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I think depending upon a single, proprietary web service for everything is foolish. When Github is down, you're out of luck. If Github changes in a way you don'

I think depending upon a single, proprietary web service for everything is foolish. When Github is down, you're out of luck. If Github changes in a way you don't like, you're out of luck.

Goopplesoft 13y ago
I dont think diversification would do much better. Most big github features are probably handled by separate teams and function somewhat independent of each other as well. But downtime could be a big issue although Github has been generally good at it (https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month) People also rely on github git repos for deployment (e.g. in requirements.txt) so their work would likely survive standard levels of downtime.
joeblau 13y ago
GitHub offers and enterprise offering that you can host yourself. It's no better/worse than hosting your own version of JIRA, Confluence, and a git repository. That way you're not 100% dependent on github.com actually being up. As far as changes, you're right, but the changes are true with any product. At my last company, we did a JIRA upgrade which ended up being a nightmare for process because lots of things changed and were configured incorrectly. I guess I'm trying to say that what you're saying is true for any SaaS product you use and doesn't take away from trying to use GitHub, maybe not necessarily github.com, to run everything.
- davexunit 13y ago
  >As far as changes, you're right, but the changes are true with any product. This is true, but only with proprietary software are they unfixable.
rohamg 13y ago
Welcome to the internet! You must be new here :) Jokes aside, using any proprietary web service has the exact same downside. And yet here we all are using Google Apps, Dropbox, GitHub, HipChat, Intercom, and dozens of others. As a team, we found additional web services add exponentially increasing complexity; we eventually needed a platform to keep track of all the platforms we were using. So we back-tracked and went the same route as the Wiredcraft guys, centralizing everything into GitHub. As a community, instead of advocating turning the clock back (which will never happen: the toothpaste has exited the tube), we should explore ways to satisfy security & reliability concerns while maintaining convenience. Also, you can self-host GitHub.
- abritishguy 13y ago
  I agree with what you are saying, but as far as reliability goes github sucks badly and until it gets much much more reliable I think using it for "everything" isn't really viable for most businesses (unless they have enterprise). I might not have any more redundancy with Google Apps, but I am yet to be affected by an outage.
- chriswarbo 13y ago
  Erm, I think you're the one who's new here. Proprietary Web services and walled gardens are a recent thing. FTP, email, HTTP, etc. are all open systems. Of course some companies did try to flog proprietary services and protocols decades ago too, but the users were clued up enough to avoid them and let them die.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Walled gardens are not new. HTTP was first documented in 1991. Compuserve was founded in 1969!
- davexunit 13y ago
  Yes, you are correct that using any proprietary web service has the same downsides, which is why I have taken it upon myself to avoid as many of them as possible and support free, decentralized alternatives. I do use github to host my source code currently, but it would be trivial for me to move to a free service such as gitorious, or a gitlab instance, or my own server running cgit or gitweb. What do you mean you can self-host GitHub? GitHub is not free software.
  - flockonus 13y ago
    hosting GitHub: https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/
  - mimiflynn 13y ago
    Might not be free software, but: https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/
chriswarbo 13y ago
Exactly. The entire reason Git was created is because a proprietary version control platform (BitKeeper) was given too much trust and power over Free Software projects, which it inevitably abused. The whole point of Git is that you don't have to surrender control. GitHub is just another BitKeeper. If you really want a Web interface there's Gitorious (which has been around longer than GitHub) and GitLab. The number of Git-backed Wikis, bug trackers, filesystems, etc. is huge too, judging by the New Packages I see in aptitude every few weeks.
- zalew 13y ago
  > If you really want a Web interface there's Gitorious (which has been around longer than GitHub) and GitLab. and recently https://rhodecode.com/ https://rhodecode.com/ which kinda looks like an opensource version of BitBucket.
  - jamie_ca 13y ago
    I see nothing on Rhodecode's website indicating it is open source, by any definition of the term.
    - zalew 13y ago
      yeah, looks like they removed the info. https://secure.rhodecode.org/rhodecode https://secure.rhodecode.org/rhodecode https://github.com/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/ https://github.com/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/ https://bitbucket.org/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/ https://bitbucket.org/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/
    - marcinkuzminski 13y ago
      Hey, i'm the creator of RhodeCode, we're still open source, the whole core is still GPLv3. It's stated in our header of the enterprise release: https://rhodecode.com/enterprise https://rhodecode.com/enterprise. cheers

I think depending upon a single, proprietary web service for everything is foolish. When Github is down, you're out of luck. If Github changes in a way you don't like, you're out of luck.

