
Bidding farewell to Google Code - cdibona
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html
======
cdibona
Hi everyone. I wanted to let you know (and I know this isn't a huge surprise)
that we will be shutting down the Google Code project hosting system over the
next year.

Wired did a nice story about Github that touches on the shutdown:
[http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-
microso...](http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microsoft-
everyone-else/)

I'll be hanging around answering questions, but the short form of 'why' is
that it just isn't used much anymore, ourselves included, in favor of Github
or bitbucket.

~~~
shubhamjain
While true that no one uses Google Code. Every now and then, I bump into some
obscure but a little useful project being hosted on Google Code. Maybe, makers
of those projects have grown out of them and don't wish to put any more effort
but still, there is a bit of value, I am able to derive from them.

What will happen, if those projects are not migrated because their developers
have simply forgotten about them?

~~~
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

~~~
wiseleo
Will it keep existing deep links published in books and research papers from
breaking? What prevents Google from setting the whole site into read-only mode
as-is? Keep it working as it does now and disable changes.

~~~
sk5t
Was that a rhetorical question--how could any third party possibly prevent
deep links from breaking?

------
comex
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
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-
go...](http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-
code.html?showComment=1426178913316#c6979343460978972701)

~~~
aikah
> 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".

~~~
enjo
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.

~~~
dchichkov
Shutting down Google Code is equivalent to destroying a storage full of
handwritten articles, some of which exist only in a single copy and some of
which are incredibly valuable.

Why valuable? For example computer science researchers had been using Google
Code to host supplement code for their research publications for years now.
These repositories are not maintained by these researchers any more, yet the
code some times is incredibly valuable, because it allows to _reproduce
research results_. The reason why researchers were using Google Code, is
because it was supposed to be as stable as the underlying company. Yet now, in
10 months, these repositories will be destroyed.

~~~
NeutronBoy
If the code is that valuable, then perhaps they should put some time into
maintaining the code, moving it to another provider, or convincing somebody to
pay for hosting.

~~~
dchichkov
Example. A cancer researcher, publishes a paper in Nature Genetics. Like this
one:
[http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n3/abs/ng.522.html](http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n3/abs/ng.522.html)

In that paper she publishes a link to a Google Code repository as supplement
materials. For example, in the aforementioned paper there is a link to the
following repository: [http://code.google.com/p/glu-
genetics/](http://code.google.com/p/glu-genetics/)

~~~
NeutronBoy
Given she published the paper and link, she should either a) take
responsibility for the general availability of the materials, and b) make sure
that if people email her for the materials (after finding that they're not
available on Google Code) she shares them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for retaining the materials and knowledge, etc
etc. I'm just having a hard time understanding why you expect Google to do the
work and maintain it? What if she uploaded her materials to Megaupload, or any
of the hundred other filesharing sites - would you hold them to the same
standard? Why doesn't the journal that published the paper (which, has a
revenue stream) host the material, given that it directly supports their work?

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Megaupload did not hold itself out as a repository for original work.

Megaupload is not run by Google, with the stated mission of organizing the
world's information.

Megaupload is bankrupt. Google is one of the richest technology companies in
history.

This is not Megaupload throwing away its hoard of 90's B movies. This is
Google, knowingly and literally throwing away coding history. We don't even
know what might be thrown away.

What if some currently unknown researcher wrote his first code and uploaded it
to Google code and forgot about it, and turned out to be the next Zuckerberg
or even Turing?

What if some valuable research that was _entrusted_ to Google from a deceased
researcher suddenly disappears?

There are likely many more unintended consequences stemming from such an act,
and I don't think we should give Google a pass, especially since Google
controls possibly the largest collection of computers on the planet. (besides,
source code tends to compress pretty well!)

Seems like the least they could do is stick it in an 'unlimited' Google Drive
and lock it as read only.

------
gtaylor
I'm sure some are going to immediately say "Yet another Google casualty", but
I feel like this one probably needed to happen. It's been stagnant for years,
and they have been on the mindshare decline since the first two years. I dread
having to deal with open source software that is still on Google Code.

Admit failure, provide plenty of notice (like they're doing), and close up
shop so resources can be spent on more impactful projects.

~~~
munificent
How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for
several years. Now it's not. That doesn't eradicate the time in the past where
it provided real value to millions of users.

A party isn't a _failure_ just because everyone eventually has to go home. It
just means even successful things have ends.

~~~
gtaylor
> How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for
> several years.

Google Code had a few good years, and I am grateful that it happened. However,
it did _fail_ to win the software forge battle as the space heated up. It
_failed_ to evolve enough to keep up. It _failed_ to keep the mindshare it
built in those two initial years as Github and others blew past it over the
next six.

