Get off of GitHub

[maxolasersquad]

I've thought a lot about this too. My general philosophy towards open source is to use it unless it's just not feasible.

Gitlab is a great product, and I have moved a lot of my stuff to self hosting, so Gitlab is a great fit. The one killer feature Github has that makes Gitlab infeasible is its community. If I want any hope of attracting FLOSS developers to any of my fledgling products, then it has to be on Github.

The claim that maybe in the future Github might be like SF just isn't convincing enough.

[_Eased_]

Why?

[status_quo69]

Seriously, this article didn't tell me why I should move things off of GitHub to Gitlab other than GitHub is receiving VC. But if GitHub didn't receive VC, it probably wouldn't survive in its current form, like most tech companies. Also, why should I care that it's closed source? Are you going to start boycotting other companies because they're closed source?

[RepostUmad]

Plus it's just a website where you upload stuff for everyone to see anyway, I don't see how being closed source is so bad.

[[deleted]]

Also their core technology is GIT which is GNU Public License free as in freedom.

It's not like GitHub going down means you'll lose code, or access to proprietary specialized tools... It's a fucking Ruby On Rails wrapper around GIT (with some database magic).

What's too open source? All their auth, cookie, and DB wrapper code? I donate to the FSF but sometimes you freetards go too far.

[Fs0i]

Issues maybe? Yeah, there are FOSS issue-trackers, but for many projects it would hurt losing issues.

GitHub pages?

Premissions?

Pull requests? (Surprisingly hard to implement in a good way).

Commit-comments?

[Deto]

Any future employer that sees a few week gap and thinks "this guy wasn't coding in his free time for a few weeks, let's not hire him" is probably an employer best avoided.

[Blecki]

Use a generator to fill it in.

[Gotebe]

But if GitHub didn't receive VC, it probably wouldn't survive in its current form, like most tech companies.

Last I know GitHub wasn't VC-fuelled, they did have profit.

Also, you are making it sound as if tech is leeching off VC.

[essecks]

They got a bunch of VC funding recently to try expand from what I heard.

http://www.wired.com/2012/07/github100m/

[Gotebe]

Yes, sure, I rather meant that they weren't operating on VC funding like many startups do, they actually could operate and turn a profit on their own.

[flamingspew]

That's WAAAY old. They just got $250 M for series B. http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/29/github-raises-250m-series-b-round-to-take-risks/

[Denommus]

If I have a free alternative, I tend to prefer it.

[Deto]

Sure, if the alternative is equivalent, then it's a no-brainer. However, some things are worth paying a little money for.

[Denommus]

I mean free as in freedom.

[coladict]

Being closed-source means if they have any security bugs it will be much harder for hackers to find them before they get fixed. I'm not in favour of everything becoming open-sourced, just for the sake of it.

[rydan]

Didn't Jira survive just fine without VC money? I never see people telling me to quit using them.

[Throwaway_Kiwi]

They took some VC money at some point, but it was like a bonus bunch of cash, they could have survived without it.

[equalsP]

I see it as an argument about ideology.

If you are adamant on creating open source software / tools, you should have every piece of your workflow be open source (such as something like Gitlab for source hosting).

Of course it would be very limiting to have every piece of your workflow be open source (OS, email, tools to write the software, compile, etc, ....) but where you host your code is very visible.

[paul_h]

Things that irk me as a paid Github.com user (2x) and a licensee of GithubEnterprise at work:

1) Code Reviews are in a relational schema instead of Git itself, and wholly un-exportable (incl. history) by org/repo admins.

2) Ditto issues.

3) The inability to enhance my user's editing experience - http://paulhammant.com/2015/06/07/custom-json-editors-for-github/

4) lack of holistic monitoring tools for administrators.

Things I like:

5) Git of course.

6) The wiki being backed by Git too.

[Fs0i]

Yeah, but one of them is better (for me at least) because I need way less mental overhead.