Goopplesoft 13y ago

I dont think diversification would do much better. Most big github features are probably handled by separate teams and function somewhat independent of each other as well. But downtime could be a big issue although Github has been generally good at it (https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month) People also rely on github git repos for deployment (e.g. in requirements.txt) so their work would likely survive standard levels of downtime.

joeblau 13y ago

GitHub offers and enterprise offering that you can host yourself. It's no better/worse than hosting your own version of JIRA, Confluence, and a git repository. That way you're not 100% dependent on github.com actually being up. As far as changes, you're right, but the changes are true with any product. At my last company, we did a JIRA upgrade which ended up being a nightmare for process because lots of things changed and were configured incorrectly. I guess I'm trying to say that what you're saying is true for any SaaS product you use and doesn't take away from trying to use GitHub, maybe not necessarily github.com, to run everything.

davexunit 13y ago
>As far as changes, you're right, but the changes are true with any product. This is true, but only with proprietary software are they unfixable.

rohamg 13y ago

Welcome to the internet! You must be new here :) Jokes aside, using any proprietary web service has the exact same downside. And yet here we all are using Google Apps, Dropbox, GitHub, HipChat, Intercom, and dozens of others. As a team, we found additional web services add exponentially increasing complexity; we eventually needed a platform to keep track of all the platforms we were using. So we back-tracked and went the same route as the Wiredcraft guys, centralizing everything into GitHub. As a community, instead of advocating turning the clock back (which will never happen: the toothpaste has exited the tube), we should explore ways to satisfy security & reliability concerns while maintaining convenience. Also, you can self-host GitHub.

abritishguy 13y ago
I agree with what you are saying, but as far as reliability goes github sucks badly and until it gets much much more reliable I think using it for "everything" isn't really viable for most businesses (unless they have enterprise). I might not have any more redundancy with Google Apps, but I am yet to be affected by an outage.
chriswarbo 13y ago
Erm, I think you're the one who's new here. Proprietary Web services and walled gardens are a recent thing. FTP, email, HTTP, etc. are all open systems. Of course some companies did try to flog proprietary services and protocols decades ago too, but the users were clued up enough to avoid them and let them die.
- sp332 13y ago
  Walled gardens are not new. HTTP was first documented in 1991. Compuserve was founded in 1969!
davexunit 13y ago
Yes, you are correct that using any proprietary web service has the same downsides, which is why I have taken it upon myself to avoid as many of them as possible and support free, decentralized alternatives. I do use github to host my source code currently, but it would be trivial for me to move to a free service such as gitorious, or a gitlab instance, or my own server running cgit or gitweb. What do you mean you can self-host GitHub? GitHub is not free software.
- flockonus 13y ago
  hosting GitHub: https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/
- mimiflynn 13y ago
  Might not be free software, but: https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/

chriswarbo 13y ago

Exactly. The entire reason Git was created is because a proprietary version control platform (BitKeeper) was given too much trust and power over Free Software projects, which it inevitably abused. The whole point of Git is that you don't have to surrender control. GitHub is just another BitKeeper. If you really want a Web interface there's Gitorious (which has been around longer than GitHub) and GitLab. The number of Git-backed Wikis, bug trackers, filesystems, etc. is huge too, judging by the New Packages I see in aptitude every few weeks.

zalew 13y ago
> If you really want a Web interface there's Gitorious (which has been around longer than GitHub) and GitLab. and recently https://rhodecode.com/ https://rhodecode.com/ which kinda looks like an opensource version of BitBucket.
- jamie_ca 13y ago
  I see nothing on Rhodecode's website indicating it is open source, by any definition of the term.
  - zalew 13y ago
    yeah, looks like they removed the info. https://secure.rhodecode.org/rhodecode https://secure.rhodecode.org/rhodecode https://github.com/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/ https://github.com/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/ https://bitbucket.org/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/ https://bitbucket.org/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/
  - marcinkuzminski 13y ago
    Hey, i'm the creator of RhodeCode, we're still open source, the whole core is still GPLv3. It's stated in our header of the enterprise release: https://rhodecode.com/enterprise https://rhodecode.com/enterprise. cheers