[Geany-Devel] Moving away from Github

Jiří Techet techet at xxxxx
Thu Jun 7 09:02:50 UTC 2018


On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 11:26 PM Lex Trotman <elextr at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jun 2018 at 00:16, Matthew Brush <mbrush at codebrainz.ca> wrote:
> >
> > On 2018-06-06 01:53 AM, Mark O'Donovan wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Regarding https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/1870
> > >
> > > What are people's thoughts on transitioning away from GitHub?
> > >
> > > I personally have given GitHub a free pass up to now due to the
> benefits
> > > they were providing to the FOSS community. Following the Microsoft
> > > buyout I no longer wish to do so and have moved all repositories I
> > > control to GitLab. I am considering closing my GitHub account
> altogether
> > > and will be considerably more likely to contribute to GitLab projects
> in
> > > future. In this i'm sure that I am not alone.
> > >
> > > I also think that Geany, as a Free and Open Source Software program,
> > > should be hosted on a FOSS repository management site. The same open
> > > source arguments that we use to promote Geany apply here.
> > >
> >
> > What changes with the new ownership? As I understand it, the website is
> > to remain free for open source projects, is still proprietary software,
> > and is still owned by an (albeit massively larger) for-profit
> corporation.
>
> Agree with Matthew, as far as Geany is concerned, nothing changes, a
> company allows us to use their infrastructure, so we do.  It will
> always be on their terms. Same with Sourceforge same with Gitlab.
>
> And to add, Gitlab is also a private company, with terms of use that
> allow it to unilaterally change the terms of use without notification,
> but all users are responsible for monitoring the terms and obeying
> them.  The only difference is that they provide the software
> (including their ability to monitor your use in the binary installs)
> for you to set up your own copy, but Geany does not have the
> infrastructure or manpower to set up and maintain its own site.
>

Agree too. The possibility of self-hosting is too expensive time-wise and
the alternative will always be depending on some company (unless it's a
foundation but then it's a question of its funding and the financial
sustainability - at the github scale it would be burning a lot of money).
Github was not profitable and they had to do something to change that (and
any new alternative to github where people start moving their projects will
have to face the same issue eventually). So

1. They could cancel free accounts and start charging money
2. Sell the company to someone who does (1)
3. