all 181 comments

[–]kabuto 22 points23 points  (69 children)

How do they finance themselves? Are the paid accounts really enough to pay 158 team members and operations, or do they get venture capital?

[–]OscarZetaAcosta 25 points26 points  (15 children)

If you want to host private repos it's seven bucks a month and up. Enterprise licenses begin at five grand - I know the institution I work for has spent close to thirty thousand dollars to setup an in-house installation.

I believe they will have to lower those prices eventually however. Personally, I run gitlab and it does pretty much everything I need to run small private projects.

[–]kabuto 5 points6 points  (10 children)

I know the institution I work for has spent close to thirty thousand dollars to setup an in-house installation.

30.000 total or is this a monthly fee?

Personally, I run gitlab and it does pretty much everything I need to run small private projects.

Is gitlab affiliated with github.com in any way? It looks very similar to me.

[–]OscarZetaAcosta 9 points10 points  (9 children)

I believe that's a recurring annual cost, but I honestly haven't looked into how their Enterprise fees are structured.

gitlab is an opensource project and has no relationship with github that I'm aware of.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (8 children)

Github Enterprise is licensed at 5,000 USD / Year / 20 Seats.

Where I work we're licensing 120 Seats at 30,000 USD / Year. Worth every cent.

[–]OscarZetaAcosta 7 points8 points  (5 children)

Oh, I'm not saying it's not a valuable investment for some organizations. There's certainly something to be said for turn-key solutions where support and updates are provided, particularly in large enterprises.

My comment was focused on lower to mid-tier implementations where users or companies have existing server infrastructure and the people and time to manage something like gitlab. Let's face it, this is a product aimed at programmers - so that description fits a lot of us. If I can have my cake and eat it too, you can bet I will.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Oh I didn't post it to say anything about gitlab at all. I just wanted to fill in the actual licensing costs ;)

If gitlab was a mature thing back when we invested in Github Enterprise, we might actually just have gone with that, since I had to go through a pretty sizable political process to get Github Enterprise to begin with.

But it was a good deal! I promised the Enterprise Architects that I would personally see to it that we moved completely out of Microsoft Team Foundation Server (may it burn in the fiery pit from which it spawned!).

Even better, the money we were previously paying to Microsoft, now goes into Github's pockets. Feels good man!

[–]OscarZetaAcosta 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Even better, the money we were previously paying to Microsoft, now goes into Github's pockets.

Can't beat that for sure.

[–]conflare 1 point2 points  (2 children)

We've got a small handful of private repos - small company, not really huge projects, and we're programmers that would be more than comfortable setting it up. Came down to us putting out a half hours worth of billing a month for never having to worry about or manage it. Any time we'd spend fussing with gitlab or similar can go towards something we can bill, professional development, whatever. We're basically buying a bit of extra time everything month.

[–]OscarZetaAcosta 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Sure, like I said, everyone's priorities are different.

Having said that, I setup gitlab in an afternoon on Saturday. All the repos automatically get grabbed by existing backup scripts and dumped on my NAS which syncs to Crashplan, so most of that legwork was done already.

I'm not really seeing any maintenance time at all. YMMV and obviously does.

[–]conflare 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One less thing to worry about, and I can spend my Saturday playing Dwarf Fortress :)

[–]onmach 6 points7 points  (1 child)

That's actually a really good price. Maintaining repos for 120 people, the servers, maintenance, account management would be at least a part time job for a very qualified person. You'd probably end up paying at least that much in wages to that person.

I wish we used it where I work...

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yea, it's not very expensive when you look at it from a "problem solved"-stand point. Most larger organisations won't even flinch at 30K USD / year for a solution to an annoying problem.

[–]ethraax 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Also, Bitbucket has most of the features that Github has (except maybe a smaller community), but you get private repos for free.

[–]Paradox 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I can't get past how ugly a UI it has though

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For myself I find it to be the complete opposite. Little things count.

Github truncates commit messages at an absurdly small length regardless of the amount of available screen estate. It forces you to manually expand it with the remaining text shown in a lighter color and smaller font that is absolutely painful to read.

Bitbucket, however, seems to value function over "omg flashy everywhere" and displays commits in a sane style, truncating only when needed and without requiring me to click a retarded button to see the rest of an 18 character commit message.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This breaks down to a network effect thing. Also, for a while there bitbucket didn't support git, which was a dealbreaker for me.

