
RMS: GitHub has done terrible harm to our community - stargrave
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-discuss/2019-11/msg00277.html
======
danieldk
Maybe it has done harm to GNU and the GPL, since they have become less
relevant. But despite its problems, GitHub has been a huge net positive for
free software. They considerably lowered the bar for making a project
available. SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects. With
GitHub, anyone could start a project and no-one would look down on you and
tell you that your project is not novel enough or whatever.

GitHub also drastically lowered the bar for contributing to free software.
Contributing to a project used to mean subscribing to a mailing list,
submitting a patch there, and not much would usually happen. With GitHub you
fork, submit a PR, get your PR automatically built and unit tested with CI,
the project owner can merge your PR with a single button click. It's fine to
prefer an e-mail patch workflow, but GitHub has shown that for most of the
population, submitting patches through PRs is a much lower bar.

At this point, GitHub is largely unnecessary. Most of the features have been
copied and reimplemented better in FLOSS alternatives such as GitLab, Gitea,
Gogs, etc. But since they were one of the first, people will stay due to
network effects.

~~~
viraptor
> SourceForge acted as gatekeepers and rejected projects.

Did it? I remember starting two projects which made not much sense at all. I
vaguely remember the process was automatic then. Has it changed with time?

~~~
danieldk
Maybe it has changed later. In the mid 2000s, you definitely had to wait for
approval. Some of my projects were rejected. There is still some documentation
around the net about approval:

 _Once you complete your registration, you must wait a few days for the
SourceForge administrators to review your request and set up the
infrastructure. You should receive an email response informing you of the
project 's creation when it is ready. You can check the status of any of your
project requests by visiting your SourceForge home page:
[http://sourceforge.net/users/your-userid/](http://sourceforge.net/users/your-
userid/) . There, you can view all of your SourceForge projects. Also, on the
'my projects' page you can see all your projects regardless of their approval
status._

Source: [https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-
Sourc...](https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plugging-into-
SourceForge/sourceforge.html)

------
psv1
There is being direct and then there is speaking like an edgy teenager for
entirety of your adult life. It's so difficult to take Stallman seriously when
he makes these extreme generalisations.

~~~
tsukurimashou
I think he really just speaks his mind, I'm not sure he is trying to be edgy
or anything, he always had quite radical ideas and positions. I mean people
have been calling him a lunatic for years, he has been fighting for free
software and warning people about proprietary software and the obvious risks
it carries. Despite being proven right about quite a lot he warned about,
people views never really changed about him.

~~~
ezkl
What exactly do you consider radical about his position in this instance?

~~~
ac29
Radical might not be my choice of words, but he's got a certain type of
ideological purity around free software that's definitely on the extreme end.

Here's a paraphrased version of what he's saying:

"GitHub [...] has done terrible harm to our community.

GitHub was so bad for free software, all along[.]"

Now, if you were to define "our community" as the open source community, this
would be laughable - very few people would argue that open source software has
been terribly harmed by GitHub (on the contrary, the rise of GitHub has seen
many projects flourish). I don't necessarily think he means the wider open
source community, though - he's referring to his own Stallman flavor of free
software.

~~~
ezkl
I absolutely agree. His lack of self-awareness and seeming inability to see
the generally positive aspects of the growth of open source just doesn't sound
radical to me. Quite the opposite in fact.

------
kstenerud
This is just RMS being consistent. He's never liked non-GNU licenses, and
considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source
projects to be the spawn of the devil. He'll continue saying this until his
dying breath.

That said, GNU and the GPL have been very helpful, sometimes instrumental, in
fostering and protecting open source code and developers, so I'll put up with
his ivory tower vision for the practical benefits it's brought us.

Call him crazy (and he probably is), but he's been a net benefit to society,
which is a lot more than most achieve.

~~~
teddyh
> _considers anything that allows the use of open source code in closed source
> projects to be the spawn of the devil. He 'll continue saying this until his
> dying breath._

I claim that RMS has never said _anything_ like that, and I challenge _anyone_
to prove otherwise.

He’s consistently said that it’s _better_ if software was copylefted (like
GPL) than if it was simply free software (like BSD), but he has consistently
reserved the, like you say, “spawn of the devil”-type categorization for
proprietary software and worse, like malware, etc.

------
madiathomas
GitHub probably did more good for the FOSS community than any other project I
can think of. Before GitHub, it was so difficult to share code. Solutions
available weren't anywhere close. I don't understand why he wants every little
piece of software to be open sourced. GitHub was attractive to investors
because it had closed source projects that have to pay in order to use it. I
don't see how GitHub was going to succeed if they were purely open source and
no-one was paying to use it. Those proprietary projects that he so hates are
the ones who were keeping the lights on. They are the ones which were giving
Investors hope than GitHub will make lots of money in future and they must
invest more.