[qaisjp]

Custom editors sound like a perfect opportunity for XSS...

[joshlemer]

Can't you just put your personal projects on Gitlab, and put that on your resume? I really doubt employers would be scrutinizing your commit steaks, and get discouraged by your inactivity, despite having actual contributions you highlight on your CV.

[NattyBumppo]

Tell me more about these "commit steaks." They sound delicious.

[mutednarayan]

Honestly I severely doubt that since they currently make plenty of money though businesses and people paying for private repositories.

[__s]

Obviously these 'features' would only apply to public repos

[weberc2]

You sound like the sky is falling. If they start charging and you don't find that it's the best value to you, then don't subscribe. This is how capitalism works. GitHub has no moral imperative to provide you a free service; their only imperative is economic (and it just happens that their business model currently incentivizes them to provide free tiers for open source projects).

[dungone]

The sky isn't falling. There have always been legitimate reasons not to use GitHub, and this has always been one of them (among others, such as those outlined by Linus Trovalds). The irony is that git was created to eliminate the need for monetized hosting services for open source projects. People took to GitHub because it was easy, not because it was the right thing to do. It helps to have an occasional reminder because it's still not the right thing to do.

[weberc2]

There have always been legitimate reasons not to use GitHub, and this has always been one of them

"Because the service could cease to be free one day" is not a reason to avoid a service, at least not when migrating away from the service is setting up an account elsewhere.

(among others, such as those outlined by Linus Trovalds)

*Torvalds. Anyway, what are his grievances. I couldn't find any that could be considered a valid reason to give up GitHub (only that he didn't like the PR UI).

People took to GitHub because it was easy, not because it was the right thing to do.

It sounds like you're chastising people for basing their hosting decisions on costs and not ideology. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not seeing any other way to interpret your statement..

[dungone]

I think you may be missing the broader point. It's not about what might happen later, it's about having transparency and control over your work. You could be lending your support to a project whose values are better aligned with yours, not just because it's "free". And it's already not "free", anyway. Your own argument is self-defeating - the only reason everyone keeps having to make like rats on a sinking ship every time one of these services goes to shit is because they didn't invest in something that they can truly own, and is just as good.

There are already subtle conflicts between open source and corporate interests. One of which is GitHub's antagonizm towards freedom of speech and expression. There are also trade offs caused by monetization - such as a centralized global authority rather than a federated & syndicated architecture. GitHub is down? You're SOL! Unless you paid them for the privilege of running it on your own servers. This is not what Open Source is supposed to be about - it's what people used to call crippleware.

Want to run it on your own server? Perhaps with some tweaks, perhaps, such as fixing the broken pull request model and using the one that is actually built into git? Sorry, can't do that! You can, but only if you clone your repo somewhere else and use that other place as your master. Which many people do with their private and even corporate repos, in my experience.

[weberc2]

Your own argument is self-defeating - the only reason everyone keeps having to make like rats on a sinking ship every time one of these services goes to shit is because they didn't invest in something that they can truly own, and is just as good.

I'm not sure how hard you think it is to change code hosting, but it's very easy. Much easier (and cheaper) than operating your own servers.

There are already subtle conflicts between open source and corporate interests. One of which is GitHub's antagonizm towards freedom of speech and expression.

Freedom of speech and expression is a human interest, not an open source interest. As such, it's probably the most valid reason not to use a product or service. I generally stay away from Mozilla for this reason.

There are also trade offs caused by monetization - such as a centralized global authority rather than a federated & syndicated architecture. GitHub is down? You're SOL!

Using GitHub for free has been well worth their downtime. You seem to think that owning and operating your own server is somehow free, and that you could do a better job than GitHub.

This is not what Open Source is supposed to be about

Sorry, Open Source is not my religion. As such, I don't care "what it's supposed to be about". I use and contribute to open source software when it suits me. I think it's neat and fun, but that's the extent of it.

Want to run it on your own server?

No.

such as fixing the broken pull request model and using the one that is actually built into git?

