
What the Crypto Community Should Learn from GitHub's Acquisition - benmdi
https://www.buildblockchain.tech/blog/crypto-learn-from-git
======
qsymmachus
This is the thousandth time I've clicked on a "crypto" article expecting it to
be about cryptography, and instead it's about blockchain/cryptocurrencies.

Is this a losing battle?

~~~
gsich
Haven't heared of a "cryptography community", so I'll assumed
cryptocurrencies.

~~~
pejrich
There was a cryptography community before there was a cryptocurrency
community, by definition.

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nemild
I've lived through a few eras, where open and/or decentralized systems were
expected to win (Internet, crypto today). For most users, the critical things
are usability and utility, not decentralization.

If we care about decentralization, we have to care about these points even
more, to make products competitive with what users are used to. Even though
many engs I know value decentralization, most people won't choose systems for
this reason alone.

Just like with Github, there was a bunch of anger before when Slack was
displacing IRC. I wrote some thoughts about what we/I could learn from that
example:

What Open Source Can Learn From Slack

[https://www.nemil.com/musings/oss-and-
slack.html](https://www.nemil.com/musings/oss-and-slack.html)

If you really want to get more cynical, Tim Wu's book "The Master Switch" is a
masterful look at 20th century technologies (radio, telephone, telegraph)
going through the idealism of the early days, to the inevitable frustration
when it creates new anti-consumer behemoths.

~~~
benmdi
Indeed, indeed. It's a tough issue and I do sometimes slip into cynicism about
it. At the very least, I hope by being aware of it we can mitigate the worst
outcomes, even if we ultimately always see some degree of re-centralization.

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twblalock
I expected this to be dumb, but it's a very perceptive article that makes a
very good point: There are a lot of benefits to centralization, and people who
want to create decentralized systems need to recognize that and take the
necessary steps to ensure their systems do not become re-centralized.

~~~
benmdi
Thanks! Glad to have surprised you. That's pretty much it, yup!

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phicoh
"With this new set of powers, we saw a Cambrian explosion of open source that
coincided with git's adoption. [...] That's where GitHub stepped in, providing
elegant, centralized solutions around all of these new problems."

Did the author live in a parallel universe? There was an insane number of
small open source projects way before git was created. And there was a clear
place where to find them: SourceForge.

The cool things about git are the ability to sync repos and the ability to
handle merging branches way better than SVN.

Everything else we had. Sourceforge dropped the ball and that allowed github
to take its place.

~~~
benmdi
Haha, no I was in this universe, and am old enough to have participated in
that era as well ;)

I think it's pretty clear, though, that both the quantity and quality of open
source software has increased drastically in the last decade or so. I think
it's fair to say I may have stretched the degree of causation git had, as
opposed to just correlation. But I also think it's pretty evident git, as a
tool, had _something_ to do with it.

~~~
phicoh
(Of course this anecdotal) I see no correlation which source code control
software.

What I think is key for open source is the quality of internet access we have
these days. You can copy any repo without really thinking about it.

The other aspect is that open source is extremely mainstream. Mobile is still
a reflection of the old world where everybody tries to make a small amount of
money which some closed source apps.

Lots of people realize that is it is better to collaborate with other people
in an open source project then to be on your own writing your own programs.

All of that would work just as well on SVN.

------
hudon
This article would make more sense if crypto currencies were actually
decentralized... that ship sailed maybe five years ago? Today, only a handful
of corporations control the majority of the proof-of-work hashrate [0]. What’s
more, development teams represent another centralized group (ie. you can count
the devs that contribute to consensus code on 2 hands if you’re generous).

So my question is: in what way are crypto-currencies not already in the state
the article is warning about? If I capture the lead commiter to your chain as
well as the lead miner, don’t I effectively own the chain?

[0] “Both Bitcoin and Ethereum mining are very centralized, with the top four
miners in Bitcoin and the top three miners in Ethereum controlling more than
50% of the hash rate.”
[http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/01/15/decentralization-
bi...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/01/15/decentralization-bitcoin-
ethereum/)

------
davesque
This was actually a great article. So much crypto centered content nowadays is
garbage. Very pleasantly surprised by this. I think there are even a lot of
interesting related questions that were not explored in this relatively
concise post.

Though I don't have any problem with them today, services like Infura are
definitely analogous to GitHub and may eventually become weak points in the
same way.

~~~
benmdi
Glad you liked it!! Indeed, I could have written much more, but it felt like
it was getting long as it was :)

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fwdpropaganda
Very insightful article, thank you.

So the cycle is:

\- problem exists

\- quickly centralized solution to problem appears

\- new problems appears

\- slowly decentralized alternative solution to old problem appears

\- repeat

I would add that it seems that the big winners are the ones coming up with
centralized solutions. The inventors of decentralized solutions don't have
nearly as great rewards.

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flyblackbox
I am really upset about this acquisition.. And equally or more concerned with
centralized power points, maybe to an extreme that is too radical. But I do
believe at it's core, crypto is different because it's core ethos is to reject
that notion. So while the internet disrupted centralized broadcasters with a
decentralized protocol for content distribution, it wasn't baked into the
technologies ethos. So in my opinion, this difference of core mission, along
with the ability to launch dApps (anonymously even, if you'd like) without
fear of being shut down, will be a differentiation that protects this
technology's fate from creating new centralized choke points.

Ie. if Sean Parker was driven by the mission/ethos of crypto, Napster couldn't
be taken down, people would still be using it today, and the traditional music
industry would be dead (as well as traditional tech companies like Spotify).

------
mLuby
This happens because `distributed < distributed + centralized` nearly always.

For example, git is great, but git plus an (optional) issue tracker has more
value, so that's what people use.

Coincidentally (or perhaps causally?), FOSS < FOSS + closed source.

The only way I can see this changing is if the distributed (or free or open-
source) benefits of the system fail early and painfully when centralized (or
paywalled or close-sourced). I can't think of any such systems off the top of
my head.

~~~
benmdi
Yeah, sometimes I worry this pattern is inevitable as well. At the very least,
though, I'd like to see us paying attention to the issue this go-around with
crypto/blockchain