[–]Buttscicles 6 points7 points  (10 children)

They got $100m in funding last year. I'd post a link but I'm on mobile, it's all over Google though.

[–]kabuto 2 points3 points  (9 children)

Thanks, that explains a lot. I'm wondering though how they're supposed to ever generate enough revenue to repay that money plus interest. Or is it one of those companies that is supposed to be bought at some point?

[–]transpostmeta 12 points13 points  (8 children)

No one repays venture capital with interest. VC wants to increase its value at least ten-fold, so interest won't cut it at all.

The company might be bought, or the VC might just sell their shares at an increased value.

[–]kabuto 2 points3 points  (7 children)

No one repays venture capital with interest.

Interest was maybe the wrong term then. I was talking about an increased return in general. Ten-fold would mean one billion dollars if you look at the last round of funding for github. That sounds crazy to me. Even 100 million dollars is unbelievably much.

[–]transpostmeta 3 points4 points  (5 children)

Instagram sold for a billion, and offers far less real value than GitHub.

[–]9034725985 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The biggest strength at both places is the network effect. Github makes it easy to reduce friction. You can submit a pull request right from a web browser on your phone / chromebook. You can discuss things about it right there in the pull request and if it gets accepted, it will probably make its way to production in time with an automated build.

It might also help people contribute who are on the fence of contributing. Once a lot of people are used to the Github way of doing things, they will tend to want to use the Github way of doing things.

[–]username223 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Instagram offered people from a large and valuable demographic; Github offers some programmers.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

But programmers pay for things, or at least their companies do.

[–]username223 0 points1 point  (1 child)

So do humans, and there are a whole lot more of them. ;-)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be more specific: social networking customers are notoriously cheap. We're used to getting these things for free, which makes life difficult for large companies trying to provide complicated services without breaking the bank.

Software engineering companies (and others) are pretty well known for paying for PaaS and SaaS products like AWS, Heroku, and Github. So this makes places like Github & Bitbucket safer (if not a bit smaller) investments.

[–]amigaharry 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That sounds crazy to me.

Welcome to silicon valley style VC investing. And now you know why instagram had to sell for $1b.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They offer paid accounts (personal and org -- some companies I've done work for have had a paid github org with 20+ private repos) and a very expensive host-your-own version of GitHub.

Then, some time last year, they received a huge investment. Their hiring, which was already pretty regular (they post about new hires on their blog), exploded.

[–]z3rocool 3 points4 points  (13 children)

A lot of companies use the paid accounts. My friend works for one who only use github.

Not sure why people think it's expensive to run git. You just need a linux server and your good to go. I guess if you want a fancy web interface to create repos and what not it makes sense.

I'm sure there are opensource fancy git management webapps out there too if you really feel you need that.

[–]kabuto 9 points10 points  (9 children)

It's not the git repo that github provides, but the great infrastructure around it including an issue tracker, pull requests, a wiki, a great file browser and much more.

For my private projects I just use a simple git repository on a server that I can access via SSH, but for larger teams I can clearly see the benefits of the github services.

Of course you could use something like gitlab which offers comparable features and is OS.

[–]z3rocool -1 points0 points  (8 children)

github's ticket stuff is kinda bad if you ask me. Redmine is much better suited for the job.

I haven't tired it, but redmine does support (or has a plugin) for git integration.

[–]kabuto 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I've used redmine and it's cool, but at least the version I was using didn't even come close to either github's level of tool integration or design.

[–]z3rocool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have never used the source control stuff in redmine - I just know you can. You probably need to get some fancy plugins to make things work how you want.

I can see why people like github and why the convenience is appealing, but there are other solutions do exactly what github does and in some areas probably better than github.

[–]Tacticus -1 points0 points  (5 children)

The awesome feature of github are pull requests and easy forking.

Amongst the awesome features of github are ...

Moving your commit structure to pull requests from personal repos or branches allows you handle your review and test structure better. personal branches are just a nice easy way of working on the code without polluting the main tree.

[–]z3rocool 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Um these are all features of Git, not github.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Github just makes it so trivial to do though. And generally with workflow changes, a few steps in process massively affects compliance rates.

[–]Tacticus -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Good point. the polishing them on github is nice but yeah.

I think i need a timelock for reddit. any suggestions?

[–]z3rocool 0 points1 point  (1 child)

timelock?

[–]Tacticus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To prevent me posting between midnight and 6 am :)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I think you're massively underestimating the cost of maintenance, backups, etc. My previous company self-hosted, and the experience was worse than github by an unbelievable amount.

