GitHub Is Not Open Source, A Rant
GitHub Is Not Open Source, A Rant
Github is Not Open Source | Juliette — I write
Content warning: this is a rant from a teenager who has strong opinions.
Okay...
However, it holds a monopoly on software.
You don't know what a "monopoly" is.
they could just go “Boop! You’re gone!” and there’s nothing I could do about it other than move forges.
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...
Centralization is not bad by itself but it’s bad when there’s no other option. There just needs to be ways to contribute to code without having to use Github.
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.
You don't know what a "monopoly" is.
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.
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.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"So, is google not a monopoly because there are other search engines out there?
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
Does Apple not have a monopoly among US teenagers because there are Android phones available?
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).
Does Microsoft not have a monopoly in desktop computing because Apple and Linux exist or because phones exist?
Same point.
What is your definition of monopoly and how does Github not fit it?
A monopoly is when a company is the only one in a market niche. Not the most prominent one.
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...
You don’t know what a “monopoly” is.
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, even though alternatives do exist.
Not like you can just visit some other selfhosted community on lemmy or reddit and see how others started hosting a local git appliance for their scripts and what not.
Cut them some slack. They're at an age where they're trying to assert their independence and their brain is still developing. They've got time to mature and find more worthy fights over which to spill words. Or maybe they'll remain smooth-brained. But either way, right now they're not at their best.
Did you just discover this? It's a Microsoft site after all.
It is indeed surprising how a Microsoft-owned site has become the default home for open-source projects. Have people thought this through?
To be fair, it only became Microsoft-owned after it had already become that home.
GitHub isn’t.
The code on it is.
You could use gitlab, or something else.
The fact that GitHub is owned by Microsoft alone makes it not open-source.
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.
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.-
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.
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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.
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.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"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.
Due to a generation being taught only Microsoft GitHub’s system, many forges have seen it imperative to copy all of those patterns—including all of the bad ones. Being a clone of MS GitHub isn’t a very compelling reason to be on another platform, but so few are looking to actually fix the issues Microsoft would be too big/slow to adapt to—e.g. the entire pull request model being so slow for getting it merges.
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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/
Gitea is also privately owned. forgejo is the community owned fork of Gitea
This is the coolest one I know of Self hosted, open source, good simple project management
OP, if you want an arguably easier escape from MS GitHub, have you considered not using Git? The unfortunate current truth is these two are married to the point that a lot of new (& even experienced) folks think MS GitHub is Git & even if you start a project elsewhere, somebody will fork it onto the platform the the SEO bots will put their fork at the top of the ranks. You might be better off choosing a different DVCS all together as the interoperability will be much more difficult. That said, it wouldn’t just be to escape Microsoft, but also since there are a lot of interesting, less explored ideas in the space (like how learning functional or object-oriented code for the first time will broaden your perspective for tools & ideas you already know). Personally, I find the Patch Theory-based VCSs pretty compelling so it could be worth it to dig into Pijul or Darcs.
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
Forgejo (Gitea fork) is working on federation, using the ForgeFed protocol: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/59
That's awesome. Thanks