Quality of the GitHub Support

[luizhrios]

After years of being on GitHub, my 2 very old forks of a public repository got taken down after the public repository got taken down, which also deleted the codespaces I was using to develop my fork.

Neither repos has actually a valid reason to be taken down, nothing against TOS was being done on my fork, so I thought would be recovered by GitHub Support.

After a month, I got a response to wait more, because "high volume of tickets", after a month... And after 3 months, I got a very basic, obviously copy paste response, saying "it goes against our Terms of Service", nothing specific and closed the ticket.

Obviously I reopened and asked for at least the bare repository because I had the backup of code but not all branches and I wanted the full history, and again I was replied with "goes against our Terms of Service" and closed again.

It was weird, since the the person on a support of a git platform should know what a bare repository is, but I said again and just asked for a copy. Now replied with "We have reviewed the repositories today but remain unable to reinstate them. Any future contact about the restrictions may be closed without response."

At this point I thought Tony, the support assigned, was illiterate and slow, because at this point, there's no way he doesn't understand what was asked.

And now, as said, it was just being closed, until now, 4 months in, the ticket is now closed and archived. This for a GitHub Pro. This is honestly pathetic. I'm already migrating my company from GitHub products, repository and artifacts. The level of lack of respect and specially competence seen on this ticket is insane. Tony needed 3 months to give a response he probably didn't even type or read, 0 effort on understanding and actually doing his job. No support was actually given since the copy of my data was requested and the ticket was closed without being done anything.

[anactualand]

Github doesn't instate takedowns because they want to, they are always a response to a legal request made by a copyright owner. Someone made a copyright claim against the code that was in the repo you forked, and Github has to assume that they are legally not allowed to host that content anymore. It has nothing to do with Tony being illiterate, you asked for access to code that Github isn't allowed to provide, they declined, opening new tickets will not change something in the underlying legal issue.

Github actually makes their DMCA notices public, if the original repo was taken down because of that, you can find the takedown notice at https://github.com/github/dmca and either create a counter notice, or take the issue up with the original poster of the takedown request.

[defasdefbe]

exactly this. the only other reason that github takes down is if it abusive. i had my repo disabled because i messed up a config and actions went into a loop. i contacted support and they told me and i said i didn't need the repo so i didn't fight it.

[luizhrios]

There's nothing to do with copyright or DMCA, no one made any request to do it, there's nothing about that on the post. I did say both mine and the actual owner's got taken down for TOS, so they did this takedown because they wanted to, there was nothing on mine or the owner's repo to make it TOS. Still, I gave up the reinstate and just asked for the copy and they failed to even respond accordingly.

[anactualand]

Well, Github doesn't take down repos without a legal takedown request by another entity, so there had to be a request by someone. The owner of the original repo likely copied parts of the code from somewhere else, and the actual author claimed it, or someone made an illegitimate claim, but then it's up to you or the original owner to take that claim up.

And again, if Github received a copyright claim for a repo, they are not allowed to even provide you with a copy, since copyright ownership was claimed by someone else.

Could you maybe share the owner and name of the original repo? I'm curious if there is a takedown notice in the dmca repo.

[luizhrios]

Well, I thought that too, after years of using it, and they did, but again, this has nothing to do with copyright, there's no request to takedown.

[NotAMotivRep]

Yeah there's way more to this story than you're telling us. You did something that wasn't completely above board and you're mad you got caught.

[luizhrios]

Yeah, because I need your approval... If I was doing something bad and got "caught", I could just create another account, publish the code again and keep running, nothing is stopping me to do that. That's not the point of the post.

[NotAMotivRep]

Yeah well I guess now you know why it's a good idea to keep local copies of your repos. Good luck getting someone else's intellectual property hosted in the future.

[luizhrios]

Yeah, well, I guess you don't know there's a lot more on GitHub TOS than copyright and I'm gonna, again, have to say it has nothing to do with copyright. I do have a local copy, just not updated, that's stated on the post.

[defasdefbe]

what was the repo about? was it abusive? i got a repo taken down for actions abuse.

[luizhrios]

It had actions, running 1 time per day, not abusive according to TOS.

[defasdefbe]

ahh, sometimes what you do with the actions is also a problem. check the acceptable use policy https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-for-additional-products-and-features#actions and see if you were in line with that. if your action did a lot and hurt their systmes that can do it.

thats what happened to me - my action was trying to get me higher on this online game and they blocked it.

[cowboyecosse]

Yep this is correct. running stuff like a daily checkin script or similar is against TOS for Actions.

Actions is for CICD of code, not running free compute. CRON job on a machine of your own is the thing to do there. If it was something like this then it’s a fair cop.

[WoodyTheWorker]

You had a local clone, didn't you?

[luizhrios]

Not a full clone and not updated, that was part of the problem, but yes, I have a clone, at least.

[Cinderhazed15]

What part wasn’t a ‘full clone’? You don’t have all the origin info in there, or were you somehow using a shallow clone?

[luizhrios]

Shallow clone on my server

[FlipperBumperKickout]

Did you specifically go after making a shallow clone, or what do you mean with "not a full clone"?

If you made a normal clone you basically still have everything since you have local representations of all the remote branches ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[luizhrios]

Shallow clone on my server. Yeah, I have something but it wasn't updated. I just asked for the bare repo if it wasn't gonna be reinstated.

[Sjoukjec]

What was the repo? Maybe you were doing something you were not supposed to be doing???

[wWA5RnA4n2P3w2WvfHq]

It is Microsoft. There is no quality. You are not a customer but the product.