So call it for what it is: A project that had two good years out of eight.
Like many failures, there were successful moments and positive impacts on the
greater community. But closing down due to losing constitutes failure.

~~~
spankalee
It actually can be considered a success in the style of the original intent of
Chrome, Fiber, the Nexus line, and who knows, maybe the upcoming MVNO: to spur
innovation and increased investment in a stagnating product area.

When Google Code came out Source Forge was horrible, and Github didn't exist.
Google Code helped both open source software and the market for code hosting.
Now there's a dominant, but so far so great, offering with Github, and several
very good competitors.

Google Code wouldn't have even launched today, it's both necessary to projects
and to Google.

~~~
jrobbins
Yeah, it's tempting to take a small bit of credit for the existence of the new
generation of project hosting services. Google Code showed that there was room
for new players, so it did open the door, but you have to give credit to
GitHub for the concept of social coding. I never understood it and it goes
against my personal OSS DNA, so I would never have made that leap.

Another way to (very charitably) count Google Code's success is to look at the
role it played in Google. One of the largest users of Google Code has always
been Google itself. In 2005, Google had released like 8 project tarballs on
SF, kind of tentatively. Having Google Code as a home field endorsement
allowed that to grow into the thousands. Now, OSS releases seem pretty routine
for Google and feel more integrated with the community than ever.

------
sytse
Hi Chris, GitLab CEO here. What do you think about mentioning Gitlab.com as an
alternative for people to move to? It has unlimited (private) projects and
unlimited collaborators. It is based the open source GitLab project.

~~~
cdibona
It is a very nice system, but the stuff that goes into a shutdown had me
fighting to keep the message as tight as possible. I wanted to go on about
Bitbucket, gitlab, and put in a long discussion about how this doesn't effect
the scalable git team at google at all (we host android and chrome and a ton
of internal teams on a git backed on our backends here) , but had to keep the
message pure...

But I heartily recommend people look at Gitlab...

~~~
notsony
Rather than recommending a specific Git hoster such as Github, you should have
listed out alternatives... especially as Google Code also supports Subversion
and Mercurial.

~~~
sebastiank123
Subversion & Mercurial? Then actually just RhodeCode
([https://rhodecode.com](https://rhodecode.com)) is the only alternative since
it supports Git, Mercurial and Subversion.

Disclaimer: I am RhodeCode's co-founder.

~~~
sebastiank123
Kallithea is partly a fork of our old, legacy version of RhodeCode without all
the hard work our engineers spent over the last 12 months in turning an open
source project into a real, sophisticated enterprise product.

In more than 30,000 engineering hours our team added exclusive Subversion
support, 4x better performance and tons of security fixes (all based on
enterprise customer feedback), server-side-mergeable pull requests and maybe
the world's most flexible and advanced code review system.

Anyway, I recommend to try out both and choose the one you trust your source
code and team's productivity more.

P.S.: RhodeCode Enterprise 3 is free for startups and small teams.

~~~
sebastiank123
Reply to comment by jordigh:

Wow, there is someone really angry and offensive here and not really telling
the truth ...

It is sad to see how often forks go downhill if they were purely based on
ideologies and not with the user and general good for the project in mind.

But anyway, we welcome and fully support everyone to fork our old GPL
versions, the world does not need less but more source code management
systems, especially since we lost now one of the key players in Google Code.

~~~
bkuhn
> It is sad to see how often forks go downhill

As can be seen in my blog post and various talks in the subject, the Kallithea
community faced two choices: a fork of only the GPLv3'd components, or a
lengthy GPL enforcement battle with Rhodecode, who violated the GPL by
changing to a non-Free-Software license for code that combined GPL'd software
that wasn't copyrighted by Rhodecode.

If Rhodecode would go back to a pure GPLv3 model for its software and develop
the software in pubic again, I think the fork could be easily resolved and we
could all work together again. Thus, only one simple act of yours would
resolve the fork entirely, sebastiank123, will you take that act?

Meanwhile, I'm sure the Free Software user community can make the easy and
obvious choice between a community-run, developed-in-public Free Software
project that complies with GPLv3 and a for-profit-corporate run, developed-in-
private, semi-Open-Source project that has a history of GPLv3 compliance
problems.

------
rdtsc
Anyone else scared of the Github monoculture?

I am.

For all the touted distributed version control advantages we now have one
world global centralized repo. Yeah, yeah, I know you can clone it locally.
But of course if all the issues, and testing, and build tools are tied to
Github. Isn't it a bit disconcerting?

Maybe I am just paranoid. And not saying that Google code was going anywhere,
I saw more and more projects switch to Github and Google code receiving less
and less attention.

~~~
perakojotgenije
It's not monoculture, there is also bitbucket which IMHO is much better
product. Problem is that all the cool kids are now using github and if you
want to look cool you also have to use github. Or you could just ignore the
hype and use bitbucket.

