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Github has already stumbled, and will fall soon. Their gaffes in conduct[1] and content[2] policies are already dividing the community. For a company that has t

Github has already stumbled, and will fall soon. Their gaffes in conduct[1] and content[2] policies are already dividing the community. For a company that has thrived on being a monoculture, this spells doom. [1] https://np.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the_open_code_of_conduct_isnt_for_me/ https://np.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the_... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

darkstar999 11y ago
You seriously think censoring the word "retard" will harm their business?
- GauntletWizard 11y ago
  I think you should think twice before investing or hosting data with companies that engage in tit-for-tat infantile behavior.
  - ossreality 11y ago
    > tit-for-tat infantile behavior. like sh1t posting for 18 hours about how you have a right to be an asshole to whomever you want, anywhere you want, even on someone elses' property?
- izolate 11y ago
  Of course not, try not to think in such black and white terms. Missteps like these sow the seeds of disdain for companies. Developers are a fickle bunch, and easily hold grudges.
  - eropple 11y ago
    I don't think the loss of patronage of the set of developers willing to choose their tools based on whether they as a company allow their users to slur large groups of people is really on their radar.
- petercooper 11y ago
  I don't, but what I believe could worry many (especially business users) is the idea of needing to rapidly enact a change within 24 hours to not have a repo or even your entire account deleted. This is assuming https://imgur.com/QC51FZz https://imgur.com/QC51FZz is even true, though.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Let's assume for a moment that email is true: how many businesses have policies that allow their staff to use language in that particular way? And Github, like most other providers, have catch-all clauses in the ToS. This one, perhaps: > We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and Accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party's intellectual property or these Terms of Service. I suppose my point is that if you're a business you shouldn't rely on Github etc.
    - petercooper 11y ago
      I 100% believe GitHub has the right to police and enforce their own standards on their system - just wanted to make that clear first. This is not about the r-word issue for me. What I find unsettling is that what they could consider "objectionable" is wide open and resolution of raised issues is expected so rapidly. Silly story time.. A developer in MajorCorp leaves a code comment (which is eventually committed) saying "// TODO: Fix this later, GitHub is down again, GitHub is trash!". GitHub could fairly request its removal as it is likely to be objectionable to them. However, the main contact on the account is away at a conference and gets to their email a couple of days later. Is their repo or even their entire account now toast? How much would someone want to bet against that? This is a farfetched contrived story, but now there's a demonstrated (again, assuming the screenshot is legit) attempt to enforce this clause and evidence of "24 hours" being the timeframe allowed for resolution, the tiny risk of such an outcome is going to hit sentiment and get legal departments twitching. (My personal suspicion is paying and enterprise users will not receive such threats, but in the above example I'm being idealistic and assuming everyone gets equal treatment.)
- cheald 11y ago
  Well, it cost them my $7/mo. That decision was very disturbing to me - I've always viewed GitHub as a content-neutral platform which provided a code hosting and sharing service. Yesterday's incident seems to signal that they are willing to make political judgments about peoples' code and force their opinions into that code, and I'm just really not okay with that. This wasn't about removing something which posed a legal or material threat to GitHub or its users - this was about controlling expression to force compliance with a political agenda. Which, by the way, GitHub is well within its rights to do, but which I find extraordinarily distasteful. I'm not willing to say it "will fall soon", but it has substantially damaged my opinion of GitHub as a company, and has diminished my trust in the integrity of their service as it serves the needs of open-source communities.
  - Fomite 11y ago
    In exchange, I've started actively patronizing businesses that choose not to make "Lets indulge all speech ever!" as they hill they want to die on.
    - cheald 11y ago
      That's...rather quite a strawman. There is a huge chasm between "Let's indulge all speech ever!" and "Let's not force compliance to our political opinions on our users". I suspect what you mean is that you are actively patronizing businesses who reinforce your current political beliefs; I doubt very much that you are patronizing businesses who engage in censorship which runs contrary to your political beliefs out of some idealistic respect for their courage to take a stand. And that's fine - we all naturally tend to support those we agree with, and not support those we disagree with - but framing it as admiration of the will to censor is just almost certainly spurious.
      - Fomite 11y ago
        The way the narrative is currently framed is "Let's indulge all speech ever!". And what you suspect is incorrect. This decision is largely driven by finding them more pleasant environments rather than my current political beliefs. If that were the case, I wouldn't be patronizing GitHub. Nor would I have had had lunch at Chick-fil-a.
- beambot 11y ago
  What if I put other expletives in code comments....? Will I be banned too?
ossreality 11y ago
bahahahaha. Oh you people are so cute. Look at that second one, just tons and tons of sh!t posts from sh!t people saying "SJW" with more vitriol than I can possibly imagine. The real gems are from complete tools like this too: "Git is run but a bunch of retards" Can't even write a sentence without stumbling multiple times. ""The "Retards" are "retards" anyway and cannot get offended by it. "" You really want to throw your lot in with these assholes? Funny how these issues are always astroturfed by the same type of anime avatars that Gators use.
Uhhrrr 11y ago
I don't know that censoring a few words is enough to cause them to lose momentum, but I have similar concerns. What is the compelling advantage of using github instead of gitorious or gitlab or whatever? They have a few nice tools, but nothing that can't be replicated. And if there's no significant advantage, then they're only one data breach or PR fail from losing tons of customers. The very nature of git means they can't get user lock-in.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Network effects. There's entire subcultures that have de facto clustered themselves onto GitHub, like the Erlang community. Most web developers, as well. You're right the actual GitHub interface is not as amazing as it is often heralded. I've always thought the issue tracker was a joke, for instance.
  - mooreds 11y ago
    The issue tracker is absolutely a joke, but being a standard for company codebases is a huge moat. If it works well enough, what company wants to spend time moving a codebase/history. I speak this as someone who managed developers at a company that was still using CVS. And yes, we discussed moving to git every so often, but it always was lower on my priorities than new features.
EarlPoncho 11y ago
well at least they picked the right time to get money
hipcactus 11y ago
Enterprise Customers cannot (and will not) attempt to transition from hosting hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of private repositories on gitHub in favor of another service. The alternative would have to aggressively undercut gitHub's enterprise sales model while competing with gitHub's uptime. Customers aren't going anywhere.
- stonogo 11y ago
  No "Enterprise Customer" is using github without a fallback plan. Github is in no way stable enough to rely on for business-critical work; fortunately, git is distributed and cnames exist, so it's easy to seamlessly fall back to competent hosting as needed.
  - tomschlick 11y ago
    Github has a standalone server you can run inside your own firewall. Thats where their big bucks come from and most likely what the commenter meant by enterprise. https://enterprise.github.com/home https://enterprise.github.com/home
ljk 11y ago
is this why github's been doing the censoring and making it a "safe" place? to appeal to a broader audience and please the investors? similar to what reddit recently went through https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug
pluma 11y ago
I strongly disagree. These look more like intentional signals to indicate that they're trying to shed the kind of behaviour they had become known for previously[0][1]. It's understandable that they're concerned about how the "feminist community" sees them. They're this generation's SourceForge and "feminist" backed shitstorms against them are likely posing a considerable risk to their brand. Just look at Gittip[2] (now Gratipay)[3]. [0]: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:GitHub http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:GitHub [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605739 [2]: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis [3]: Gratipay lives and they had to change business models for unrelated reasons but I'm fairly certain the "crisis" has an impact on their brand and growth even if it didn't outright kill them.