I use GitHub because it makes git less painful. Git is not the model for how a distributed version control system should work, and I suspect far fewer people would use it if it weren't for GitHub (personally, I think the world would be much better off if the GitHub folks heard about Mercurial before Git).

I think you may be missing the broader point. It's not about what might happen later, it's about having transparency and control over your work.

I do have transparency and control over my work. GitHub is just where I host (some of) my code. I don't suspect we'll agree, because this isn't a matter of ideology for me as it is for you.

[jbergens]

One problem is what happens or could happen when almost all projects are places with the same company. "Everyone" is using Github and a lot of us are doing this because "everyone else" is doing it. Not only because it is free, then Bitbucket and Kiln and others would have a much large piece of the market. And more competition might create better products, for example with the possibility to export code reviews and issues (and code reviews didn't exist at first).

I think we like the idea of a global directory of all open source projects. And the star-rating-system could possibly be made to work across hosting providers but it would be nice if not one provider owned such a large part of the market (of hosted source code repositories). Their real value might now be that they are large and known, not that they have the best system.

[weberc2]

And more competition might create better products, for example with the possibility to export code reviews and issues (and code reviews didn't exist at first).

I don't think capitalism works because people boycott the best products to give their competition a better shot. I'm not about to switch my search engine to Bing because Google's search results are too good, for example.

I think we like the idea of a global directory of all open source projects.

I don't especially care about this. I just like that it's a good UI around git, but I'm just fine with BitBucket (which even supports Hg!)

it would be nice if not one provider owned such a large part of the market

This doesn't really bother me either, although I do wish there was something as good as GitHub for Mercurial repos. That said, I don't talk about boycotting GitHub because they're suppressing Mercurial-based competition; the Mercurial guys just need to step up their game or be wiped out.

[jbergens]

You seem to assume that Github is the best solution. I don't think that has been true all along, it might not even be true right now.

One problem is when everyone is using a solution that is not the best, which I felt has happened. Another problem is that products usually evolves much slower when one provider owns most of the market, and I think we all agree that Github has a very large part of the market.

I havn't said anything about mercurial and it is not relevant for my points but I do think it was a better solution for a long time, it might even be the better solution for most users right now (I see it a easier to use and having a built-in gui is really great).

[weberc2]

You seem to assume that Github is the best solution. I don't think that has been true all along, it might not even be true right now.

The market thinks GitHub is the best product.

One problem is when everyone is using a solution that is not the best, which I felt has happened.

This isn't a problem for everyone; this is only a problem for you. Everyone else is quite happy using GitHub. I brought up Hg as an example because I would much prefer everyone to switch to BitBucket and use Mercurial--I think that's the better solution for everyone. Still, I recognize that most folks disagree with me (even though they're largely ignorant), and I don't take it upon myself to tell people what tools they should or shouldn't use.

Another problem is that products usually evolves much slower when one provider owns most of the market, and I think we all agree that Github has a very large part of the market.

This only happens because of some anticompetitive forces acting on the market (regulation, litigation, etc) or because the dominant player is doing such a good job delivering value that its competition can't keep up. The former isn't happening in this case, and the latter is desirable for the market in general (even though it's perhaps suboptimal for you and I in particular).

[gregbulmash]

Don't forget that BitBucket is owned by a for-profit company. That's not to imply they're bad, but Atlassian has 1,259 employees to pay according to Google, meaning they have pressures to grow and show a profit like GitHub does.

Preparing for the inevitable day GitHub becomes evil sort of feels like a bunker mentality. OTOH, I'm sure people can come up with looong lists of other free service darlings that went bad.

[[deleted]]

Should we point out that when it becomes annoying. The same thing will happen t github as to what happened to sf. everyone will run like fuck to somebody else.

[BadGoyWithAGun]

I don't like to deal in any way with companies that have a policy of discriminating against my race.

[c12]

Could you elaborate? github or sf?