~~~
javajosh
I'm genuinely curious, what do you like better about bitbucket?

~~~
lukaslalinsky
I migrated all my projects to Bitbucket when GitHub decided they do not want
to host release downloads (they reversed the decision after that). I also use
other Atlassian products and I trust the company to maintain the product, much
more than I trust GitHub.

Bitbucket has much better review tools - hierarchical comments, approve
button, side-by-side diff (GitHub has added that recently).

You can see commit log as a "graph", not just a simple list. It's easier to
identify merges.

And it does not charge for personal private repositories.

~~~
ta0967
_GitHub decided they do not want to host release downloads (they reversed the
decision after that)_

AFAICT they haven't, at least i don't see any way to upload release tarballs.
they certainly let anybody _download_ tarballs generated for any annotated
tag. but those tarballs are not immutable! once in a while, these tarballs
start coming down with different hashes, presumably as github changes the code
which generates those tarballs. that makes them less than ideal as package
sources.

~~~
lukaslalinsky
Well, it's not back in the original form, but you can attach binaries to
releases. But in any case, this was the trigger for me to not trust GitHub.
[https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-
software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)

------
stephen
Seems like one of the better (best?) shutdowns Google has done IMO.

There are several compelling (also free) alternatives (GitHub/etc.), so this
isn't like Reader (which had previously killed a lot of viable/non-free
competitors in its market).

They even have automated migration setup.

Looks pretty well done.

~~~
sjs382
Agreed. There are viable alternatives, there are migration tools, and the
"sunset" is staged nicely.

    
    
      You can't create any new projects on the service.
      
      You have 5 months to continue using the service while you work on finding an alternative.
      
      In 10 months, it's shut down, except that tarballs of project source, issues, and wikis will still be available.
      
      For ~12 more months (until the end of 2016), tar balls will be available for download.
    

A 2-year shutdown is more than reasonable. Hopefully by then I'll catch all of
the orphaned projects that I may want to use, and be able to save them
elsewhere myself.

Kudos, Google!

------
micro_cam
Myself and lots of other academics chose google code to host projects that are
no longer actively contributed to but still used or of interest to the
academic community as building blocks for future research. At the time it
seemed like the safest place to leave something.

I'll be moving my code and forking a few analytical projects I use appreciate
but I hope they would leave the site up in read only or archive mode for
longer then a year as i'm sure many authors have moved on and may not even be
aware of this change.

~~~
BrainInAJar
> At the time it seemed like the safest place to leave something.

Google is never the safest place to store anything, unless it's your personal
data. Google sunsets products constantly.

~~~
jfoster
Correct. That's only become particularly relevant in the past few years,
though. Sure, they retired projects before, but they are becoming increasingly
ambitious with the retirements. By that I mean they are retiring things that
lots of people still use (Reader), were not released that long beforehand
(Helpouts), could be viable businesses with modifications (Wallet for Digital
Goods), or contain large quantities of valuable content (Code).

My point is that Code has been running for quite a while, and at one stage it
probably did look like the safest way to keep a project online. Can't blame
people for choosing it earlier on.

------
pdknsk
Does this mean Chromium is also moving away from Google Code? I'm curious how
Google plans to migrate almost 500,000 bug reports.

I'm expecting Google to purchase GitHub next in order to improve its
deficiencies. In particular code search, which is really poor. Google Code
search is good, so Google can then apply its search expertise "in-house".

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch)

Maybe it's just habitual, but I prefer the issue tracker on Google Code as
well.

~~~
lnanek2
At least for Android bug reports, Google mostly ignores them and closes them
all as obsolete every release even though they weren't fixed. So I don't think
they'll have any problem ditching Chromium bug reports. I've heard they have
an internal bug tracker anyway, so the public ones like b.android.com are just
jokes on people who don't know any better.

~~~
notatoad
no, they _mostly_ don't do that. you just think they do because you only hear
about it when the internet gets angry about something.

The chromium bugtracker is very active and the chromium developers are very
open and helpful on it.

------
cpks
Honestly, while it makes sense to shut down Google Code, it is mindboggling
that Google destroys information. Public projects on Google Code ought to be
archived and the archives and redirects ought to be kept up in perpetuity.
People may not be reached by the announcements. Some projects, the authors may
be dead, in a coma, etc. Some may just not care.

This is the #1 reason I fear the cloud. When Google shuts a project down,
unless you act fast, you lose data.

Would it be rocket science for Google to set up a service which provides:

1\. DNS hosting 2\. Static page redirects 3\. Static page hosting 4\. Secure
static page hosting (available only to authenticated accounts)

in perpetuity? This would be a read/delete-only service.

When Google Reader shuts down, I could access my data forever. When Google
Code shut down, the project archives would stay up as read-only. Etc. No
maintenance, and a one-time migration with Google Takeout for each dying
service.

------
reuven
GitHub's success is due, in no small part, to their excellent interface.
Google Code was, by contrast, always ugly, hard to navigate, and hard to
understand. (This, of course, ignores the many features that GitHub offers,
which Google Code doesn't.)

