The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl [LWN.net]

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 12, 2020 3:33 UTC (Thu) by kuon (guest, #135598)
Parent article: The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

For me, the good side of this (well, I see it as good now) is that this whole saga convinced me to self host my git projects. It took some effort but about 250 repos were moved to a gitea instance I own.

It made me realize how dependent we were on github. It is a good tool, there is no deny that, but we are giving away a lot of control over our own projects in return.

I wish some larges foss projects would move away from github, to help ensure that the alternatives stays alive.

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The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 12, 2020 4:06 UTC (Thu) by pj (subscriber, #4506) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm waiting for someone (gitlab? gitbucket? someone) to build a federated version so we can self-host but still be part of a single community.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 12, 2020 7:10 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Some options are: email, ForgeFed

https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distrib...
https://drewdevault.com/2020/09/20/The-potential-of-feder...
https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 14, 2020 13:59 UTC (Sat) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (2 responses)

Some IPFS options also exist.

https://radicle.xyz/ is the most advanced is my guess.

I hope those get developed further.

My guess is we need good protocols on how to do storage on IPFS for git data, possibly part of regular git program long term.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 15, 2020 3:02 UTC (Sun) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

Seems like there are multiple git remote-helper implementations for IPFS:

https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/git-remote-ipld
https://github.com/cryptix/git-remote-ipfs
https://github.com/monadic-xyz/ipfs
https://github.com/larsks/git-remote-ipfs

Some discussion of git on IPFS:

https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/git-on-ipfs-links-and-reference...

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 17, 2020 9:54 UTC (Tue) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

As mentioned I hope they settle on the same protocol and an official helper gets added to git binary distribution.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 12, 2020 4:07 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

> I wish some larges foss projects would move away from github

I've noticed some have pre-emptively set up Gitlab mirrors in the last week or two. That's better than nothing I suppose, but disaster recovery *cannot* be a reactive process.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 14, 2020 15:06 UTC (Sat) by ghorbanian (guest, #129503) [Link] (6 responses)

Has anyone looked into using block-chain to decentralize code repositories?

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 14, 2020 16:19 UTC (Sat) by terminalnode (guest, #134544) [Link]

Not entirely sure how it works, what it's limitations are etc, but there is a token (on the ethereum chain I believe) called gitcoin.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 14, 2020 16:57 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Is the problem a centralized repository (given how easy it is to recover using local copies) or other infrmation such as pull requests and bugs?

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 15, 2020 16:07 UTC (Sun) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (1 responses)

The problem the blockchain solves is essentially distributed agreement on transactions with resistance to tampering *in the context of ongoing distributed agreement*, ie, further transactions and modifications from anywhere. I don’t think the security problems it solves are really of concern for a code repository - there’s a single authoritative version from somewhere, presumably, and a limited number of folks who can change it. Just sign or encrypt the thing being distributed.

In fact, if you don’t need to solve those specific security problems, blockchain is a shit way of distributing stuff - it has *massive* overhead vs a distributed protocol without “proof of work” (or proof of whatever you’d like). If your fundamental goal is to get *data* around in a trusted manner - rather than do distributed agreement type things - blockchain is not a good answer.

We know how to build distributed services, I think the problem is practicality and combining distributed service with ease of finding things and all the other stuff - as you mentioned - that a system like GitHub provides.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 15, 2020 16:07 UTC (Sun) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link]

Sorry, tzafrir mentioned the other forge services aspect.

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 18, 2020 7:43 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, if only there were some blockchain-based DVCS created as a response to gatekeepers using legal threats to shut down the collaboration tools of a well-known project…

The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Posted Nov 18, 2020 8:13 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I seem to recall that there's such a project. What was the name... something like "dork"..?