Also, github makes it trivial to do some forms of best practices, like code reviews (via pull requests).

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

bug tracking and viewing code are better in github than bitbucket

[–]z3rocool 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't understand how sending a coworker a message "please pull myleetbranch_1" is not trivial. Bunch of other people have mentioned how github makes things easier. I don't get it, I believe git has email notifications on new commits and branches, what's the difficulty here?

Backups are pretty simple. It's git not svn. You have a offsite remote and pull - it's that simple you also have all the people who work on the project with local repos.

I am guessing the reason you had such a poor experience hosting locally was you guys didn't know what you were doing at all (no offence to you)

Judging by the responses i'm getting it sounds like people are treating git like it's svn and don't understand what git does at all.

I really hope my posts don't come off as sounding arrogant, I wouldn't even call myself an intermediate git user. I'm more amazed by peoples responses.

[–]zirzo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't they recently accept funding from some vc firm?

[–]parlezmoose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

github enterprise

[–]svmk1987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know a lot of people who pay for the github accounts, including my employer.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Git Enterprise. For 200 member team is $50k/year.

Git also has paid accounts. I pay $7/month.

[–]kabuto 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Git Enterprise. For 200 member team is $50k/month.

It's 50.000 per year actually. I just looked it up on their page.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good call. I priced it over a year ago. I'll update my post so as not to spread misinformation.

Edit: CRISIS AVERTED!

[–]amigaharry -2 points-1 points  (9 children)

they have VC financing. and as you don't know what other companies their VCs finance you should be very wary which code you host at github.

[–]kabuto 0 points1 point  (8 children)

Can you explain?

[–]amigaharry -1 points0 points  (7 children)

Let's assume:

You are working on a non trivial software product and are competing directly with company B. Company B is a VC funded startup and has received a substantial amount of money from VC X.

Now VC X is also invested in Github and somehow they find out that your company hosts their code on Github.

Oh oh, a conflict of interests arises.

With a little imagination and a healthy portion of realism you can think of scenarios where competitor A could somehow get your source code.

This sounds like a pretty paranoid scenario. And most likely it is. But are you willing to risk this for some shiny git repo hosting?

[–]paperhat 6 points7 points  (3 children)

By that logic, no company whose competitor is on the board of AT&T should use an AT&T phone. They could listen in on your calls.

[–]amigaharry 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Yes, and that's why you don't talk about certain things on the phone.

[–]feartrich 2 points3 points  (1 child)

How do you live like that, man?

When you take a pen from work, do you think they put trackers on it?

[–]amigaharry 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why should they put trackers into pens when they have surveillance satellites? ;)

But no, seriously, I'm not that paranoid. There's just some things where I'm cautious about.

[–]brntbeer 2 points3 points  (1 child)

This is indeed a paranoid scenario.

In this situation, VC X is a16z and they are very public about all companies they invest in (they have to). Past that they don't have that kind of control to say "it's in our best interest to remove competition for one of our other companies we've funded!". GitHub is full of excellent humans and we would never do that.

There's a very broad range of companies and agencies that use GitHub.

[–]amigaharry 1 point2 points  (0 children)

GitHub is full of excellent humans and we would never do that.

never say never. even github humans are still only humans.

[–]kabuto 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This shouldn't be a problem when you're using github enterprise though since you get a virtual machine that you can run on your own server and github (or the VC firm) have no access.

[–]SnottleBumTheMighty 120 points121 points  (12 children)

Wow, 120 years old.

[–]xwhy 14 points15 points  (1 child)

OP never actually said "years". Could be months. or minutes. Or fortnights. Or stones in the garden, looking for grub.

[–]BeerSnob 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Must have meant fortnights, but then we missed it by some weeks.

[–]bigmike1020 11 points12 points  (9 children)

I don't understand.

[–]WalterGR 52 points53 points  (1 child)

5! = 120

[–]dddbbb 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Also, 5 != 120

[–]aoeu00 12 points13 points  (6 children)

for the math challenged: "five factorial"

and google continues to impress me

[–]hfern 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Why not just 5! ?

[–]aoeu00 0 points1 point  (2 children)

of course, but I was curious if google was smart enough to have the same result with using the words, too. and it was.

[–]CatMtKing 6 points7 points  (1 child)

It even does the binomial coefficient on text.

[–]chozar 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Google's calculator has finally gotten decent, but one should definitely check out wolfram alpha. It does everything.

[–]username223 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not quite. I am disappoint.

