
Why I no longer use GitHub (2018) - stargrave
https://wowana.me/blog/why-i-no-longer-use-github.html
======
tannhaeuser
I have no gripe with gh specifically, but it's very disappointing that the
first thing people do is flock to centralized services on top of the brilliant
p2p scm that is git. You really don't need to look further to get a grasp of
how things for the dweb will work out.

Also of note: github blocks indie search crawlers, contributing to search
engine monoculture. Moreover, your user's clicks are captured by a company
with an incentive to push for privacy invasion as a business model going
forward. So, indeed, F/OSS projects using gh should definitely reconsider, if
they haven't already done so when MS bought gh.

~~~
rtpg
If I want to contribute to a project, it’s super helpful to know what the
canonical location for this is (“canonical repository” vs “pull from some
random persons repo”)

If I want to run a FOSS project, I might not be interested in the details of
managing distribution and security of some server (one-click software rather
than setting up some server myself)

I also .... kinda don’t care about account management (=> using something that
people already use is nice)

Peer to peer isn’t actually interesting for almost any aspect of a project.
The main advantage is availability, but it doesn’t help (and can hinder) other
objectives of running a FOSS project.

I think that there’s a way to get most of the goodies (see GitLab... kinda),
though it’s a hell of a lot more work than “just send email patches around!” I
think sourcehut is getting there though

------
aboutruby
> if you are attached to your CIs then there are probably decent FOSS
> solutions for that

[https://drone.io](https://drone.io) is open-source and works very well.

I personally can't stand Gitlab's interface and general slowness.

sh.rt (which kind of became [https://sourcehut.org](https://sourcehut.org))
looks much better but it looks like you need to be logged in to see most of
the content.

About abuse on Github, I only had issues with posting email addresses in
public gists (even if they are public ones), and saw repo owners editing other
people's comments, which should not be a thing.

About Github's source code, it's not open-source but you can host it with
Github Enterprise and actually look at the source code (it's a very simple
encryption of the source code as far as I remember).

Anyway, since Microsoft's acquisition of Github I started to worry of the
general direction Github is going to but so far they haven't messed up too
much IMHO.

~~~
dsumenkovic
Hello! Thanks for mentioning GitLab. I would like to ask if you could provide
more details about what should be improved regarding the interface. Feel free
to open an issue about it via [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues).

We are heavily focusing on performance improvements - both in the product (so
that features run better)[1] and in our GitLab.com infrastructure (so that
GitLab.com runs more reliably)[2].

[1] - [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/merge_requests?label...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/merge_requests?label_name%5B%5D=performance)

[2] - [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/infrastructure/issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/infrastructure/issues)

------
xorand
There was a time when I thought places like GitHub are the future of Open
Science [1], which will replace paper articles by data+programs. The problem
is now well-known: at any moment somebody will buy the whole place and will
upgrade it, so to say. [1]
[https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/the-
price-o...](https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/the-price-of-
publishing-with-github-figshare-g-etc/)

------
revskill
The title should be: Why i move from Github to Gitlab. The post won't be
existent without Gitlab.

------
IshKebab
This is rubbish.

> GitHub is not FOSS. Gitlab is.

Firstly, I don't think it is hypocritical to run a service that isn't FOSS,
but that also supports FOSS. Secondly, nobody is under the illusion that
Github is open source. Thirdly, Gitlab is only _partly_ open source. Many of
its features aren't.

> Github pull requests suck, why not just use email?

Maybe because email doesn't: a) Give you a convenient list of open pull
requests, b) Give you a list of pull requests that other people can see at all
c) Let you do nice line-by-line code reviews, d) Let you integrate CI tools
easily, etc. etc. etc.

> You can't host malware on Github

Ok?

> I set up gitolite for repository access control, cgit for a simple Web
> frontend, and I plan to include an issue tracker that treats E-mail as
> first-class rather than forcing users to create accounts (possibly Bugzilla
> but I'm open to suggestions)

Riiiight. I'm sure everyone will love going back to the good old days of
Bugzilla.

~~~
btasovac
Hello, Community Advocate from GitLab here.

We are an open core company. We ship two editions - Community Edition and
Enterprise Edition. CE is completely open source and licensed under MIT
license. EE is proprietary, closed source code but we try to work in a way
similar to GitLab CE: the issue tracker is publicly viewable and the EE
license allows modifications.

In conclusion (TLDR), GitLab has an open core business model and ships both
open and closed source software.

~~~
IshKebab
Ok... exactly my point.

------
LifeLiverTransp
They already started to botch it up anyway, you can see the "copy-pasted-from-
competitors-we-wanna-be" feature creep already arriving. That notification
timeline lifted from the manyfacedbook, where they want you to look at the
adds they will shove into it soon enough.

That maintenance lack for the open source users and the lack of new really
relevant features.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Actually, GitLab started as an open source feature-by-feature copy of GitHub.
Since incorporating they have actually introduced many original
functionalities, including their own CI pipeline.

Additionally, there is nothing wrong with implementing a better version of
what the competition offers.

~~~
LifeLiverTransp
Im not critizizing gitlab. Im whacking the webpage formerly known as github.

~~~
BerislavLopac
My apologies then, but it wasn't very clear from your comment.

~~~
LifeLiverTransp
Agreed - could have been more precise. Just had a hard time holding down that
bile that builds up- once some clueless productmanager jams down useless
obsticle-"features" in my workflow, to meet some delusional growth projection.

------
leereeves
Why did this drop from #1 to #89 in a few seconds? That was strange.

~~~
hguhghuff
Maybe it got artifially upvotes or flagged.

------
hguhghuff
This stuff doesn’t matter ... it really boils down to the extreme FOSS
ideological stance.

Fact is GitHub is the site that won this winner take all race. If you put your
open source project anywhere else you do your project and it’s users a
disservice. Everyone knows and is familiar with github and uses it every day
... taking your project elsewhere takes it out of this daily workflow.

And frankly who cares if GitHub itself is not open source... honestly it
really doesn’t matter in any meaningful practical way, it matters only from an
ideological standpoint.

I like it that the modern world of OSS isn’t controlled by the extreme
ideology because these people tend to choose worse options to get the job done
because that worse option meets an ideological position.

~~~
leereeves
The commercial option tends to look like the better option at first, because
companies invest a lot of money upfront to polish the product and buy market
share by giving the product away.

Later, when the company is fully grown, customers are locked-in, and investors
want to cash out, the commercial option often becomes the worse option.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Except GitHub has become freer since Microsoft bought it, you can now have
unlimited private repos for no cost.

~~~
ksaj
This was a choice that kept me on board without panicking and jumping ship
like many others. I'm pretty comfortable with github, and find its search
engine options and overall site responsiveness (speed) to literally quash any
chance of me joining the fleeing masses. The private repos was a very happy
addition.

