5 ms·

Why is everyone so happy about the whole open source community becoming dependent on a single commercial company?

by Fice 12y ago

ndesaulniers 12y ago
It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.
- Fice 12y ago
  For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. And, being a huge centralized service, GitHub is very susceptible to censorship (e.g. repos being taken down via DMCA or Russia blocking GitHub until they started to cooperate with the censors). I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement.
  - bacongobbler 12y ago
    > For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. I believe that's more to do with the process than the platform. Having to remember different processes to contribute fixes/features is a pain. I can't count how many times I had to register an account, log into their custom bug tracker, find the darned obscure remote (looking at you, apache SVN), check out, figure out who I have to email the patch... And then doing it all over for a different project makes the entire process a little ridiculous. With Github, it's ridiculously simple: Log in, fork, clone, push, PR, repeat. > I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement. OTOH, having a place to call "home" for FOSS developers generates a better sense of community. It's like hosting a conference across multiple buildings: sure, the venue's big enough to hold X amount of people, but it doesn't seem like there's X people attending if I can't see everyone without having to traverse buildings. Also, > It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.
    - Fice 12y ago
      I see no technical reason why GitHub could not have been implemented as a federated system. Should we even consider convenience of a service that has serious ethical issues?
      - Tiksi 12y ago
        I wonder how difficult it would be to federate gitlab or gogs. Set up something like OAuth so you can log into anyone's gitlab (provided they have to set to public) and be able to fork/clone/branch to your "home" instance of it. Have an interface akin to github but have it pull in data from other gitlab instances you linked/subscribed to. You could also run some sort of public opt-in indexing service for discoverability of new projects, but the code would be hosted on your own instance. I'd much prefer that over github, as my account sits idle there, while my gitlab gets plenty of use. I suppose it's something I should look into.
        sytse 12y ago
        More thought about federation of GitLab here http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/5097708-implement-cross-server-federated-merge-requests http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...
- lfowles 12y ago
  Indeed, the only thing that could make it better is if issues were integrated into git somehow. Maybe just another branch similar to wiki/gh-pages?
  - Fice 12y ago
    That reminds me of Fossil, a DVCS that integrates issue tracker and wiki so that every clone of a repository contains fully functional project website accessible via built-in http server.
    - jrapdx3 12y ago
      Glad to see someone mention Fossil, a fine choice for small-medium sized projects. Fossil may not be ideal for huge projects, but easily running a Fossil repo on my own web server suits my purposes. It's probably even simpler to use the hosting site for Fossil at http://chiselapp.com/ http://chiselapp.com/ It's advertised as a free service and houses several hundred publicly accessible sites. Kind of like a low-key GitHub for Fossil repos. How well does Fossil scale? SQLite (https://sqlite.org/ https://sqlite.org/), "the most widely deployed SQL database engine in the world", can't be too small a project. Certainly a nice-looking site, under its skin pretty much a plain-vanilla web-facing Fossil repo.
      - sigzero 12y ago
        I am sure Fossil would do just fine for Vim. Tcl uses it as well.
    - lfowles 12y ago
      Thanks for the pointer, I'm glad to know this exists. Too bad there isn't a lossless Fossil <-> Git/Github converter!
      - Fice 12y ago
        Fossil supports incremental import and export to Git, so it should be possible to maintain a Git mirror of a Fossil repository or vise versa. This does not work for tickets and wiki, but the Fossil web server can also render markdown documentation located in the source tree.

Why is everyone so happy about the whole open source community becoming dependent on a single commercial company?

by Fice 12y ago

Why is everyone so happy about the whole open source community becoming dependent on a single commercial company?

It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.

Fice 12y ago
For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. And, being a huge centralized service, GitHub is very susceptible to censorship (e.g. repos being taken down via DMCA or Russia blocking GitHub until they started to cooperate with the censors). I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement.
- bacongobbler 12y ago
  > For increasingly many developers (potential contributors) a project effectively does not exist if it is not on GitHub. I believe that's more to do with the process than the platform. Having to remember different processes to contribute fixes/features is a pain. I can't count how many times I had to register an account, log into their custom bug tracker, find the darned obscure remote (looking at you, apache SVN), check out, figure out who I have to email the patch... And then doing it all over for a different project makes the entire process a little ridiculous. With Github, it's ridiculously simple: Log in, fork, clone, push, PR, repeat. > I see this dependence as very bad and dangerous for the global free software movement. OTOH, having a place to call "home" for FOSS developers generates a better sense of community. It's like hosting a conference across multiple buildings: sure, the venue's big enough to hold X amount of people, but it doesn't seem like there's X people attending if I can't see everyone without having to traverse buildings. Also, > It's trivial to push your local copy to bitbucket, or even your own git server. Lock in is not really an issue, in my opinion.
  - Fice 12y ago
    I see no technical reason why GitHub could not have been implemented as a federated system. Should we even consider convenience of a service that has serious ethical issues?
    - Tiksi 12y ago
      I wonder how difficult it would be to federate gitlab or gogs. Set up something like OAuth so you can log into anyone's gitlab (provided they have to set to public) and be able to fork/clone/branch to your "home" instance of it. Have an interface akin to github but have it pull in data from other gitlab instances you linked/subscribed to. You could also run some sort of public opt-in indexing service for discoverability of new projects, but the code would be hosted on your own instance. I'd much prefer that over github, as my account sits idle there, while my gitlab gets plenty of use. I suppose it's something I should look into.
      - sytse 12y ago
        More thought about federation of GitLab here http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/5097708-implement-cross-server-federated-merge-requests http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...
lfowles 12y ago
Indeed, the only thing that could make it better is if issues were integrated into git somehow. Maybe just another branch similar to wiki/gh-pages?
- Fice 12y ago
  That reminds me of Fossil, a DVCS that integrates issue tracker and wiki so that every clone of a repository contains fully functional project website accessible via built-in http server.
  - jrapdx3 12y ago
    Glad to see someone mention Fossil, a fine choice for small-medium sized projects. Fossil may not be ideal for huge projects, but easily running a Fossil repo on my own web server suits my purposes. It's probably even simpler to use the hosting site for Fossil at http://chiselapp.com/ http://chiselapp.com/ It's advertised as a free service and houses several hundred publicly accessible sites. Kind of like a low-key GitHub for Fossil repos. How well does Fossil scale? SQLite (https://sqlite.org/ https://sqlite.org/), "the most widely deployed SQL database engine in the world", can't be too small a project. Certainly a nice-looking site, under its skin pretty much a plain-vanilla web-facing Fossil repo.
    - sigzero 12y ago
      I am sure Fossil would do just fine for Vim. Tcl uses it as well.
  - lfowles 12y ago
    Thanks for the pointer, I'm glad to know this exists. Too bad there isn't a lossless Fossil <-> Git/Github converter!
    - Fice 12y ago
      Fossil supports incremental import and export to Git, so it should be possible to maintain a Git mirror of a Fossil repository or vise versa. This does not work for tickets and wiki, but the Fossil web server can also render markdown documentation located in the source tree.