GitHub Is Not Open Source, A Rant
GitHub Is Not Open Source, A Rant
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Github is Not Open Source | Juliette — I write
60 comments
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I kinda hope they change the software to also be called codeberg. Its sich a good name and forgejo is so difficult to say and have people know how to spell it
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IDK. I think that just causes more confusion. Like with "Use gitlab", do I mean the application or gitlab.com?
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"Forge-yo" difficult to say?
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Did you just discover this? It's a Microsoft site after all.
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It is indeed surprising how a Microsoft-owned site has become the default home for open-source projects. Have people thought this through?
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They bought it after it was already the default.
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To be fair, it only became Microsoft-owned after it had already become that home.
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GitHub isn’t.
The code on it is.
You could use gitlab, or something else.
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The fact that GitHub is owned by Microsoft alone makes it not open-source.
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Microsoft has developed many open-source projects. The view of Microsoft as some kind of anti-open-source crusader is 20 years out of date.
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I will now attempt to invalidate your opinion by parroting the words "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
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So has Google, they've done the Chromium browser, but everyone on Lemmy sees that so called "open-source project" with suspicion.
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- You can use other forges, but they have the exact same issues as GitHub. You need to make an account, you need to accept terms of service and if they feel like it (or are forced by a court) they'll ban you and your repository.
git send-emailexists. So it's not like you absolutely can't contribute to projects that are hosted on GitHub.
At some point in the future gitlab will get federation, but that's not a solution for now. It'll take a while.
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Why does everyone shill gitlab as a github alternative. Theyre just another shitty corporate platform
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At some point in the future gitlab will get federation, but that’s not a solution for now. It’ll take a while.
Gitlab had more than a decade to implement federation and didn't give 2 shits about it until one single dude (oelmeki?) decided to start implementing it. And even now, Gitlab hasn't built a team around federation and only have that single, external contributor writing all the code, tests, etc. . The only thing they're providing is "guidance". It wouldn't surprise me if oelmeki isn't even getting paid.
Gitlab feels like just another company happy to be #2 and not willing to do anything more to be better because most other alternatives are way behind. I bet if they were #1, they'd be just as bad as any other company that's #1.
Hopefully forgejo gets complete federation first and becomes real competition for gitlab. Gitlab doesn't deserve #2.
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Total noob here when it comes to all things git, but can't you simply host git in a privately owned server? I thought I saw that when installing some packages on my Synology NAS.
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The fact GitHub is not open source on their servers is not really a problem for me, there are many open source platforms to host code. And for centralized platform I won't be able to change anything myself anyway.
\ My rant would be about having to run their proprietary code on my machine to use GitHub. -
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Codeberg / Forgejo has a migration tool that you could use
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Gitlab has a hard limit of 10gb
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Gitlab.com has an even lower limit of 1GB, I think. But you can self-host it, that limit can be arbitrarily set.
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If I am not mistaken, there's already an import tool. Or was it Codeberg?
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Gitlab does have it. @Darken@reddthat.com you can provide a personal access token to Gitlab and it'll import your repos with all the issues and pull requests intact.
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I've migrated all my repos (not much, around 50 repos or so) to GitLab this January, GitLab has a built-in tool for that, it was as easy as a single click once I authenticated GitHub to allow that.
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It'll follow the enshitification path of every other big-tech site, give it time.
If you can't wait, https://gitea.com/
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Gitea is also privately owned. forgejo is the community owned fork of Gitea
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Forgejo is foss fork. Gitea, while being free and open source as well for the time being, is run by a for-profit corporation now.
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This is the coolest one I know of Self hosted, open source, good simple project management
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So tired of seeing these posts.
Nobody worth listening to is complaining about creating an account on GitHub. Ubuntu brainstorm was a huge success and you had to create an account for that too
It literally takes 30s.
And github has a hugely comprehensive API that allows developers to easily move if that want to.
If Microsoft Open sourced the backend, the reality is, nobody would look at the code, and everyone would still use GitHub because it's reliable. Vs code is open source, and I'm willing to bet community contributions are limited
And open sourcing the backend just means Oracle will take the code, and set up their own server for marginally cheaper and make GitHub worse.. That's what they did with red hat
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Gitlab or Gitea should integrate with Arweave and Fediverse. Fork if needed.
Develop a decentralized Github alternative.
Microsoft owns Github. It's iron how popular Github is for open source.
Limitless Peace
60 comments
Okay...
You don't know what a "monopoly" is.
Yeah, nothing you could do about it, other than moving to one of the many other git hosts. Monopoly!
And then after listing off a whole bunch of alternative git hosts...
You have plenty of ways to do that, and you know that because you just listed them. Github is not a monopoly.
Also, I don't see the concept of open source mentioned at any point in this rant.
What the author is probably searching for is "vendor-lockin", which is an anticompetitive practice for so long that it became the way many companies rely their business on. It favors established products over new-comers by making switching offerings difficult/expensive or even impossible, thus better products often have no chance of competing in a field, that was dominated by a single supplier for a while.
IMO there should be strict regulations and high fines associated with it, because it hinders innovation massively across all industries.
The cost of switching away from github for a project is high, but not as high as in other fields.
Imo github doesnt have that high of a vendor lock-in. Its git, you can clone and push it to another server. Sure, youll have to convert the ci's and templates, but thats about it really.
And a good yaml is easily converted as the ideas and actions are the same, only the action names are different.
But yes, i think that is what the author was getting at.
Ye, i went to this post diagonally and it felt like a rant without any merit. Dont get me wrong, i dont fully like github either but this was just a waste of time to read...
Thing about sharing the internet with newly minted teenagers is that they haven't been around these streets nearly as long as us. They apparently dont know the history of the net as well as the timeline of the most popular sites.
Maybe schools need to start teaching internet history class or something. If only schools in the USA weren't terrible when it comes to anything tech.
This isn't even a problem with historical awareness, OP knows that Github isn't a monopoly. They listed off a bunch of alternatives in their rant. I'm really not sure what they were even complaining about.
Do you though? A clarification that most people miss : "In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus." (from Wikipedia) So are you 100% sure that the author was talking from an economical rather than legal viewpoint?
So sure, in theoretical economics GitHub is not a monopoly, rather it's part of an oligopoly. Yet, in law, it is in practice a monopoly. GitHub is so big that it does shape the market of collaborating on (open-source) software.
So, is google not a monopoly because there are other search engines out there? Does Apple not have a monopoly among US teenagers because there are Android phones available? Does Microsoft not have a monopoly in desktop computing because Apple and Linux exist or because phones exist?
What is your definition of monopoly and how does Github not fit it? I'm genuinely curious.
It isn't. There are other search engines. People use Google because it's the best, not because it's the only one available. If Google became a horrible search engine, people would switch no problem
Yes. Although Apple is preferred in this public (of which I don't know a lot about, so I won't try to guess why), Android is always an option. And a cheaper one, usually. This forces Apple to differentiate themselves by giving the best in what their users want (premium quality and status, I guess).
Same point.
A monopoly is when a company is the only one in a market niche. Not the most prominent one.
Well, if you want to contribute to a project to github then you are pretty fucked if the gate keepers won't let you
You're not "pretty fucked". Just use one of the many other git hosts out there. OP himself lists some of them in his rant.