darkstar999 11y ago

You seriously think censoring the word "retard" will harm their business?

GauntletWizard 11y ago
I think you should think twice before investing or hosting data with companies that engage in tit-for-tat infantile behavior.
- ossreality 11y ago
  > tit-for-tat infantile behavior. like sh1t posting for 18 hours about how you have a right to be an asshole to whomever you want, anywhere you want, even on someone elses' property?
izolate 11y ago
Of course not, try not to think in such black and white terms. Missteps like these sow the seeds of disdain for companies. Developers are a fickle bunch, and easily hold grudges.
- eropple 11y ago
  I don't think the loss of patronage of the set of developers willing to choose their tools based on whether they as a company allow their users to slur large groups of people is really on their radar.
petercooper 11y ago
I don't, but what I believe could worry many (especially business users) is the idea of needing to rapidly enact a change within 24 hours to not have a repo or even your entire account deleted. This is assuming https://imgur.com/QC51FZz https://imgur.com/QC51FZz is even true, though.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Let's assume for a moment that email is true: how many businesses have policies that allow their staff to use language in that particular way? And Github, like most other providers, have catch-all clauses in the ToS. This one, perhaps: > We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and Accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party's intellectual property or these Terms of Service. I suppose my point is that if you're a business you shouldn't rely on Github etc.
  - petercooper 11y ago
    I 100% believe GitHub has the right to police and enforce their own standards on their system - just wanted to make that clear first. This is not about the r-word issue for me. What I find unsettling is that what they could consider "objectionable" is wide open and resolution of raised issues is expected so rapidly. Silly story time.. A developer in MajorCorp leaves a code comment (which is eventually committed) saying "// TODO: Fix this later, GitHub is down again, GitHub is trash!". GitHub could fairly request its removal as it is likely to be objectionable to them. However, the main contact on the account is away at a conference and gets to their email a couple of days later. Is their repo or even their entire account now toast? How much would someone want to bet against that? This is a farfetched contrived story, but now there's a demonstrated (again, assuming the screenshot is legit) attempt to enforce this clause and evidence of "24 hours" being the timeframe allowed for resolution, the tiny risk of such an outcome is going to hit sentiment and get legal departments twitching. (My personal suspicion is paying and enterprise users will not receive such threats, but in the above example I'm being idealistic and assuming everyone gets equal treatment.)
cheald 11y ago
Well, it cost them my $7/mo. That decision was very disturbing to me - I've always viewed GitHub as a content-neutral platform which provided a code hosting and sharing service. Yesterday's incident seems to signal that they are willing to make political judgments about peoples' code and force their opinions into that code, and I'm just really not okay with that. This wasn't about removing something which posed a legal or material threat to GitHub or its users - this was about controlling expression to force compliance with a political agenda. Which, by the way, GitHub is well within its rights to do, but which I find extraordinarily distasteful. I'm not willing to say it "will fall soon", but it has substantially damaged my opinion of GitHub as a company, and has diminished my trust in the integrity of their service as it serves the needs of open-source communities.
- Fomite 11y ago
  In exchange, I've started actively patronizing businesses that choose not to make "Lets indulge all speech ever!" as they hill they want to die on.
  - cheald 11y ago
    That's...rather quite a strawman. There is a huge chasm between "Let's indulge all speech ever!" and "Let's not force compliance to our political opinions on our users". I suspect what you mean is that you are actively patronizing businesses who reinforce your current political beliefs; I doubt very much that you are patronizing businesses who engage in censorship which runs contrary to your political beliefs out of some idealistic respect for their courage to take a stand. And that's fine - we all naturally tend to support those we agree with, and not support those we disagree with - but framing it as admiration of the will to censor is just almost certainly spurious.
    - Fomite 11y ago
      The way the narrative is currently framed is "Let's indulge all speech ever!". And what you suspect is incorrect. This decision is largely driven by finding them more pleasant environments rather than my current political beliefs. If that were the case, I wouldn't be patronizing GitHub. Nor would I have had had lunch at Chick-fil-a.
beambot 11y ago
What if I put other expletives in code comments....? Will I be banned too?