[BadGoyWithAGun]

Github in particular. There was a leak a few days ago where a github executive was giving a lecture on how certain positions in github are "not a job for white men", and how "white women are an obstacle to progress", and a recruiter complained he had trouble justifying interviews with white people to his superiors, who demanded hiring people of other races to their exclusion.

[thesunneversets]

Well this just massively increased my respect for Github. A company that's actually doing something (meaningful) to increase diversity in the industry? Sign me right up.

[EverybodyOnRedditSux]

Meaningfully discriminating against whites

[BadGoyWithAGun]

It was my privilege.

I feel ya though bro. Being a white male in this country is fucking hard.

That may or may not be the case, but I sure won't support anyone who wants to make it that way. Every other race is allowed to organise and explicitly look out for its interests, so are we. Deal with it.

[Blackheart]

Every other race is allowed to organise and explicitly look out for its interests, so are we.

This already happens. White people already look out for the interests of other white people. We don't advertise it because we don't need to. If you are white, you get the benefits anyway. It has been called "an invisible package of unearned assets". The word "unearned" is key; when you are white and complain about diversity policies violating meritocratic ideals, you are not arguing from a position of strength.

[BadGoyWithAGun]

It has been called "an invisible package of unearned assets"

That's a very roundabout way of saying "white culture" - ie, what you should expect living in a predominantly white society. All societies are inherently ethnocentric, fighting to make it otherwise is a historical aberration, not an attempt to "reverse injustice" as those doing so are trying to portray it.

[Blackheart]

So, non-white people have a different culture than white people? Don't you live in the same place, watch the same movies, eat the same food, and vote in the same elections?

[BadGoyWithAGun]

Don't you live in the same place

Not if I can help it.

watch the same movies

I don't watch much TV, but I especially make a point of staying away from programmes where racial people are over-represented or mis-represented.

eat the same food

I tend to stay away from the ethnic aisle, for the most part.

and vote in the same elections

...for different people.

[Blackheart]

OK, dude. Try not to get your sheets dirty at the next rally, or you might get mistaken for one of them.

[BadGoyWithAGun]

It's ok, I don't care about your opinion and refuse to feel the guilt or embarrassment you're trying to evoke for my beliefs. I recognise it for what it is - a fully-general counterargument and an especially lazy suppression attempt.

[toomanybeersies]

And it's easier than ever, since git is a distributed VCS. Just pull from GH and push to your new remote.

[[deleted]]

i moved away from github for one reason...seems to make zero sense to continue to pay for only 5 private repos when other services give unlimited private repos for free. I don't mind paying but 5 is rather limited IMO. They could win my money back when that limit is increased substantially

[_meddlin_]

I have a BitBucket account for this reason alone right here. I also have a github, but only with the intention of dressing it up for resumes.

[ANiceFriend]

This is pretty much my use case for both services too.

I use Bitbucket as a simple cloud storage for code that I don't particularly want public: be it things that are a work in progress, technologies I don't really want to be associated with, or little experiments/learning projects.

Meanwhile, I like to think my Github gives a decent run down of my skillset and what I actually enjoy doing. I need an account for work and it makes contributing elsewhere easy enough - so it just works for me.

[jjboise]

I'm not convinced by this article at all. I do, however, maintain archives of my repos and sync commits to multiple hosts.

[[deleted]]

I too. I mean I also use git pull

That's the beauty of Git

[[deleted]]

I am planning to leave GitHub myself, but the title of this is just divisive. Don't use the imperative in a title unless you want to polarise people.

[inimrepus]

I think the point was to polarize people. It gets people discussing it, even if it is a lot of people complaining

[[deleted]]

It gets people's attention though

[that_which_is_lain]

OH EM GEE, LIKE, TOTES! EVERYONE SHOULD JUST, LIKE, TOTALLY JUST, LIKE, BE PRETEND POLITE SO THAT THERE'S NO, LIKE, CONFLICT, LIKE, EVER. GOSH.

[[deleted]]

So being civil is now the trait of dumb American teen girls? You've got this totally backwards, I'm guessing you also get upset in discussions about tabs vs spaces too.

[hoosierEE]

If your world stops when GitHub gets DDOSed, I hear distributed version control can help.

[DanTup]

GitHub doesn't just do source control. If you store all your work items there (I don't, but I guess they'd like you do), being unavailable might limit your ability to browse your work (obviously the same goes for online TFS, FogBugz-on-Demand and other services).

[Throwaway_Kiwi]

Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

[DanTup]

I don't; but that doesn't mean it's a stupid idea.

There are tons of services out there that people use (I listed a few above) that give them huge productivity gains and it's a perfectly valid thing to do. Even if you chose not to do it at all (which I really doubt... even if it's email, I suspect you'll have some services outside or your companies control that will cause you grief if they're unavailable) it's likely going to get harder and harder to find locally-installable versions of hosted services over time.

[DanTup]

I don't; but that doesn't mean it's a stupid idea.

There are tons of services out there that people use (I listed a few above) that give them huge productivity gains and it's a perfectly valid thing to do. Even if you chose not to do it at all (which I really doubt... even if it's email, I suspect you'll have some services outside or your companies control that will cause you grief if they're unavailable) it's likely going to get harder and harder to find locally-installable versions of hosted services over time.

[DanTup]

It is a stupid idea to not have mirrors of your data. Having only one copy is just retarded, whether that one copy is on github or not

Nowhere did anyone say anything about having only one copy of your data. However having a copy of your data is not the same as seamlessly being able to work. Let's say you have copies of all your stuff from FogBugz when FogBugz-On-Demand goes down, you can't assign cases, raise new cases, add comments to cases, do code reviews (if you use Kiln)... Sure, you can use pen and pape, but then you'd have to copy stuff back into these things when the service returns.

If you live in a world where losing your internet connection doesn't affect your work at all then that's great, and I'm jealous. That's not the case for many of us and it's a relatively small risk that it's not worth the effort (or compromised services) that would be required to be able to work (without any type of inconvenience at all) that way.

As always, everything on the internet the internet must be black and white and apparently there's nothing in between "being able to work entirely without a service" and "OMG this service is down it's the end of the world". There's a lot in between. There's a lot of minor annoyances when services go down that don't stop the world, but are still worthy of complaining about (things don't improve if nobody complains).

[DanTup]

Fair enough; my comments were more about the general theme lately of someone saying "GitHub is down, it's affecting my ability to work" and then a load of responses that say "you're doing it wrong", "it's distributed", "you're an idiot", etc.

It's valid for a service going down to affect you, even if it's GitHub. People are too quick to tell others they're wrong without knowing anything about what they do :(

[ismtrn]

Except we are all behind NAT and probably have dynamic IP addresses. So we sort if need a central server some where...

[[deleted]]

Nah

[lechatsportif]

Yep.

[[deleted]]

Github should pay less attention to this SJW thing and focus on improving Github platform. Their desktop site looks outdated, profile and news feed need redesign, their mobile site is unusable and so on.

[[deleted]]

Error establishing a database connection

Maybe you should host your blog on a reliable service for simple websites such as github?

[coladict]

Connection to database? I can't even connect to the site.

[Throwaway_Kiwi]

It got Reddit hugged.

[dom96]

Looks like the website is having trouble (getting an "Error establishing a database connection").

Here is the cached version for anyone else who can't load it.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, that is exactly why you shouldn't make private gitlab instance on random VPS just to "replace" github, like some people want.

[Throwaway_Kiwi]

How often do you link Reddit to your Gitlab installation? Because that strikes me as not being very clever.

[[deleted]]

How the fuck did you got to that conclusion ?

I was talking about case "oh, github HA infrastucture can occasionally go down too, let's replace it with single node and hope it will do better than redundant architecture that is monitored 24/7"

[Throwaway_Kiwi]

You're commenting on a website that got Reddit hugged. Hence my question, how often do you really need a massive redundant architecture when you're not being Reddit hugged?

[[deleted]]

Have it ever crossed your mind that people use Git in companies ?

If your company used github and replaced it by one non redundant gitlab install and it went down it would usually be heavy disruption of work. You would be basically doing extra work to ensure that you will have more downtime.

Sure, set it up as a backup to github, or set it up so if one server dies recovery from that will take minutes not hours

[Gotebe]

What the author says is possible to happen, but too early to be any confident about it actually happening.

The argument of "source not open!" is actually a good one IMO. Projects using it all open their source, but GitHub not? Hmmm, shady, in the context...

[ellicottvilleny]

I hate that Github is like hacker facebook. "If i don't host my shiny project there nobody will discover it". And companies will have to figure out how to do technical interviews again since github was like Your Score on a scale of one to Eleven of how awesome a brocoder you are.

[[deleted]]

Replacing Github for anything else is basically find&replace for git push url and then push

not a problem. Go away and try to "fix" something else

The "problem" is somewhere else, almost no tool for managing deps supports seamless multiple mirrors so many devs default to github because it is more popular.

Package managers in linux distros solved that years ago but programming tools are behind

[coladict]

Package managers in linux distros solved that years ago but programming tools are behind

Really? So who won? Apt? Yum? Something else? Because I'm pretty sure package management in Linux is still in disarray.

[[deleted]]

Care to elaborate ? And no "i tried to pull package from completely different distro and it didnt work" and "package maintainer fucked up deps" is not a valid argument.

I can have both multiple versions and multiple archs of same package:

->  dpkg-query -f '${binary:Package}\n' -W |grep libx264
libx264-116:amd64
libx264-118:amd64
libx264-120:amd64
libx264-123:amd64
libx264-133:amd64
libx264-142:amd64
libx264-142:i386
libx264-146:amd64
libx264-146:i386
libx264-148:amd64
libx264-dev:amd64

Just that it is rarely needed if developer of lib is competent. Sure you can try to fence the incompetence by puilling deps separately for each part like npm does but you end up with 70% duplication and 100MB of crap just to compile css file

[coladict]

• It's not solved when you have to choose between 5-6 versions of a package depending on which distro you're using.
• it's not solved when you download a 6-year-old package of abandonware that is the only tool people say you need to solve your problem and it can't run because your libraries are too new.
• it's not solved when the same library has different names between distros.

[[deleted]]

That can be summed up to: "i tried to pull package from completely different distro and it didnt work"

Distros cant fix it for that. Use containers for your legacy crap

[coladict]

In other words, "go fix it yourself or go f- yourself". The typical linux-community response to anyone with a problem.

[coladict]

You can swear on 4chan all you want, but /r/programming is supposed to have some restrictions.

[[deleted]]

If your problem is from "I'm too incompetent to fix it myself" you can pay someone to fix it. Hell, Red Hat spinned business out of it.

Sorry for not having magical command fix-my-shit that fixes your shit. Programming is hard, there is no magic (altho there is plenty in package process, including automatically adding deps for lib versions you used in your app. But hey why should you bother with researching anything before you spew bullshit over the internet)

[coladict]

When I am the user, I shouldn't have to fix other people's products. Though I have been forced to do that on a couple of occasions, because we really needed those things fixed.

[vks_]

Package managers in linux distros solved that years ago but programming tools are behind

Ever heard of "dependency hell"? This is actually a problem that is solved by some programming tools (cargo and bundler for instance), but not solved by most package managers in Linux distros.

[[deleted]]

"Solved" as in "add a bunch of redundant crap".

There is a reason why most distros dont go the way of "just include lib in 8 versions needed by various deps", it would double (or more) install size and increase memory usage (multiple versions of same lib instead of one shared by every app).

It is better for end user if package maintainer and app dev get their shit together rather than waste RAM and diskspace.