I know of many companies that learned about GitHub via open-source projects,
which GitHub hosts for free, and decided that it was so good that they should
pay money. Hosting such open-source projects was a brilliant marketing move.

Google Code, by contrast, didn't seem to have a clear purpose other than
hosting open-source projects. It was a kind of souped-up SourceForge, rather
than a serious GitHub competitor. Google certainly had the resources to
improve it, but didn't have the motivation that GitHub did -- and we see the
results.

I can't say that I'm mourning Google Code, and I think that the way in which
they're sunsetting it is perfectly reasonable. But it demonstrates that free
services are only going to stick around so long as it is serving another
purpose, and that without such a purpose, you can't reasonably expect it to
stick around.

~~~
DannyBee
"Google Code was, by contrast, always ugly, hard to navigate, and hard to
understand."

It's really funny to hear this. If you look at press/reviews/OSS forum
comments of it around launch time, people thought it had an excellent
interface, because it was being compared to sourceforge.

Then github came, and by comparison, the interface looked like crap.

But you end up with this kind of weird history rewrite where the view becomes
"it was always ugly", when it was probably best-around for at least 2 years,
maybe more (depends on your view of early github)

"Google Code, by contrast, didn't seem to have a clear purpose other than
hosting open-source projects. It was a kind of souped-up SourceForge, rather
than a serious GitHub competitor. Google certainly had the resources to
improve it, but didn't have the motivation that GitHub did -- and we see the
results."

It was in fact, meant to be a better-than-sourceforge alternative, because
Google viewed sourceforge as a harmful-to-opensource monoculture, and
competition was desperately needed. github is a monoculture, but it doesn't
seem, at least right now, to be harmful.

As for "serious github competitor", it was never meant to be that. It predates
github by over 2 years :)

~~~
fafner
Google Code was such an improvement over SourceForge. I think the real problem
of Google Code was that it took them too long to support git. When GitHub
started Google Code was still SVN only and later they only added Mercurial
support. This made people look at GitHub and GitHub could shine with some new
ideas, like making code contributions extremely easy and placing the code
first. Which of course further increased the popularity of git and so on. By
the time Google Code added git support many major projects had moved and
GitHub was simply the place to be.

~~~
DannyBee
" I think the real problem of Google Code was that it took them too long to
support git."

Yeah, this is true. Part of it was that it was going to require a ton of work
to fit Git's concepts and protocols (remember, git only started supporting
smart http in 2010) into the infrastructure we had. It wasn't until the
storage backend for code was completely rewritten, and better http support was
added to git that it really became feasible.

(Note that Google code has a completely replicated storage backend
infrastructure. It's not just a ton of git/mercurial/svn setups)

------
Animats
What's the median lifetime of free cloud services? It seems to be around 5
years. Someone probably tracks that.

With SourceForge putting ads in installers, they're no longer a good option.
This leaves GitHub in a monopoly position, which is worrisome. Especially
given the terms:

 _" GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your
account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any
other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the
Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your
access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content
in your Account. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any
reason at any time."_

That could be a problem if GitHub's investors want more revenue generated. We
need some way to distribute open source projects so they're on at least two
services simultaneously, synched.

~~~
ericfontaine
"We need some way to distribute open source projects so they're on at least
two services simultaneously, synched."

google "git sync mirror" and a bunch of solutions appear.

~~~
shampine
We use GitLab Mirrors[1] to keep running syncs of our public repos on GitHub
mirrored into our self-hosted GitLab server. Works really well and I highly
recommend it.

[1][https://github.com/samrocketman/gitlab-
mirrors](https://github.com/samrocketman/gitlab-mirrors)

------
lnanek2
That's unfortunate. I still regularly come across things on Google Code that
are useful, usually just there because they were written before GitHub.
There's very little chance the authors will bother moving after all this time
and the resources will just disappear.

Heck, I even have several projects on there like a virtual pet one that's a
good demo of how to color game sprites dynamically in Android and another
that's a good demo of using the YouTube APIs. I doubt I'll both moving them,
but it's sad other people won't be able to use my code any more so that Google
can save a trivial amount of money.

~~~
yahelc
I wouldn't be surprised if The Archive Team stepped in to backup everything
that's left standing. That's sort of their MO.

------
jff
Once we saw that Go had moved to Github, we decided Google Code was probably
being shut down soon. And now, a week after we moved our own project from
Google Code to Github, it gets shut down. Feels good to have called it :)

------
ericfontaine
I'm sticking to self-hosted fossil-scm. Very simple, lightweight, C, but has
full wiki and issue tracker and code trees.

The one thing self-hosting lacks is the social network. What is really needed
for self hosted sites is a federated network (maybe with something like
pump.io and openID) to allow coders from other self-hosted or sass hosts to
seamlessly login and contribute and display their profile, and to help
mitigate spam.

------
jrochkind1
It's easy to migrate to some other repo, but I'm thinking about the tons of
abandonware projects currently hosted there, that will probably disappear.