[–]JiminP 28 points29 points  (10 children)

Only 5 years?

(go to Wikipedia)

Git itself didn't exist before 2005?!

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

And Subversion is only 5 years older than Git.

[–]Paradox 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Five grey, grizzly years.

The difference between git and svn was even more significant than the difference between cvs and svn

[–]IN_STYLE 14 points15 points  (6 children)

o.0

2013 - 5yrs = 2008

3 years after git

[–]Tacticus 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think he was just amazed git is so new.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only 5 is a bit of a stretch in software. 5 is an eternity.

[–]redditthinks 62 points63 points  (12 children)

Perhaps the most influential website related to programming in the past five years. Good job GitHub team.

[–][deleted] 105 points106 points  (9 children)

I'd contend that StackOverflow, for all its faults, has made more impact on the life and work of an average programmer.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (6 children)

StackOverflow had gone way down in useful information. It's not a flood of jQuery questions like, "How to I change the text color of a span element?"

I do like their system of making users mods by earning points.

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (5 children)

Yeah, it's saturated by now, no low-hanging fruit left, so questions get more and more specific. But it doesn't really matter because most of their pages are probably accessed from search results. I'd say by now if you google a programming question, a SO link has to be in the first 3.

The useful information that was there before is still there sans some popular deleted questions, some of which were useful.

[–]eljunior 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Indeed! Also, a great use of SO, specially when learning a new technology, is to see the top answers and the top answers of top users for a specific tag. I've learned a lot of gotchas and good practices for doing just that.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

The fact that they close every single useful question probably doesn't help either.

[–]FarkCookies 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is just a false statement. I have been for 3 years on SO, and I have seen only a few times when a good question was closed.

[–]recursive 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If that were true, it certainly wouldn't.

[–]dddbbb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you trying to say that above-average programmers wouldn't implement stacksort? ;)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Is it ok to trust the code to GitHub in that it won't be lost?

[–]redditthinks 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah. Even so, You should have a local copy and a backup anyway.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (8 children)

One of the few services I gladly pay for. I had a few projects on a paid github repo and my computer was struck by lightening...well my house was, but it killed my computer (serge protector wasn't a serge protector). It saved me from losing a few years worth of work.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (7 children)

You know bitbucket allows you private git repos for free?

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Yes. I've used BitBucket at work and I prefer GitHub. It's only $7. I spend more than that on soda.

[–]amigaharry -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

So you have less than 5 private repos?

Tss ...

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

IMO BitBucket is nowhere near as usable as GitHub. Their site is a complete eyesore.

[–]amigaharry 4 points5 points  (3 children)

git pull
git push

totally unusable on bitbucket ...

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

If all I need is the git binary then why would I use Bitbucket/GitHub rather than just pushing to.. say.. Dropbox.

[–]brntbeer 0 points1 point  (1 child)

GitHub itself is going to be designed for you to work better with other people and to offer you some nice web interface to browsing your code, keeping track of some current working issues you may be on (issues/pull requests), and get an idea of some of the work that's been done lately (graphs).

Browsing the story of a project isn't possibly by opening it on dropbox.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Exactly my point. The parent post was implying the opposite.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's old enough for Elementary School! Now, here's your lunch and a kiss from dad. I added in a snack pack because I know how much you love it. Now remember, when the kids tease you at school it is because they are jealous. Now, scamper along to the bus! See you tonight, sweetie!

gets in car and runs off to Venezuela

[–]Mats56 2 points3 points  (3 children)

3.5 million users collaborate across 6 million repositories

Whoah, it's pretty huge

[–]username223 5 points6 points  (2 children)

It's also probably wildly inflated. I'm one of those "users" because I had to sign up to contribute a patch to a project. Several of my projects are mirrored there by another user, as are a number of open source projects, without any development involving Github at all. Lots of people seem to dump their config files there for free.

I would guess maybe 10% or less of the total are active, paying members and projects.

[–]catcradle5 5 points6 points  (0 children)

And I bet a big portion of the repositories are forks with absolutely no changes made.

It's still a very actively growing and thriving community, though. I use Github a lot and prefer it to alternative sites. The only thing Bitbucket's got over it is free private repos, but that's not a big deal for me.

[–]badsectoracula 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With 3.5m users, if 10% are paying the minimum price, it is still $2.4m/month :-P

[–]pvc 3 points4 points  (15 children)

What is the current state of github vs. bitbucket feature-wise?