~~~
thethrowboat
If you wanted to use that little piece of code, wouldn't it be better if it
was open source? I remember when you could only get exe and projects didnt
even think of sharing the code, even if it was just some small project.

~~~
madiathomas
If it is a library, I will prefer an open source one, but if it is some
software, I don't mind even when it is closed source.

------
blihp
Is his comment based on outdated information? I just checked and github
appears to recognize a few dozen ([https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-
cloning-and-archi...](https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-
archiving-repositories/licensing-a-repository#searching-github-by-license-
type)) license types including gpl2, gpl3 and lgpl

~~~
em-bee
RMS argues against _licensing under only a single version of the GPL_

obviously he prefers "GPL2 or later" and "GPL3 or later"

does github offer that?

~~~
Godel_unicode
Yes.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-
archi...](https://help.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-
repositories/licensing-a-repository)

[https://choosealicense.com](https://choosealicense.com)

~~~
em-bee
it takes some searching, but when one selects GPLv3 then the default text does
indeed include the "or later" clause.

so not only is it an option, but it is the default option, because an extra
step is needed to change that.

unfortunately, in my opinion, the whole choosealicense site could be improved
a lot. for example the license templates could be actual form fields letting
you fill in the details needed, and then producing a license text that is
correctly filled out. as it is, some users will likely miss some fields

------
lgierth
RMS has done terrible harm to our community

~~~
naringas
maybe he has recently... but he is one of the founders of it.

~~~
new_realist
No, OSS predates Stallman.

------
xwowsersx
How does GitHub encourage sloppy licensing? How is GitHub bad for free
software?

~~~
robinwassen
I think the reason is that GitHub lowers the barrier of entry to distribution
of OSS.

This makes more people distribute OSS, and most devs do probably not care as
much about OSS licensing as RMS would like and therefore do "mistakes".

RMS has a high horse stance, I think that easier access to OSS is better even
though it might come with some side effects.

~~~
TheCapeGreek
It's way easier for him to have a high horse about doing FOSS "correctly" when
he was in an academic environment with different pressures for most of his
career. There'd be a different tune sung if he were an average Joe with
business requirements to fulfill.

~~~
devnonymous
You do realize that he is not an average Joe with business requirements to
fulfill __because __he decided to mount that high horse, right ?

This argument of 'Oh, he'd be singing a different tune if he had to deal with
today's reality' is so naive.

The fact that he doesn't (/doesn't have to) deal with everyday reality is his
whole point -- he has claimed that it is unrealistic to use software that
confirms to his set of values, so he denied to participate in that reality.

------
farfegnoogin
Seems a weird sentiment to me. GitHub, as is, is largely a throw back to an
older time that RMS sought to recreate. when people just wanted to share code,
without much motive beyond that.

------
DarkWiiPlayer
I'm sorry, but I don't see it.

> GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under
> only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community.

There's many projects out there that are meant to be open source, but the
author never put a license on it, so it's, legally speaking, "all rights
reserve" and you aren'y even allowed to use the software yourself. Github
doesn't really encourage this; in fact, it even offers initializing a new repo
with a license, but it still happens that project owners just don't

> GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine
> Microsoft's making it less bad

First of all, this is obviously just his opinion; I can't really attack or
defend it like "good" or "bad" are some sort of mathematical constants. The
fact is: github _does_ serve as a platform for non-free software (heck, every
single one of my projects is either MIT or public domain, which means it can
be put into a closed-source project), so if your ultimate goal is for all
software to be "free" in the FSF sense, then yes, github has caused much harm.

> We should judge by what actually happens, not by prejudice.

This statement is so obviously correct, there's just no way you could
interpret it in any unreasonable way.

------
beenBoutIT
Interesting how RMS now views Apple as being worse than Microsoft.

------
kburman
Can someone explain the issue with slopy licensing and what is RMS?

~~~
Snetry
While GitHub encourages licensing and even help users with a dedicated menu
for it they don't enforce it or help in making licensing decisions which in
the eyes or RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) is bad

~~~
kburman
Ok, this RMS's view not GNU. Now it makes sense. Thanks, Man!

------
dbdjfjrjvebd
> GitHub's encouragement of sloppy licensing, no licensing, or licensing under
> only a single version of the GPL, has done terrible harm to our community.

> GitHub was so bad for free software, all along, that I could imagine
> Microsoft's making it less bad, or making it more bad. We should judge by
> what actually happens, not by prejudice.

> Keep in mind that Apple is much worse than Microsoft.

The title this thread "Github has done terrible harm to our community." is a
very selective quote.

------
Grue3
It did, by making Git a monoculture. It's very difficult to get a project to
take off if it's not on Github. When Github goes down, so do the majority of
important projects, breaking builds and causing chaos across the developer
world. It didn't have to be like this. Git hosting should've been distributed
like GNU Social/Mastodon.

------
ngcc_hk
Open source not free source get the movement above the ground. Sometimes what
start (rms), what help (Linus) may not be the one that make it great.

------
mk3
Stallman being Stallman, let's move on people.

------
scarejunba
This guy was my hero growing up because I'm fairly certain that the things the
initial community set up is why open source is so common today.

But now he needs a handler. My god, man. Get it together.

~~~
wahern
A handler _now_? The linked article is classic RMS: pedantic, relentless, and
reasoning so nuanced to the point of being indecipherable if not imperceptible
to all but the few who have spent countless hours wrestling with RMS' ideas.

If you assume RMS is smarter than you, or at least more analytically rigorous
(like a computer)[1], then you'd be hard pressed to find anything RMS has said
which isn't consistent with the entire body of his thinking--including his
opinions on certain age-related matters _and_ his recognition of and apology
for the insensitive manner in which he expressed them. Which isn't to say you
would consequentially agree with him, just that his reasoning is about as
impeccable as is possible for such insoluble human social issues. You almost
always end up having to wrestle with and reject his premises, which can be
difficult because his premises are often agreeable on their face. But by doing
so you develop and strengthen your own views. RMS is like Socrates, a
pacemaker in a race, or the Energizer Bunny--absolutely exhausting, but if
you're disengaging then more likely than not _you 're_ the one falling behind,
not him. Which is fine--the biggest premise of all is that any of this
matters, and if you have your doubts it's impossible to match his stamina;
just don't pretend like he's the one slowing down or tripping up.

[1] I want to say that one should simply apply the HN rule of assuming the
best version of the argument. But RMS almost always puts forth the best
version of the argument, at least from a logical perspective, though certainly
not necessarily a rhetorical perspective. Thus with RMS the better habit is
assuming he's smarter than you, regardless of whether that's true or not, as
it forces you to identify and trace the elements and threads of his reasoning,
which are invariably present in plain sight.

~~~
scarejunba
The world's changed, man. He didn't. That's all there is to it.

~~~
sifar
He need not.

------
wichert
There is some awful stuff in that thread, like this gem [1]:

    
    
      After microsoft puchased Github, they encouraged "Codes of Conduct".
      So now 40k "opensource projects" hace CoC's.
      Obviously men won't be contributing to said projects, other than
      the people allready in them.
    

[1] [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-
discuss/2019-1...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-system-
discuss/2019-11/msg00282.html)

~~~
sergiotapia
Obviously it's hyperbole - but a lot of people are definitely put off by coc,
myself included. It's a wretched, insidious text sneaked in by very bad actors
into mainstream open source repositories.

~~~
elcaminocomplex
The great thing about CoC is that they tend to be self-reinforcing, keeping
out exactly the people who are bound to conduct themselves in ways that are
inconsistent with the principles behind them.

~~~
sergiotapia
before coc was snuck into these repos, was it just a shitshow of nasty people
acting a fool in open source communities? I don't remember it that way.

~~~
Godel_unicode
I recommend you Google the name Linus Torvalds. You will find some truly
shocking language directed at his fellow human beings.

~~~
laresistance
Linus' use of explicit language was exactly something that should be used as
an example. He rarely attacked people, but instead attacked the actions that
they did or ideas that they had.

~~~
Godel_unicode
"""My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled
for. Especially at times when I made it personal."""

[https://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-linux-time-
aw...](https://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-linux-time-away-
empathy-2018-9)

~~~
laresistance
He made those remarks after he pretty much was forced to "professionalize" by
The Foundation.

I do agree however that at no times should criticism of code or work become
personal.

~~~
Godel_unicode
I'm not sure what point you're making here? In hindsight, he views his words
as inappropriate. I'm not sure I understand what the temporal distance between
the words and the apology has to do with how appropriate they were.

------
jimnotgym
Gate keeping

Imagine doing the wonderful things RMS did in the past, being a hero of both
FOSS and software in general. Imagine then being remembered for the ahole
tricks that came later instead.

Github opened up both software and FOSS to me. I found projects despite not
having a computer science education, not working full time in software, not
having a personal network of academic buddies, not using irc. Very
occasionally I contributed, and my submissions were taken on the value of the
bugs I fixed, despite my lack of reputation.

RMS is a gatekeeping mysogynist pxxxx. He is failing to damage the community
despite his best efforts because he has marginalised himself by his behaviour.

Ps. I haven't started a repo on github in a while, but I firmly remember it
suggesting you add a license, and linking to explanations of the different
licences. Did RMS want them to force it on you?