Every once in a while, googling for a solution, I find something on google
code. That looks like it's no longer maintained, but is still useful for me to
see how they've done it or copy-paste code (if licensed appropriately).

------
pnathan
In the last 1-2 years, whenever I saw a project on Google Code, I immediately
opined that it was abandoned, and often I recall being right about that.

Thanks, Google. It's been a good run!

------
aikah
I knew it ... what a shame. You know what killed that product? BAD basic
UI/UX. it was horrible to use an naviguate in,so people moved to something
with better UX, better design and better visual. Google puts 0 efforts in
these things, at least in the browser. Funny how then Google comes with
"material design" , but can't update a few CSS on its old apps...

Github didn't get popular because it was written in Ruby(though it allowed
them to iterate fast),it became popular because devs actually put some effort
into the UI/UX and it made it easy to use ...

You know what else sucks? google app engine console , google apis console ...
look at Heroku console , simple clean and usable, are you going to drop app
engine too ?

So what's next after Google reader, and Google code? Google app engine ?

~~~
fixermark
If by "Google app engine console" you're referring to
[https://appengine.google.com/](https://appengine.google.com/), that's already
in fact "dropped." Check
[https://console.developers.google.com](https://console.developers.google.com).

The App Engine UI is getting an overhaul; App Engine as a product is probably
going to stick around.

------
swills
I have to wonder, are we all really comfortable with GitHub being basically
the only free code hosting option?

Yes, SourceForge(t) is still around, but with the talk of them injecting
adware into downloads, I'm sure many wouldn't use them.

This leaves, what, BitBucket and running something yourself?

~~~
icebraining
Bitbucket, Gitlab, Assembla, repo.or.cz and a bunch of others.

------
jfroma
While I agree that Google Code, as it is right now, isn't needed anymore, I
believe there is still room for innovation in this space and I wish there were
more players than github, pushing the boundaries harder.

As a software developer is a tool that we use all day.

~~~
warbiscuit
Among others, there's gitlab.com and bitbucket.com (and also mercurial, as an
alternative to git itself -- though the two can push/pull between each other's
repos with the right plugin).

~~~
jfroma
Yes, I've installed a gitlab for my company and I'm extremely happy with it, I
feel like I've much more control: authentication, authorization, how our
projects are organised, etc. We are currently using both private repos on
github and gitlab on aws.

Regarding mercurial, I used it a lot and hosted lot of things on bitbucket 4
years ago, but now I use git a lot more, just because it is what most of the
libraries and opensource projects I use are using.

~~~
sytse
Great to hear you like GitLab!

------
espadrine
Which big projects are still using Google Code I can at least think of
<[https://vim.googlecode.com>](https://vim.googlecode.com>).

~~~
jdlshore
Selenium.

------
rlx0x
They could atleast work together with the internet archive to conserve it, but
no of course not that would require be a bit of an effort, google can't do
that, because google doesn't care if thousands of open source projects are
going to be lost forever to the world. Don't be evil my ass. Archive team is
now our last hope as usual.

------
nadams
I predicted this a long time ago and I've moved my projects off.

I would recommend migrating to self hosting to prevent an issue like this in
the future. It's not too much of a hassle if you only have a couple of
projects but when you have 10+ migrating to another source code hosting
service is a real pain.

If you are looking for a good list of what's out there check out this
stackexchange post:
[http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/self-
ho...](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/self-hosted-
replacements-for-mercurial)

I tried rhodecode - it's very basic but upgrading was always a pain
(~1hr/upgrade). And when I did manage to get an upgrade to go through there
was always some problem.

Gitlab looks interesting but their community edition is lacking.

The one benefit of indefero/srchub is that it supports SVN, hg and git and
private projects. So people can request a project in whatever SCM system they
want and it's all managed from the same place. Also it's fairly easy to setup
and maintain - no real external dependencies such as rabbitMQ or something. I
have read of people even installing it on shared hosting.

I've personally tried [http://phabricator.org/](http://phabricator.org/) but
after installing it - it seemed like it was missing major features that you
would assume would be there.

Disclaimer: I am the forker/owner of srchub.

~~~
epriest
What are you missing from Phabricator?

[https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/feat...](https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/feature_requests/)

