
OpenJDK Migrates to GitHub - dcgudeman
https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/07/openjdk-github-migration/
======
giomasce
It bothers me that they repeatedly write about a migration "from Mercurial to
GitHub", rather than "from Mercurial to Git". It seems to imply that GitHub
hosting is the only way to run Git.

It's perfectly fine to say that they are moving to GitHub hosting, but not to
put it on the same level as Mercurial: Mercurial and Git are
applications/protocols, while GitHub is a hosting service. You should compare
application with application and hosting service with hosting service.

~~~
pjmlp
For most people it is.

Just like we can discuss all day about POSIX, UNIX and various implementations
of them, while most people would relate to Ubuntu.

~~~
mrpippy
Or even worse, describing an entire Linux binary compatibility layer as "Bash
on Ubuntu on Windows", like Microsoft originally did.

[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/03/30/run-
ba...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/03/30/run-bash-on-
ubuntu-on-windows/)

~~~
ChrisSD
I'm not sure what's objectionable about that blog post? It describes a common
scenario for using the compatibility layer (and indeed the main motivation for
creating it).

Especially early on when the compatibility layer was only fully tested with a
specific version of Ubuntu.

------
tannhaeuser
The problem with consolidating everything on GitHub is that, to me, you're
selling your user's and contributor's clicks. Moreover, GitHub blocks indie
search crawlers, and as such is just a content silo. Now F/OSS software
licenses, at least of the reciprocal kind, make very much a political
statement by their license choice, willingly or not, that is questioned by
using GitHub (or any other gateway cashing in on user engagement data) as
project host. The really ugly and depressing thing is that F/OSS projects seek
networking effects on GitHub, turning a super-powerful and easy dSCM into a
centralized hub in a heartbeat; to me, they kindof devalue their own (massive)
work by trading it for only the attention value it gets on GitHub, and
contributing to the oligopolistic web. Hosting GPL software on GitHub is like
sticking fingers in your ears, dogmatically adhering to a licensing taxonomy
of yesteryear, while refusing to face today's problems. I'm not sure what
incentive to go to GitHub is there for a project with a defacto closed group
of developers that's been in the works for years or decades already; it's not
like the project seeks indie contributors anyway. Might be better to support
[https://codeberg.org/](https://codeberg.org/) .

~~~
asddubs
oh wow, this is just a straight up github clone. I actually kinda like that,
it's an interface pretty much everyone is used to, and it's good too. Maybe
they should change the color scheme or something a little though, so you don't
forget you're not just on github, cause if I scrolled down and reopened the
tab, I would definitely think I was on github

~~~
cipherboy
Codeberg is just a hosted Gitea instance (click help in the menu bar and it
takes you to the Gitea docs).

Gitea is wonderful and definitely something you can host yourself for friends
and family. I've even enabled KaTeX rendering in comments/issues/Markdown
files on mine, which is something GitHub probably won't do anytime soon.

I'd definitely check it out.

~~~
asddubs
oh huh, I had heard of gitea but I didn't know it was so similar to github. I
may actually set up an instance for myself then, I'm using github issues for
some personal stuff that isn't collaborative

------
rvz
> Host all OpenJDK Git repositories at
> [https://github.com/openjdk/](https://github.com/openjdk/).

Good choice from moving to Git [0], very risky move on moving to GitHub. If
this was just a mirror then that would be fine but it is moving from Mecurial
to Git and then the whole project to GitHub.

They should do what Xfce, GNOME and KDE have done and they have self-hosted
their own repositories on Gitlab, which GitHub requires the Enterprise Edition
for self-hosting. Not really an option, unless you want to pay for this.

The risks outweigh the pros for GitHub as I have said before [1] and will say
it again. Self-hosting over 'centralising everything' on GitHub.

[0] [https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/357](https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/357)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565)

~~~
pron
I work on OpenJDK. Here are some steps we've taken to not overly depend on
GitHub:

1\. Issues stay on a self-hosted JIRA.

2\. All PRs get an automatically generated patch that's posted to the mailing
list, and all comments are two-way mirrored between GH and the mailing list.

3\. All links to commits in issues don't point directly at GH but at an
indirection through our domain.

4\. All bots work on both GH and GitLab

This means that we can move off of GH pretty much instantly if the need
arises. But self hosting with GitLab just wouldn't serve our goals. We want
speed all around the world, and we don't want to spend resources on
administration.

