
Get off of GitHub - pljns
http://sudophilosophical.com/2016/02/09/get-off-of-github/
======
chriswarbo
I find GitHub rather ironic. Git was created in the first place to pick up the
pieces after the BitKeeper debacle [1]

BitKeeper is/was a proprietary VCS platform, which enticed in developers by
providing a free (gratis) version for FOSS projects. Sound familiar? When the
"no reverse-engineering" terms were inevitably broken, access was revoked and
many Linux kernel developers who'd come to rely on BitKeeper found themselves
out of luck.

Torvalds et al wrote Git to replace the functionality of BitKeeper. Not only
did this give those devs who'd come to rely on DVCS something to use (IIRC,
Torvalds himself sent/received patches via email; a workflow which is well
supported in Git), but it would ensure that no one entity could have too much
control over Linux (and other FOSS) development.

Then GitHub came along, a proprietary VCS platform which enticed in developers
by providing a free (gratis) version for FOSS projects, and quickly overtook
previous alternatives like Gitorious, and became a single entity with too much
control over FOSS development.

Whilst I admire GitLab's work, since Gitorious went away I'm reluctant to
advocate such a single point of control/failure again. I now host my git repos
on my own server[2], with a static HTML interface generated by git2html[3]
(with a few tweaks [4]). Patches are welcome by email.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper)
[2] [http://chriswarbo.net/git](http://chriswarbo.net/git) [3]
[http://hssl.cs.jhu.edu/~neal/git2html/](http://hssl.cs.jhu.edu/~neal/git2html/)
[4] [http://chriswarbo.net/git/git2html/](http://chriswarbo.net/git/git2html/)

~~~
tmikaeld
Much of Githubs success with FOSS where the API's, tools and simplicity of
putting up new repos.

These days package managers such as Node's npm/bower, Sublime text packages,
PHP's Composer rely on the accessibility of this central place for code
access.

I'm worried that without a central place for FOSS code, the community of FOSS
projects will fragment and some may become unaccessible when they are needed.
Either by running out of hosting funds, getting hacked or becoming
unmaintained.

Searching for FOSS projects will become more difficult and it would be harder
to get any idea of how often the projects is updated or even how "popular" it
is.

~~~
chriswarbo
These aren't new problems though; the same arguments apply if you replace
"repos" with "Web sites" and "GitHub" with, say, "GeoCities" or "Tumblr".

Package managers certainly aren't tied to sites like GitHub; for example, I
host my own Composer packages (
[https://packagist.org/users/warbo/](https://packagist.org/users/warbo/) ).
Unfortunately each package does tend to get tied to a particular Web address,
but there are sporadic efforts to overcome this (e.g.
[https://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent](https://wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent) )

If you consider GitHub to be a "central place for FOSS code", which represents
the unfragmented community, and serves as the only neccesary search engine and
update notification system, then I regret to inform you that you're mistaken.
FOSS has been around far longer than GitHub, as has the Web. The community is
incredibly fragmented, although pretty much all communicate via a combination
of Websites, email, IRC and RSS feeds. GitHub has only ever been a rather
recent fragment of this; although it would still be a great loss if all its
projects were deleted overnight.

Like everything else on the Web, the current "solutions" are search and
archiving on a massive scale. Perhaps P2P technologies like IPFS and magnet
links will be (part of) a more scalable alternative going forward.

~~~
tmikaeld
Don't get me wrong here, I host a Gitlab server myself and pull other projects
into that instead of relying on Github, I'm just saying that it IS a problem
that Github is so central at the moment and it will have consequences if it
goes down or start to charge for FOSS.

Of course Open Source have been around and will continue to be around, I'm
talking about those FOSS projects that have only a single or a few developers
with no company backing it. It takes effort and time to even share a project
and if it is not easy and free - some might not consider open sourcing their
projects at all.

I'm looking forward to a new P2P layer that works like the web, but is more
transparent and encrypted. Perhaps using tech like WebRTC? Webtorrent that is
built on it is already impressive - The only issue is that it loads the whole
file in RAM for both seeders and leechers.

One especially interesting project is:
[https://matrix.org/blog/home/](https://matrix.org/blog/home/)

------
scrollaway
Down. Mirror: [https://archive.is/gArqw](https://archive.is/gArqw)

Edit: On topic: I've been meaning to move to Gitlab but Github still has a
strong pull on me. I have a really good profile there which is useful when I
look for work, and the barrier of entry to contributing to other open source
projects is immeasurably great. Github has actually made open source _fun_.

The recent developments are extremely worrisome though. I was hoping we'd get
some more years from Github before they turn awful... thankfully, the tie-in
only goes as far as the profile itself, there are excellent backup[1] and
conversion tools which have been recently linked on HN - and of course,
there's Gitlab.

[1] [https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup](https://github.com/joeyh/github-
backup)

~~~
repomies691
"451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons"

~~~
scrollaway
Huh. Which country are you in?

~~~
ajsalminen
Apparently the site owner has blocked everyone from Finland and possibly
Estonia as a protest after "an incident at the border" since summer 2015:
[https://voat.co/v/whatever/comments/754757](https://voat.co/v/whatever/comments/754757)

------
aembleton
Maybe the developers of FOSS just want to use the best tool for the job. Maybe
they are opening up their work because they want others to be able to
contribute to it and Github happens to be the most effective way of soliciting
contributions.

------
pc86
> _... when open source projects opt to use Slack as their chat platform
> instead of IRC; it 's [sic] sends the signal that FOSS is good enough for us
> but not good enough for them._

It couldn't possibly be because Slack is better than IRC?

I mean, come on. _Sometimes_ there is a better closed-source alternative. I
don't know why FOSS attracts these people that think all closed-source
software is literally the devil or whatever, but if you're not using the best
tool for the job you don't have the best interests of the project at heart.
For most use cases, Slack is objectively better than IRC. For a minority, IRC
is better.

The dogma from the FOSS community is a large part of why many people are not
involved in it at all.

------
headgasket
Gitlab is quite impressive. I've dropped bitbucket for it. I still love
github, I find its best use case for me is a great repository of code
samples(I've also contributed to several projects ); the social aspect is
valuable (to me) because generally the most starred projects are of the
highest quality, it's a valuable vetting process.

The curse of the growth hacking is this: there's a fixed number of top
developers and hackers on this planet. Once you've crossed that number, the
next new user's input decreases the signal to noise. This happens everywhere.
(not pointing any fingers to not get down votes... :-)

cheers!

------
dudul
"[VCs are] not looking for a profitable business; instead, they’re looking for
growth that provides the opportunity for a 100x exit. "

I don't want to make a little bit of money every day, I want to make a fucking
ton of money all at once (
[https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo?t=57](https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo?t=57) )

------
verusfossa
I run a gitolite[0] instance on my server. It's great so long as you have
another way to deal with issues and love the terminal. Access control is a
breeze.

I feel like Gitlab is heavy. Gogs is neat, but incomplete. If you don't
need/want bloat, gitolite works well.

[0] gitolite.com

------
carsongross
I was surprised to see this tweet by a technical director at Github:

[https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/690601512813367297](https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/690601512813367297)

~~~
aembleton
Just found this story that shows that tweet:
[http://www.techinsider.io/github-the-full-inside-
story-2016-...](http://www.techinsider.io/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2)

------
drinchev
Okay too much GitHub hate going on these days. It's just impossible to have
that unnoticed. I really hope there are no politics behind those articles ( or
their publicity ).

------
eddieroger
Site is down, no comments yet. Guess I'm staying with GitHub a little longer.