~~~
nadams
I think I was looking for a way to "hide" a project/make it private. And after
about 30 minutes of clicking around trying different settings/features I felt
like it was too bloated for me. For me - I love the simplistic nature of
Google Code.

~~~
epriest
You can set who can view a project with Edit Project > Visible To.

------
zatkin
GitHub has a user GoogleCodeExporter that is publicly logging all of the
repositories that are being transferred from Google Code to GitHub. The number
of commits might break GitHub!

[https://github.com/GoogleCodeExporter?tab=contributions&from...](https://github.com/GoogleCodeExporter?tab=contributions&from=2015-03-12)

------
dingdingdang
This is why [http://redecentralize.org/](http://redecentralize.org/) and other
similar efforts are so important - the centralized model is functionally unfit
for long term usage or relying upon. How to capitalize these newer
decentralized technologies are key for next leap in the web industry.

------
zmmmmm
This makes me question: how important does Google see developers as being as
part of their ecosystem?

I mean, I understand all the rational logic of what they are saying. Sure,
there are other services etc etc, the world will keep turning. But doesn't
Google see _any_ kind of benefit from having developers using their service?
In terms of mind share, having developers think positively about Google,
having them regularly come to and work with a Google service? Even in purely
commercial terms, it would be something that Google could leverage to expose
developers to their cloud services and other platforms. Traditionally, staying
close to developers in any way they can is something platform companies strive
to do.

But it seems like Google doesn't see any value in any of that. So my basic
question is, does Google still care about developers? Or have they simply
moved on as a company?

~~~
Andrex
Google wants developers contributing to their projects, so they go where the
developers go. The developers have moved onto GitHub and have effectively
abandoned Google Code, therefore so has Google. Stubbornly maintaining their
own service no one wants just breeds confusion and and a division of
resources.

As the article says:

> To meet developers where they are, we ourselves migrated nearly a thousand
> of our own open source projects from Google Code to GitHub.

Nearly a thousand open-source Google projects have been migrated to GitHub
already.

~~~
zmmmmm
That all sounds weak to me. Google largely abandoned Google Code _before_ all
the developers fled to Github. One of the _reasons_ people went to GitHub
because it was clear that Google was no longer investing in Google Code.
You're painting a picture where Google is just a passive entity that has no
control over what developers do, it just meekly follows them around. That is
hardly giving an impression that developers are a high priority to Google. If
they were a high priority, Google would want them all using a Google service,
and be willing to invest in that to keep them there, not cede them to third
party.

------
lultimouomo
Between this and gitorious, I forsee a lot of dead links in the future.

Hasty times we are living; a lot of useful information will be lost in the
cloud age as services shut down. Of course, that information wouldn't probably
have been available at all if it weren't for those services, but it's still
sad.

------
devsaysstuff
A canary in the mine moment - relying solely on a single third-party for your
hosting is always a risk - you are there at their grace, nothing more. Migrate
to Github? Hmm... they are becoming the defacto single monopoly platform - and
no one seems to notice or care?

------
SixSigma
I wonder how Uriel will move his code, what with him being dead and all. There
must be other projects too. Goodbye history.

------
apendleton
I think this will invite comparisons to, e.g., killing off Google Reader, but
they won't be deserved in my opinion. Google Reader was the leader in its
niche, and when they announced the shutdown everyone had to scramble to find
alternative services before all their stuff disappeared. By contrast, this is
a niche where the community has clearly moved on to other things that everyone
acknowledges as being better in basically every respect. There's just no need
for Google to continue to provide this service.

------
baldfat
So the move to GitHub by Google's open source code is the next step? I kept
hearing from people "in the know" that moving to GitHub was a real possibility
a long time ago.

~~~
kllrnohj
Most of Google's open source code is _already_ on GitHub and has been for
quite a while: [https://github.com/google](https://github.com/google)

~~~
baldfat
If you ever read any of my comments and down votes from Hacker News it was
always this. The code on GitHub is a mirror and not an actual GIT repo that is
accepting merges and being worked on.

~~~
DannyBee
This is not accurate. From a strict numbers perspective, ~95% are git repos
accepting merges and being worked on. ~5% are mirrors.

~~~
baldfat
Just saying I got downvoted a ton. Like around 50 or more times for just
saying Google is on GitHub.

------
eco
Glad to hear it. Every time I find a promising library and it's on Google code
I groan a little.

------
DigitalSea
I think we all saw this coming when Google started moving their projects over
to Github away from Google Code. This is definitely the right move to make.
However, I find it quite disturbing that Google is closing the service down
entirely. Surely it would be more beneficial to keep the site in read only
made for a good while longer given how deeply linked some parts of the web are
to Google Code repositories. Perhaps somehow clean up the platform and hand
over the reigns to the Internet Archive instead so it can be preserved and
then 301 redirect any request to the archive.

Google really needs to get some kind of procedure in place for retiring their
applications and services. Surely they realise that being the largest Internet
company out there they have responsibilities to do the right thing by the
millions that rely on their services daily? You can't just throw something
away even if many moved on to Github and Bitbucket quite some time ago. Why
not some kind of automated service that attempts to redirect to projects that
have moved to Github and Bitbucket? Google has a trove of data, surely they
can achieve something like that with pretty close accuracy and then use their
manual approach for the projects that they could not automatically link.

------
ocdtrekkie
I'm not surprised, and yeah, I've assumed code on Google Code is abandoned by
default. But, you know, just yet another Google product biting the dust.

