On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 4:34 AM, Dimitris Chloupis <[email protected]> wrote: > Google is king of abandonware , they have closed down half of their software > projects, Google Code was just the tip of the iceberg . The other half is > close to be abandoned or at least heavily outdated. Moreover google code was > crappy anyway, its close down went unnoticed. > > Github is nowhere anything like Google and its insult to even compare the > two.
This is an interesting comparison. Google have experimented in many different directions away from their core business of search, that end up coming to an end. Indeed if you look at the reason googlecode was shut down, google says: "when it started Google Code when project hosting options were limited, but since launch in 2006, it's seen a "wide variety of better project hosting services" such as GitHub and Bitbucket rise to the forefront. ... Google itself has transferred nearly a thousand of its own open-source projects to the popular coding repository GitHub." [1] A service shutting down sometime should be considered, but its a different scenario that the one asked -- of new corporate overlords extorting money from users. Probably the worst example of this is Sourceforge. Once the darling on the open source community, Sourceforge have committed reputational suicide [2] taking over projects that moved elsewhere, and then bundling Adware with their installers. [3] digs into the possibility the same could happen to Github. Nothing is certain, but at least considering whether Github might do something similar: * AFAIAA Sourceforge never had paid developer accounts. They tried to monetize the proejct's users. Github makes money from businesses wanting private repositories. * Reputation is fragile Sourceforge's plummet serves a cautionary tale. * Sourceforge projects were hosted as sub-domains (e.g. http://project-name.sourceforge.net) -- so while projects could move away from Sourceforge, Sourceforge remained in control of their old site. Github on the other hand allows you to host your repository on your *own* domain [4]. So when you on from Github, your domain can move too in a way that is largely transparent to the community. If you want to be defensive, you should host github on your own domain. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8206903/google-code-is-closing-down-github-bitbucket [2] http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source-software/sourceforge-commits-reputational-suicide.html [3] https://www.wiredtree.com/blog/could-github-eventually-suffer-the-same-fate-as-sourceforge/ [4] https://help.github.com/articles/about-custom-domains-for-github-pages-sites/ cheers -ben > > On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 10:26 PM Eliot Miranda <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> 2015-12-17 17:08 GMT-03:00 Nicolas Anquetil <[email protected]>: >>> > >>> > >>> > On 17/12/2015 20:46, Peter Uhnák wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> Ah, that's interesting. So my concern is whether github is a safe >>> >>> long-term bet. Specifically what is there to prevent some third >>> >>> party from >>> >>> buying github, or of github going public and the board taking the >>> >>> decision, >>> >>> or github on its own, deciding to charge for hosting, keeping the >>> >>> data >>> >>> hostage to extract payment? What safeguards are in place to prevent >>> >>> this? >>> >>> I'm not interested in "this will never happen" arguments. I'm >>> >>> interested >>> >>> in hard data please. >>> >> >>> >> GitHub explicitly reserves the right to shut down without notice, >>> >> however considering they have ~10M users and ~30M repositories >>> >> (ranging from small one-person projects, over programming languages, >>> >> to governmental programs), do you really think it is a real scenario? >>> > >>> > well, googlecode closed didn't it? >>> > and it was not a small affair either >>> >>> Google code was really small compared with Github. >>> >>> GitHub is monumental. It's to source management what Gmail is to email. >>> >>> > you never know what might happen in the future (trust a divorced man) >>> >>> You get half the code? (the part that needs refactoring probably) >> >> >> >> ROTFL >> >> _,,,^..^,,,_ >> thanks, Eliot
