8 ms·

Ugh. No, not that Google Code is shutting down, per se. The alternatives are better and for active projects there is plenty of time to migrate. What I object

by comex 12y ago

Ugh. No, not that Google Code is shutting down, per se. The alternatives are better and for active projects there is plenty of time to migrate. What I object to is that the site will only be preserved in read-only mode for 5 months, despite its popularity and the resulting large number of deep links into it on the Web. Why not forever? git, hg, and I believe svn can all provide read-only access (with some bandwidth overhead) by publishing static files over HTTP. With the addition of a static export of the Google Code pages (mostly doable by crawling; some pagination issues would need to be worked out), Google could host the site going forward on a simple HTTP server without needing to maintain its server-side codebase. And Google is lacking in neither HTTP servers or bandwidth... Belated abuse complaints would remain a problem, but it's easy enough to delete things on request. Google is obviously not legally obligated to keep the site up, and under current mores I suppose it's not socially obligated either. But I think that when the owning company continues to be highly financially successful and maintenance is easy enough, there should be a social obligation for some kind of archival. Or at least redirect the subdomain to whatever Archive Team comes up with...

k3n 12y ago
Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management. They see Google Code as a time-sink, and they're probably right, and it's not surprising to me that they'd drop something that is no longer serving it's intended purpose, but instead has negative implications for their model. Keeping it going forward would require even more hands-on humans, so they scrap it. As for the deep links, one of the Google Code devs did mention[1]: > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. His comment also contains a link to a wiki with more information on how to opt-in to this service. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html?showComment=1426178913316#c6979343460978972701 http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go...
- aikah 12y ago
  > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that will be lost no question.Open source code is a community wealth,even in funky languages nobody use anymore. What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil".
  - magicalist 12y ago
    I seriously doubt Github would ever agree to that automation. First, what accounts would all these orphan repos go under? Second, how much spam would they be agreeing to host by saying yes to that? This is a much better job for The Internet Archive or a read-only google code in perpetuity. edit: in fact, it looks like they're planning on making a read-only version, but the definition of "legitimate" is going to be very important to nail down: > cdibona: We are planing on taking the majority of these legitimate, open source, 'abandonded' projects and putting them up in cold storage in a git repo on googlesource.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554
  - enjo 12y ago
    On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me) but this is ridiculous. If these projects are truly important than donate some time and move them over yourself. To demand that google invest time and resources into the migration of these migrations or to keeping this running forever is just silly. Hell tools like https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ even exist.
    - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
      In actuality, I've found most HN users seem to love Google. To the extent that almost any criticism of Google gets downvoted to death.
rwallace 12y ago
I think, when people give you something of value for free, it's not okay to respond with "But you should have given me more!" If that's not obvious to you, think of it in game theory terms: you're basically responding to cooperation with defection. The proper response to something like this shutting down is "It's a pity it has to end, but thank you for running the service all those years."
- jfoster 12y ago
  Can you explain the game theory behind that? I would've expected that, in this case (where the worst case for a user is what will currently happen), responding with a request for more rather than cooperation is actually the rational behaviour.
  - rwallace 12y ago
    No, the best case for the user is what would have happened anyway. The worst case is the people who provided that free service, and maybe other people who see the thanks they got, end up thinking "well, damned if we're going to give those ungrateful bastards anything else for free."
jkoudys 12y ago
Par for the course as far as Google's concerned. This is the one caveat I give all my clients before going ahead with using any google service beyond gmail, since you can easily get the rug yanked out from underneath you. It's not usually the discontinuation of an entire service, but they drop major features from many apps, and give the users as much warning as a Vogon would.
jpatokal 12y ago
Chris diBona says Google will be keeping a public copy of all unmigrated repos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554
- walterbell 12y ago
  Can that be relied upon as an official Google statement?
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    Chris DiBona is Google's Director of Open Source and the author of the blog post announcing the deprecation, so I'd say yes. But he's "planning", not guaranteeing it.
- comex 12y ago
  That's good to hear, although I'm not sure based on the comment whether: (a) a project's issues and wiki will be preserved in some form, in addition to the repo(s) themselves; (b) code.google.com links will be redirected to this googlesource archive (for projects which have not opted in to the custom redirect thing). If the answer is yes on both, then I'm a happy camper.
  - durin42 12y ago
    So for (a), we're going to build tarballs that include the issues, and wikis are already just in a repository. For (b), that's not a bad idea, but I don't know if we'd talked about that. I'll poke it in our bug tracker. Thanks!
shurcooL 12y ago
I disagree with your comment. I'm sharing my disagreement via this comment rather than down voting (because I don't do that). I think Google and others should feel free to experiment, shut down closed experiments once the time is right, and not have to be obligated to spend resources on archiving things. As long as migrating is easy.

by comex 12y ago

k3n 12y ago

Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management. They see Google Code as a time-sink, and they're probably right, and it's not surprising to me that they'd drop something that is no longer serving it's intended purpose, but instead has negative implications for their model. Keeping it going forward would require even more hands-on humans, so they scrap it. As for the deep links, one of the Google Code devs did mention[1]: > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. His comment also contains a link to a wiki with more information on how to opt-in to this service. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html?showComment=1426178913316#c6979343460978972701 http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go...

aikah 12y ago
> I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that will be lost no question.Open source code is a community wealth,even in funky languages nobody use anymore. What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil".
- magicalist 12y ago
  I seriously doubt Github would ever agree to that automation. First, what accounts would all these orphan repos go under? Second, how much spam would they be agreeing to host by saying yes to that? This is a much better job for The Internet Archive or a read-only google code in perpetuity. edit: in fact, it looks like they're planning on making a read-only version, but the definition of "legitimate" is going to be very important to nail down: > cdibona: We are planing on taking the majority of these legitimate, open source, 'abandonded' projects and putting them up in cold storage in a git repo on googlesource.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554
- enjo 12y ago
  On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me) but this is ridiculous. If these projects are truly important than donate some time and move them over yourself. To demand that google invest time and resources into the migration of these migrations or to keeping this running forever is just silly. Hell tools like https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ even exist.
  - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
    In actuality, I've found most HN users seem to love Google. To the extent that almost any criticism of Google gets downvoted to death.

rwallace 12y ago

I think, when people give you something of value for free, it's not okay to respond with "But you should have given me more!" If that's not obvious to you, think of it in game theory terms: you're basically responding to cooperation with defection. The proper response to something like this shutting down is "It's a pity it has to end, but thank you for running the service all those years."

jfoster 12y ago
Can you explain the game theory behind that? I would've expected that, in this case (where the worst case for a user is what will currently happen), responding with a request for more rather than cooperation is actually the rational behaviour.
- rwallace 12y ago
  No, the best case for the user is what would have happened anyway. The worst case is the people who provided that free service, and maybe other people who see the thanks they got, end up thinking "well, damned if we're going to give those ungrateful bastards anything else for free."

jkoudys 12y ago

Par for the course as far as Google's concerned. This is the one caveat I give all my clients before going ahead with using any google service beyond gmail, since you can easily get the rug yanked out from underneath you. It's not usually the discontinuation of an entire service, but they drop major features from many apps, and give the users as much warning as a Vogon would.

jpatokal 12y ago

Chris diBona says Google will be keeping a public copy of all unmigrated repos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554

walterbell 12y ago
Can that be relied upon as an official Google statement?
- jpatokal 12y ago
  Chris DiBona is Google's Director of Open Source and the author of the blog post announcing the deprecation, so I'd say yes. But he's "planning", not guaranteeing it.
comex 12y ago
That's good to hear, although I'm not sure based on the comment whether: (a) a project's issues and wiki will be preserved in some form, in addition to the repo(s) themselves; (b) code.google.com links will be redirected to this googlesource archive (for projects which have not opted in to the custom redirect thing). If the answer is yes on both, then I'm a happy camper.
- durin42 12y ago
  So for (a), we're going to build tarballs that include the issues, and wikis are already just in a repository. For (b), that's not a bad idea, but I don't know if we'd talked about that. I'll poke it in our bug tracker. Thanks!

shurcooL 12y ago

I disagree with your comment. I'm sharing my disagreement via this comment rather than down voting (because I don't do that). I think Google and others should feel free to experiment, shut down closed experiments once the time is right, and not have to be obligated to spend resources on archiving things. As long as migrating is easy.