On Tue, Jun 05, 2018 at 11:41:13AM -0600, Jon Zingale wrote: > I was being a little bit cheeky in my response to Microsoft's > acquisition of Github, though I am disappointed. Two salient > and moderate responses seem to be that: > > 1) One could always migrate to another cloud service, gitlab perhaps? > Another option could be to take the 30 seconds it takes to setup one's > own git origin. > > 2) There ought not be a difference whether those at Microsoft > (an undeniable champion of proprietary rights) and those at GitHub > (the developers of a service developed within the context of an > open-source community) manages what may be the world's > largest open-source collection of code. > > For me, GitHub has been the only social media I have ever known. > I have often enjoyed browsing the stacks and seeing how fellow > programmers have come to express their ideas in code. To `pick > one's own code and go home` strikes me as reactionary (leftpad > <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/> > anyone?), in that doing so dismisses the value of these commons.
I wasn't implying that. Given the undeniable success of GitHub in creating such a commons, recreating that same commons in the event of some corporate overlord (doesn't matter who) destroying it should not be difficult, and will be done. Particularly if someone has cloned a copy of GitHub's sourcecode, which seems likely. As per point 1, it will take 30 seconds to reattach your own code repository to the new commons. The biggest loss will be in abandonware - some itty bitty project code that someone dumped into Github and forgotten about, and then nobody cared for. Should we care for such projects? Maybe, but then we have collectively voted with our feet, so maybe not. > The roles GitHub has come to play in the development world are manifold. > Many software houses consider participation in open-source > GitHub projects as-valuable-if-not-more than having a CS degree. > Collaborations outside of software, in the narrow, have found their > home in this community. For instance, the highly publicized (at least > for mathematics) development of `Homotopy Type Theory > <https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2013/bauer-hott-book>` had been > collaboratively written using this technology. In short, version control > is not just for programmers anymore. > The version controlled stuff is not of a concern. Any such material can readily be rehosted in a new commons. Of more concern is ancilliary material - eg issues and wiki pages. On Github, the wiki pages are hosted as a special branch in the version control, so should be around. > While it is often an individually inexpensive position to give the > benefit of the doubt to Microsoft, I find it difficult to summon a > sense of good-faith. My position is that I never extended good-faith to Github in the first place. It was never needed, nor asked for. That's the beauty of it. > By analogy, Scott Pruitt may do wonders > for the environment. We will have to wait and see. > Yeah, well by analogy, people have turned to state and local governments to step up where federal systems have failed due to conservatives. eg Paris climate accord being a case in point. We'll have to wait and see if that works out, otherwise put up with inevitable bumps in the road every 4-8 years in the collective insanity pervading modern democracies. At least there's a chance Trump will be gone in another 2 years. > In the meantime, I anticipate the day I have to wait for software updates > when I go to git pull from origin. ;) > > Cheers, > Jonathan Zingale > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