~~~
The_rationalist
_Issues stay on a self-hosted JIRA._ It's really sad as you will have order of
magnitude less contributions on jira. Couldn't you autosynchronize github.com
issues to jira ones? Otherwise, you're hurting the ecosystem as a whole

------
burtonator
YEARS ago at a conference I got really mad at Gosling and told him that Java
was going to be Open Source one way or another and that they might as well
Open Source it now and maybe SUN wouldn't implode.

Well... I was right.

~~~
bluejekyll
How would this have prevented Sun from “imploding”?

Wasn’t Sun’s main issue that they were selling extremely expensive hardware
and a proprietary OS that were completely overtaken by x86 and Linux?

I remember getting to play with the very expensive hardware they’d handout to
startups in the late 90’s and early 00’s. It was good hardware, but it wasn’t
so much better than the slightly more buggy and much less costly Linux systems
at the time.

~~~
Twirrim
According to Larry Ellison, one of the biggest problems that Oracle discovered
when they acquired Sun was that sales compensation was based solely on the
value of the sale, with no requirement for the deal to make a profit. Their
sales team had been merrily selling them to bankruptcy. [1]

Geniuses with tech, but maybe not so good on the business side?

[https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-
TB-24039](https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-24039)

~~~
tehlike
Reminds of the saying: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
measure.

Also a good read: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-
massacre-190...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-
massacre-1902)

~~~
hassancf
Interesting. “But then there started to be curious sightings, all around town:
Rats, alive and healthy, running around without their tails.

It turned out the hunters would rather amputate a live animal’s tail than take
a healthy rat, capable of breeding and creating so many more rats—with those
valuable tails—out of commission. There were also reports that some Vietnamese
were smuggling foreign rats into the city. And then the final straw: Health
inspectors discovered, in the countryside on the outskirts of Hanoi, pop-up
farming operations dedicated to breeding rats.”

------
m0zg
Java development is now hosted by Microsoft. :-)

~~~
foepys
I don't exactly know why you are being downvoted, you are absolutely right,
albeit a bit snarky.

Microsoft is currently embracing open source and people wonder why that is.
Their history around FOSS is worrying and some question if it's part of
"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".

Plus it's very ironic that Microsoft is now the hoster of Java's source code
after their failed proprietary Java implementation (J++) which eventually lead
to the creation of C# after being sued by Sun.

~~~
notRobot
A minor point: while MS has been embracing OSS, they've never been in support
of software freedoms ("libre") because it's fundamentally incompatible with
their business models. Yes, most OSS software is also libre, but MS doesn't
care about that.

~~~
pjmlp
Neither do many FOSS developers nowadays regardless of the dream, as
supermarkets don't take pull requests so they end up adopting dual licenses or
putting the golden eggs behind Server walls.

------
AbacusAvenger
How many applications are left that still use Mercurial? I can only think of
two big ones, the JDK and Mozilla's entire code base. Are there still others
around? Seems like everyone's moving to Git these days, which is great
considering I never did get the hang of Mercurial.

~~~
justaguy88
It's a bit odd that there's such a monoculture around git though, where are
the competitors?

~~~
creato
Should we care about a monoculture around a local used/hosted, open source
tool?

I might worry about a monoculture around a hosted service like github, but not
git itself.

~~~
_ZeD_
I'm sorry because both the ui and the underlying model of Mercurial is
factually Better than git

~~~
chrisseaton
> is factually Better than git

It obviously isn't 'factually' better - that's a matter of opinion not fact.

And in my experience, both Mercurial's model and UI is very over-complicated
with far too many concepts. Git has a smaller number of simpler primitives and
primitive operations. I think that makes the underlying model of Git better
and that's why I prefer it.

------
saagarjha
Will they be moving contributions to GitHub pull requests as well?

~~~
The_rationalist
Yes

------
sharken
Having worked with multiple Mercurial repositories managed by a custom tool
which is now also being converted to Git, I can confirm that the smart choice
for a new developer is to choose Git.

It’s no longer “Choose Git or Mercurial?” that is the topic, but instead it is
which Git branching model to choose.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Why is that? Hg still seems nicer to use in my experience

~~~
sharken
For the usual VCS operations such as adding files, committing and pushing i’d
say they are quite similar.

If you’re doing really complicated merges (which you should avoid anyway),
then yes Mercurial is better in my opinion.

But given the prevalence of Git, e.g. it is much easier to find a new dev with
Git experience and also much easier to Google a Git problem, it seems only
natural that more and more Mercurial repos will be converted to Git.

------
pyuser583
Lol. I was looking for the openjdk source code. Was confused about current
status. Good to know.

------
The_rationalist
I wonder how much this will increase contributions and as such how much the
JVM will improve :)