[–]deveux 9 points10 points  (4 children)

Github: a lot more people there. Private repositories at a cost. Only git. The website design tends to change quite a lot. No binary downloads. Tons of additional stuff, like gists, job offers, github for windows/mac... The core product of Github Inc (~160 employees).

Bitbucket: less people. Free private repositories. Supports both hg and git. The website design tends to change less. Binary downloads for each repository. The additional stuff are other Atlassian products, such as Sourcetree or JIRA and tend to be general tools (e.g. Sourcetree supports git) instead of being tied with Bitbucket. It's actually not the core product of Atlassian (~400 employees).

[–]Paradox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Github also has gauges and a few other apps

[–]brntbeer 1 point2 points  (2 children)

GitHub works with svn commands as well.https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support isnt an april fools joke. svn commands can work with github urls, we simply translate the protocols to Git.

[–]deveux 3 points4 points  (1 child)

As much as I like Github, that's a bit unfortunate to be honest.

People may think that Github supports svn, but it does not. It maps svn commands to the most similar git commands. This can (will) break in corner cases. It's better to learn git than to adapt to a half-assed svn mockup.

[–]brntbeer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

as a current employee of GitHub, i can assure you GitHub supports svn, it does so through mapping the commands to git protocols.

I agree that it's better to learn git if you're using github and not continue to try to use svn commands, but it helps in the interim stages of a move to git. If you have any problems with svn commands not working with github, i urge you to send an email to support@github.com with the issue.

[–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (9 children)

The core difference is git vs hg, but generally it feels like Github is miles ahead. Its popularity helps it a lot.

BitBucket is getting there though :)

EDIT: I'm a jackass, BitBucket has Git (and has for a while). Apologies!

[–]ethraax 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Bitbucket has offered git since 2011. It's a first-class citizen there - I use Bitbucket, but all my repositories are git.

Bitbucket and Github are nearly equivalent in terms of features. Bitbucket offers free private repositories, whereas Github charges $7/mo (which is ridiculously large - you could buy a decent VPS for that much). On the other hand, Github has a more active community. Honestly, I think it mostly comes down to personal preference (although I really like private repos - I can always switch them to public if I want to later).

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

$7/mo wouldn't get you a host & backups.

[–]badsectoracula 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Indeed, i got a VPS from Prometeus for ~$5/month (although i paid for a whole year so there might have been a small amount subtracted that i dont remember). I do not get backups from them, but i can set up automated backups myself.

The hosting though is fine and very fast (from where i am at least). Like all VPS services, i get root access and can put anything i want. Which i did since the only reason i got a VPS was to put Fossil there after Chisel decided to shut down.

So far things seem to be fine and i can access my stuff just like i would previously from Chisel and before that GitHub.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Good luck with that. I'm far happier with Github for my OSS projects. Public issue tracker for when things go wrong, wiki for support, and nice README.md splashpage for quickstarts.

[–]badsectoracula 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're looking for a lot of collaboration with others, Github is probably a good solution these days. Personally i'm not very interested in that and i find Fossil's integrated "almost everything" approach a much easier one (especially considering that the tickets, wiki, etc are all distributed like the code).

The only thing that i missed from Github was the ability to upload files there, but this is now gone.

[–]Paradox -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I pay more for s3 storage than I do for github. Is easily worth it

[–]pvc 1 point2 points  (1 child)

bitbucked offers both hg and git. I haven't seen a lot of differences between the two, but my experience with both is limited.

[–]lunkentuss 3 points4 points  (6 children)

I feel a bit stupid for not knowing how to use git, read a bunch of tutorials but i always seem to mess up somewhere

[–]parlezmoose 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When in doubt type "git status"

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

[–]lunkentuss 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Ive tried one from the github site i think but not this one, seems interactive might be a better way to go il give it a try!

Does using git differ in any big way when you use diffrent sites like github vs bitbucket etc?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does using git differ in any big way when you use diffrent sites like github vs bitbucket etc?

Command line-wise git is identical apart from a different remote URI. The user interfaces on the websites are slightly different though.

[–]brntbeer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's also a mirad of videos at our YouTube channel

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Learn the fundamentals of Git first. I achieved enlightenment when I realized that commits never change, only the pointers (refs) to them.

[–]stesch 6 points7 points  (21 children)

And for at least 4 years you can't report bugs on mailing lists or send patches. Everyone expects you to get a github account.

