chicago https://github.com/Chicago
- yellowbkpk 13y ago
  I suggested the City of Chicago use Github because it is the only place to put open data that both (a) allows contributions back to the dataset (pull requests) and (b) allows for community feedback (issues and comments). It's by no means ideal (the building footprints dataset is hidden behind a 2GB compressed JSON blob) but it's still useful and a step in the right direction. It's still aimed squarely at developers using the data, though. Asking a "normal citizen" to submit a pull request is still a pretty big ask.

asperous 13y ago

People forget this, but even though git was developed for programming version control, there isn't a lot that makes it useful strictly for programming only. Git is a powerful version control and collaboration system for any plain text (or maybe even binary) files. There's nothing special about programmers that makes it so they are the only ones that can learn about these tools and use them. With something like TortoiseGit (or Github's app) I can totally see people you would never expect start taking advantage of this. Authors, mathematicians, research agents, cartographers, government agents (all those legal documents need version control badly), lawyers, etc. As the world trusts computers with more and more of their files, they might start picking up the tools that programmers have held so dear. Why not empower them?

derleth 13y ago
Torvalds, in classic Unix hacker fashion, designed git to be so stupid it doesn't care what it's being used for, which goes quite a long way to making it all things to all people. Similar is how the Linux filesystem code flatly refuses to care about what encoding scheme filenames use as long as the byte 0x2F (ASCII '/') is only used to separate pathname components, the byte sequences 0x2E (".") and 0x2E 0x2E ("..") appearing alone in a component are special, and the byte 0x00 (ASCII nul) is only used to terminate the entire pathname. The kernel is so stupid it only sees byte sequences and only cares about those specific values and sequences; as a direct result, users can use any character encoding which guarantees those values will only be used for their respective purposes, and rely on easily-configurable applications to sort it out. Here's Torvalds, Viro, and Ts'o chewing out someone who thought the kernel should enforce UTF-8 file and directory names: http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/utf8.html http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/utf8.html
- rmc 13y ago
  I thought ".." was a hardlink to the parent directory created when a directory was created? Hence the kernel doesn't actually have to treat ".." as anything special, since, due to hardlinks, "it'll all work out"?
  - 13y ago