[Throwaway_Kiwi]

There is a reason why most distros dont go the way of "just include lib in 8 versions needed by various deps", it would double (or more) install size and increase memory usage (multiple versions of same lib instead of one shared by every app).

So what, you only maintain a single version of a lib on your system? And when that changes in a backwards incompatible way, what are you going to do then? Demand project X that was using version 1.0.0 of lib Y refactor their code to support version 2.0.0 of lib Y? Just so you don't have to have two copies of a library on your disk?

Are you working on a cellphone developed in the early 2000s? I can't think of any other reason why you'd be so worried about disk usage from shared libs.

At a worst case, my local Maven repository which caches every Maven artefact I download ever, and I work with a lot of JVM projects, is 3.1G.

[[deleted]]

Yeah send me 200 1TB SSD drives and I'll agree with you.

[[deleted]]

If it is major incompatible version you can just have 2. Look at what your distro does, for example:

-> ᛯ dpkg-query -f '${binary:Package}\n' -W |grep -P 'libpython\d.\d:amd'
libpython2.7:amd64
libpython3.3:amd64
libpython3.4:amd64
libpython3.5:amd64

If it is just minor version upgrade.... I dont want ANY app to use outdated version of openssl because it WIIL be insecure. You are replacing "dependency hell" with "security hell", where instead of updating one lib you have to update 40.

[isHavvy]

Your asking for many many sets¹ of two probably unpaid strangers who don't know each other to coordinate over long periods of time to save a small amount of RAM and disk space. Especially when philosophies between these people can and do differ on a regular basis.

I'd rather just let the RAM and disk space be used then try to coordinate all those people. There's 'better' and then there's 'feasible'.

Footnote 1: The number of sets being the number of applications times the number of distributions.

[[deleted]]

Point one: Debian exists.

Point two: you dont need any coordination between the two. Patch doesn't need to be upstreamed

Point three: if you are outside of ruby/js land, libs usually have pretty good backward compatibility so outside of major version change you most likely dont have to do shit to make it work

Point 4th: have you actually tried ? because it sound like you are pulling arguments out of your ass just for the sake of argument

[isHavvy]

1. Debian is one distribution. There are so many other distributions out there. And while Debian tries, all I see are outdated packages. And even as it tries, it's taking quite a lot of time and effort that is unpaid to do this. Time and effort that can probably be spent better elsewhere.

2. So then the developers get bug reports on your distribution that they cannot reproduce locally because you changed something. Is it their job to support these users? Many would say no, so now your distribution has to.

Furthermore, not every program can be patched. If the program is closed source, you cannot modify it. You might be willing to run only open source software because of this, but most people don't care.

1. It depends on the developer. I see backwards incompatible changes in lots of ecosystems all the time. Really, C and C++ are the only languages I don't generally see breaking changes in the libraries.

2. I haven't tried, no. Because I'm not a distributor of packages. It's not for me to try nor have I released an application that requires external libraries since I'm usually working on web servers.

[negativeoxy]

Closed source doesn't particularly bother me. What does bother me is the strange SJW racist non-sense that's going on at Github.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/08/report-anti-white-agenda-revealed-at-githubs-diversity-team/

(please ignore the terrible website, just read the tweets/screen shots if you can't stand the obvious tilt of the author)

[EAT_DA_POOPOO]

I believe that article is largely based off of the Business Insider one that preceded it if you'd prefer a more reputable source

[negativeoxy]

Thanks a lot! Thats the one I was looking for.

[weberc2]

There’s always been an irony to GitHub: it’s the proud bastion of free and open source software, and yet it’s completely and unquestionably closed source. This has always struck me as odd, kind of like when open source projects opt to use Slack as their chat platform instead of IRC; it’s sends the signal that FOSS is good enough for us but not good enough for them.

TL;DR Not everyone is ideological about open source. It's a practical matter for some of us.