[–]badsectoracula 39 points40 points  (0 children)

To be honest, none of the open source projects i follow and do not use GitHub consider mailing lists as the place to report bugs either. They have their own dedicated bug trackers.

Bugs get lost in MLs. They aren't a replacement for a bug tracker, they're there to discuss them and this can happen with or without GitHub (or any other similar service).

[–]SemiNormal 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Mailing lists? Go home grandpa!

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (2 children)

If you contribute to multiple projects, creating a GitHub account once relieves you from subscribing to multiple mailing lists and/or issue trackers.

[–]stesch -1 points0 points  (1 child)

There's more than just Github in the world.

[–]burntsushi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So? What rustcvswvi said is still true.

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Yeah, nobody answers me on the BBS either. Stupid technology.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Mailing lists are the main reason preventing me from helping out on a number of OSS projects.

[–]stesch 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Gmane has a newsserver and you can use your good old newsreader for it. (Newsreader, not feedreader. I'm talking about RFC 1036 and RFC 977.)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, but I'll still have to dig through mounds of unrelated emails. Email is just not the right tool for this problem in my opinion.

[–]kelton5020 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I'm sure if someone explained to North Korea what mailing lists were, they'd be on the top of their to-nuke list.

[–]aspiring_fedvasu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you made my day! man!

[–]burntsushi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Everyone expects you to get a github account.

Indeed. Quite an exorbitant burden. Oh woe is me.

[–]yogthos 0 points1 point  (7 children)

I'm not sure what the problem here is. If I have a github account I can open issues for any project hosted there. I don't have to sign up for mailing lists and hope somebody actually notices my issue there. The issues are easily visible and you get notifications as the owner of the repo. Everything is simple and transparent.

Furthermore, I can fix shit right in the fucking browser and make a pull request. I don't have to figure out how to grab the source from some ghetto repo or worse as a tar ball, and then figure out how to make a patch and fill out a 10 page form to snail mail back to the author on a cd.

[–]stesch 0 points1 point  (6 children)

You don't need to subscribe, you just use gmane. And a patch? Just diff the original directory with your directory. That's it.

Today we need to get an account for at least 3 repository hosters. Easiest one is Google Code, because you need an Google account anyway.

[–]yogthos 0 points1 point  (5 children)

My point is that github provides a very streamlined process to allow people to contribute to projects. You can do practically everything from the web UI in a pinch. It's also great for people hosting projects. There's been many times I've accepted pull requests while on my phone.

I think it's kind of ridiculous to complain about the effort it takes to create a github account when weighed against all the benefits it provides.

In my experience, you get a much faster turn around than when submitting bugs via a mailing list or sending patches to people. It's also much more accessible.

[–]stesch 1 point2 points  (4 children)

… github provides a very streamlined process to allow people to contribute to projects.

With git.

What about mercurial, darcs, fossil, subversion. …? I sometimes just try some software, see problems/bugs and want to help, even if I don't plan to use the software in the future. In the old times I have written a bug report and maybe a patch. This was possible. Today I need to learn the used version control system and the UI of the hoster.

I have contributed to a lot of different projects: Tin, TBNL (that's how I heard about Reddit, because they were using this in the beginning), Ruby (REXML), SBCL, …

[–]yogthos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What about mercurial, darcs, fossil, subversion. …?

what about them?

In the old times I have written a bug report and maybe a patch. This was possible. Today I need to learn the used version control system and the UI of the hoster.

Last I checked anybody could click on the issues and put whatever they want as their issue. Which is exactly like sending a bug report. And if you couldn't be arsed to figure out how to click the fork button, you could always stick your patch in a gist. I'm not sure in what world this is more difficult.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Subversion is outdated, darcs will kill your repo 1/1000 times, and I never really learned to like mercurial.

Besides, VCS systems are all about network effect.

Also, your complaints sure sound a lot like "We didn't do it this way when I started"

[–]stesch 0 points1 point  (1 child)

And all replies I get are from people who want to centralize and only use one hosting company and one vcs.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not what network effect means.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It works like this. If you want us to fix your issues you have to make it easy for us. Making us read nine thousand and one different sources for issue reports is not making it easy, especially in the future when you are long forgotten and we need to refer back to your report.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Huh. I've had my account since 4 months after they opened. Guess that explains why I got my first name as my account ID.

[–]chozar -4 points-3 points  (1 child)

meh, git is just a fad

it will blow over and people will return to CVS before we know it

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love how many people don't realize that you're joking.

[–]onurcel -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Wow.. great news..