~~~
51Cards
While I've been sad to see a lot of Google projects come to and end I think
this one is justifiable. I don't know of any active projects still hosted
there.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think my only serious concern is that even this year, I've downloaded
several projects off Google Code. I am worried that a lot will be lost if they
are not archived somewhere.

------
chemodax
My favorite comment: "Google I hope someday you close your search engine and
company at all. Welcome to Google Cemetery."

------
dasil003
Meanwhile SourceForge just keeps limping along.

------
stuaxo
Just going to join the people asking that you speak to archive.org to get
these old projects hosted.

Sure I can move my own old projects, but there is plenty of stuff out there
that will be lost.

Part of what makes modern coding efficient is being able to not just look up
working libraries but also to find old solutions to similar problems.

------
seagreen
These migrations would be much easier if we specified dependencies by content,
not location. Obviously not Google's fault, just something to think about as
we build future systems.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM)

------
landr0id
Anyone know how this will effect Google's Project Zero, or where they will
post their findings in the future? GitHub doesn't offer the flexibility that
Google Code has for marking issues as public/private which Project Zero relies
on heavily.

------
nperez
Honestly, I thought plans to sunset it had already been put in place. I hate
every moment that I want to check out a project and find that it's hosted on
Google Code. The web has moved extremely fast in the last decade (and will
probably move even faster in the next decade), and I can tell that I'm looking
at 2006 code. There was never a push to give it the love it needed to compete
with Github.

I hope there is some level of cooperation with those who want to archive it.
It's important enough to be archived. The UX is not up to standards in 2015,
though, so I will bid farewell to it with some amount of satisfaction and some
amount of regret.

------
kevin_thibedeau
There goes my PageRank. Thanks Google.

Does anyone know of a way to make the landing page at GitHub look less
confusing than the default? That is the #1 reason I went with GC. I want first
time users to see descriptive text not an activity log.

~~~
gerbal
make a gh_pages branch and build a descriptive jekyll page.

Or just have a good Readme.md and hope people scroll down.

------
perdunov
Acquiring GitHub would seem like a pretty natural move by Google, wouldn't it?

------
mooreds
Just ported a project I was involved in a couple of years ago to github.
Thanks for the heads up.

( [https://github.com/mooreds/gwt-crypto/](https://github.com/mooreds/gwt-
crypto/) )

------
mikelat
This doesn't come off as much as a surprise, because there are better
alternatives because google code stagnated and wasn't a priority. Google code
still has very old looking interface (especially when contrasted to their
active products like G+ and gmail), google code only declined because google
didn't want to work on it.

This doesn't do google any favours, as with every product they launch I'll be
asking myself if it's worth investing time or money into just for it to
stagnate.

------
sebastiank123
Hi, Sebastian from RhodeCode here. We do a fully-featured, behind-the-firewall
SCM for Git, Mercurial and SVN - used by some of the world's largest
organizations and also some well known Silicon Valley startups.

If you want to host your source code on your own (virtual) server then please
contact us at [https://rhodecode.com](https://rhodecode.com) and mention
Google Code - we are giving away free licenses for startups and smaller teams.

------
nercury
I was surprised to find my old project there from 2009: a simple lib for utf8
font rendering with OpenGL. I exported it into github, only to find that it
never had any source hosted in source control - all my source was in a tarball
inside "downloads".

I guess there are many authors like me who don't even remember they are
hosting something there - it would be sad to loose all that code.

------
joewalnes
This is a slightly modified snippet extracted from something I wrote last year
predicting the Google Code shutdown.
[https://medium.com/@joewalnes/some-2015-tech-
predictions-1e7...](https://medium.com/@joewalnes/some-2015-tech-
predictions-1e78ff31cbfd)

\------------

It's not about Mercurial vs Git.

When Google Code added Mercurial support, Mercurial and Git were roughly equal
in popularity. Git was more functional, but Mercurial was a lot simpler to
use. In fact, almost everyone I spoke to at the time preferred Mercurial and
honestly I thought it was going to be the winner. Project hosting sites that
had typically used centralized source control systems like CVS or SVN
scrambled to add Git and Mercurial support (including Google Code).

Then GitHub happened. They realized that the it's not just the source control
system that should be decentralized but every aspect of the project. Projects
could be forked with a single click, pull requests created and tracked,
network graphs explored. It created an organic and discoverable open-source
ecosystem, the likes of which we never saw on Google Code, SourceForge, etc.
Anyone could explore ideas in existing projects without having to gain
committer access. It was magical.

GitHub may have just as easily decided to bet on Mercurial instead. I believe
if that would have happened, Mercurial would be the most widely used system
today. BitBucket did something similar for Mercurial and did pretty well, but
GitHub always had the lead.

 __It was the project hosting sites that lead the source control systems, not
the other way round __

So, back to Google Code. It could have been something huge and it could have
made Mercurial the winner, but Google Code never grokked the importance of
"social coding". Even though the source code was decentralized, the projects
themselves were still centralized. Decentralized project concepts such as
forking, network graphs, pull requests, etc - this was all from the new world
of GitHub.

Over the past two years we've seen Google release new open-source projects on
GitHub, then existing projects starting to migrate. Recently, Go started
migration too — this is no casual move because it affects the import paths
used in a vast amount of user created Go code which will build breakages.
Yeah, the writing is on the wall for Google Code.

When SourceForge fell out of favor it was sold. It’s now filled with ads,
especially deceiving ones on project downloads page which try to trick users
into downloading some malware infested turd burner. In fact, for a while
SourceForge were actively modifying genuine project releases to include
spyware. Cocks.

Google didn't do a SourceForge. If there's anything we’ve learned from Google
over the years is that they’re not afraid of shutting down projects that don’t
work out. By the way, I really respect Google for this — killing products
takes guts.

Google Code — I salute you. You did well, you made the open source world a
better place, and above all you stepped aside when you knew the time was
right.

------
boyter
I wonder if there will be a feed for the list of projects currently inside
Google Code. I would very much like to grab the lot and preserve them inside
searchcode.com

Anyone know if this is possible? Last time I checked it didn't have a public
API other then the tracker and I was performing some rather ugly
crawling/scraping to get a list of projects.

------
tjdetwiler
The email I received made me look at some long lost repositories of mine that
I did while learning in school. It's always fun to be able to look back on
work you did when you were less experienced.

It's unfortunate how transient the internet can be. How much information is
created and lost over such a short period of time.

------
xasos
Sure, services like GitLab and BitBucket are cool, but GitHub is the superior
option. Take away the fact that they are open source/have unlimited free
repos, and there isn't much else.

GitHub has a superior UI, a waaaaaay bigger community, a great API, offers
student discounts (5 free repos), and other goodies.

