Github [LWN.net]

Github

Posted Feb 6, 2013 12:45 UTC (Wed) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848)
In reply to: casual contributions and Github by fb
Parent article: LCA: The future of the Linux desktop

> On a side note, I wish more FOSS projects would just move to GitHub.
On the sole grounds that loads of potential casual contributors (including me) already have a GitHub account and are used to work with it. It would remove yet another barrier to contributing.

There are others of us who prefer not to use github, and prefer free software and less centralised infrastructures. Mako argues well why this is important at http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html. I am a fan of git and email, myself; works well, is clear, code review is integrated easily, and you don't need to sign up to anything (or certainly not a service with a terms of service / privacy policy to be wary of).

I agree strongly with the idea that collaboration should be made as easy as possible, though. Complex build systems can be a pretty big barrier to entry (and make for an unpleasant entry to a codebase).

(Log in to post comments)

Github

Posted Feb 7, 2013 9:58 UTC (Thu) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]

> There are others of us who prefer not to use github, and prefer free software and less centralised infrastructures. Mako argues well why this is important at http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html.

I read your link, and I respectfully disagree with its conclusions.

I think the comparison with bitkeeper misses the point. BitKeeper was a proprietary tool. Git is FOSS, and migrating to and from another Git host would be trivial compared to a bitkeeper migration to anywhere else. At least for me, that distinction matters.

IMO if you really want to ease collaboration, you need to be where the "casual contributors" are. Right now, most are at Github.

BTW, I actually looked at Gitorious. I pay Github $5/month for hosting private projects without any collaborators [*]. Gitorious doesn't seem to offer anything like that for individual users.

[*] stuff like my own private LaTeX/text files, or my "etc" files.

> I am a fan of git and email, myself; works well, is clear, code review is integrated easily, and you don't need to sign up to anything (or certainly not a service with a terms of service / privacy policy to be wary of).

I think most people nowadays do not have an email account with direct IMAP/SMTP, or that would not mangle the text. It was not like that 15 years ago, but AFAICT it is the reality in 2013.

I myself don't have a personal email that works for patches (using GMail with the 2-factor authentication). Finding a way to use git-send-email to submit patches to OpenWrt was a PITA. (I reckon my life would be a lot easier if they were hosting their project on Gitorious.)

Github

Posted Feb 8, 2013 3:59 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> I myself don't have a personal email that works for patches (using GMail with the 2-factor authentication). Finding a way to use git-send-email to submit patches to OpenWrt was a PITA. (I reckon my life would be a lot easier if they were hosting their project on Gitorious.)

I use gmail with 2-factor authentication and I use offlineimap/esmtp to do *all* of my email (I can't stand the web UI nor any phone UI that I've ever seen for email) just fine. Now if only I could lock down that the password that offlineimap is only good for reading over IMAP and esmtp's password could only access SMTP, it'd be better.