ossreality 11y ago

bahahahaha. Oh you people are so cute. Look at that second one, just tons and tons of sh!t posts from sh!t people saying "SJW" with more vitriol than I can possibly imagine. The real gems are from complete tools like this too: "Git is run but a bunch of retards" Can't even write a sentence without stumbling multiple times. ""The "Retards" are "retards" anyway and cannot get offended by it. "" You really want to throw your lot in with these assholes? Funny how these issues are always astroturfed by the same type of anime avatars that Gators use.

Uhhrrr 11y ago

I don't know that censoring a few words is enough to cause them to lose momentum, but I have similar concerns. What is the compelling advantage of using github instead of gitorious or gitlab or whatever? They have a few nice tools, but nothing that can't be replicated. And if there's no significant advantage, then they're only one data breach or PR fail from losing tons of customers. The very nature of git means they can't get user lock-in.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Network effects. There's entire subcultures that have de facto clustered themselves onto GitHub, like the Erlang community. Most web developers, as well. You're right the actual GitHub interface is not as amazing as it is often heralded. I've always thought the issue tracker was a joke, for instance.
- mooreds 11y ago
  The issue tracker is absolutely a joke, but being a standard for company codebases is a huge moat. If it works well enough, what company wants to spend time moving a codebase/history. I speak this as someone who managed developers at a company that was still using CVS. And yes, we discussed moving to git every so often, but it always was lower on my priorities than new features.

EarlPoncho 11y ago

well at least they picked the right time to get money

hipcactus 11y ago

Enterprise Customers cannot (and will not) attempt to transition from hosting hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of private repositories on gitHub in favor of another service. The alternative would have to aggressively undercut gitHub's enterprise sales model while competing with gitHub's uptime. Customers aren't going anywhere.

stonogo 11y ago
No "Enterprise Customer" is using github without a fallback plan. Github is in no way stable enough to rely on for business-critical work; fortunately, git is distributed and cnames exist, so it's easy to seamlessly fall back to competent hosting as needed.
- tomschlick 11y ago
  Github has a standalone server you can run inside your own firewall. Thats where their big bucks come from and most likely what the commenter meant by enterprise. https://enterprise.github.com/home https://enterprise.github.com/home

ljk 11y ago

is this why github's been doing the censoring and making it a "safe" place? to appeal to a broader audience and please the investors? similar to what reddit recently went through https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

pluma 11y ago

I strongly disagree. These look more like intentional signals to indicate that they're trying to shed the kind of behaviour they had become known for previously[0][1]. It's understandable that they're concerned about how the "feminist community" sees them. They're this generation's SourceForge and "feminist" backed shitstorms against them are likely posing a considerable risk to their brand. Just look at Gittip[2] (now Gratipay)[3]. [0]: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:GitHub http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:GitHub [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605739 [2]: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis [3]: Gratipay lives and they had to change business models for unrelated reasons but I'm fairly certain the "crisis" has an impact on their brand and growth even if it didn't outright kill them.