~~~
sytse
The GitLab UI is improving at a rapid pace, have you tried it recently? Is
there anything you miss from our API?
[http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/](http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/) With GitLab.com
your free repos will never expire.

------
jamiesonbecker
It may not be valuable to the _author_. That does not mean it's not valuable
to some future searcher.

This is not the right way to bid goodbye to a lot of open source code that
will disappear from the world forever.

Perhaps Google could partner with Internet Archive to preserve this history
before it is lost _forever_?

------
doktrin
> abuse management

The article gives the impression that they were combating some sort of
systemic (malicious?) abuse. I don't doubt the statement, but I'm having
trouble picturing exactly what they're going through. What kind of abuse do
project hosting providers face on a recurring basis?

------
lucb1e
> We were worried about reliability

You don't say?

After pulling the plug on all the products I liked, I'm worried too.

------
dawson
CodePlex will be next is my guess.

~~~
itsbits
Codeplex will stay some more time..but I am expecting around 2016-17..

~~~
talles
Why? Microsoft itself already jumped to GitHub...

[https://microsoft.github.io](https://microsoft.github.io)

------
scanr
I find the consolidation in repository hosting surprising. It feels like it
should be the kind of ecosystem that supports lots of competing repository
hosting providers that cater to various niches. This may be because I quite
like bitbucket.

------
gnachman
Is there any alternative that supports issue attachments? That's the one
feature that I really need to live for iTerm2 but github and gitlab don't
support it except for images.

~~~
DouweM
GitLab developer here, and happy to let you know that support for arbitrary
attachments to issues and comments was contributed by a member of community
earlier this month, and will be included in GitLab 7.9, due to be released on
the 22nd :)

------
diminoten
Makes perfect sense, but I'm surprised the answer is to shut it down, rather
than to build a competitor to GitHub.

------
Untit1ed
Is anyone else finding that the Github importer just stalls at 0%?

I don't really want to have to redo the whole wiki manually :(.

------
louwrentius
What took it so long? That's my question honestly. Google code was already
dead for at least two years.

------
max0563
This is a sad day, all of my early projects were hosted on Google Code. I'm
sad to see it go.

------
Apocryphon
This is Google's "Yahoo! shutting down GeoCities" moment, isn't it?

------
jheriko
It was not competing with bitbucket or github, but still a shame to see.

------
myohan
GitHub wins! I think it's good that Google indirectly admitted their service
is not as good as Github, now they need to do the same thing about Google+.
Google, you are an amazing company but sorry you can't possibly be the best at
everything.

------
soapdog
they should keep it on read only form. Lots of good FOSS will be lost if they
pull the plug.

------
pellanti
Shame to see it go but hey ho!

------
tam000
I am glad its shutting, i just hoped it did a lot earlier. I love GitHub..
Please Google make it user friendly..

------
stefantalpalaru
And that's why you should never ever rely on a Google service.

~~~
MrZongle2
At least, not without a contingency plan that could be implemented in 30-90
days.

------
I8ZYPEYXSQ
I8ZYPEYXSQ

------
I8ZYPEYXSQ
Oi