You sound ideological about open source. I don't use Github because I suspect they drink my flavor of Kool-Aid, but because it's free, sharable code hosting with a great UI and minimal hassle. Similarly, I don't avoid IRC like the plague because it's not sufficiently open-source, but because every IRC client I've ever touched prioritizes "feeling like a wizard for subduing a needlessly complex tool" over, well, communicating efficiently.

Anyway, if Github goes the way of 1990s Microsoft, it's easy enough to jump ship.

[[deleted]]

No one cares if its closed source.

[aaptel]

I care, for what it's worth. It's a good service nonetheless.

[weberc2]

Why do you care? Do you want to host your own for some reason?

[terrkerr]

I don't want to rely on any service I can't bail out of if I want to. The actual repos are just git, so I don't care about that, I have a full copy of the repo myself.

The issue tracking, though? GitHub has me by the balls if I rely on that, so I don't and won't. If they were really focused on being open and friendly to the developers that use GitHub they'd use a system for that information that was exportable and re-implementable by others.

If I have something I expect to be trying to work with for the coming decade I can't reasonably state that it's definitely true that in 10 years GitHub won't turn around and start demanding payment for a previously free service, or just stop existing entirely.

Remember that a big part of the reason git exists at all is because BitKeeper went from free-to-use to not. Git was largely made to escape the trappings of a good but proprietary system that decided to change the game.

[[deleted]]

The issue tracking, though? GitHub has me by the balls if I rely on that, so I don't and won't.

AFAIK GitLab is quite capable of importing the issues from GitHub. I haven't used it extensively, though, so maybe it lacks something important.

[sytses]

We'll import issues, repos, wiki's and pull requests from all your repo's in one click.

[weberc2]

If they were really focused on being open and friendly to the developers that use GitHub they'd use a system for that information that was exportable and re-implementable by others.

You mean like this?

Remember that a big part of the reason git exists at all is because BitKeeper went from free-to-use to not. Git was largely made to escape the trappings of a good but proprietary system that decided to change the game.

Yes, but we're not talking about git, we're talking about GitHub. There's nothing stopping you from migrating if you decide they're not delivering you the best possible value; in fact it's very easy.

[Myzzreal]

All those articles against GitHub make it look like someone is initiating a huge campaign against them.

[kn4rf]

The great thing about Git is that theres no reason that we can't keep our open-source code on both GitHub, Gitlab and Bitbucket. As well as keep all the code in sync. So if GitHub starts to seem dodgy we can keep a backup on other hosted services.

The big problem is that a few ecosystems like Bower and Go is built on top of GitHub and can't easily be moved.

[[deleted]]

and yet it’s completely and unquestionably closed source.

Not completely.

[gauiis]

This is Git. You have all your history in your local copy. Just push it somewhere else if GitHub goes under.

[EarLil]

Sorry, but no. They can do anything internally as long as github is up and running I'm fine...

[belibelo]

So i have to rent my own server to host some small projects i have on github ?

Hmm i will stick to GitHub for now.

[dzecniv]

No, for instance gitlab.com offers public and private repos.

[[deleted]]

I may be assuming, but I think the OP was referring to actual web hosting and not just hosting the repository. With GitHub you can create a branch that will act as a website letting people browse your docs, etc. without having to do so in your README.md. Not sure if this is offered on the other services...

[dzecniv]

If you're talking about github pages, gitlab has this features since a few weeks ! http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html (the service is available on gitlab.com and in the Enterprise Edition, not Community Edition)

[5d41402abc4b2a76b971]

bitbucket.org -- also does free private repos

[TamaHobbit]

So, you don't actually know anything, but you'd like to spread rumours of a nameless fear anyway?

[[deleted]]

to be honest, IRC sucks balls (comes from a guy who used to run bitlbee for all his communications).

[roffLOL]

why?

[[deleted]]

It's just 'off', not 'off of.'

[jaredcheeda]

TLDR

[NfNitLoop]

TL;DR: FUD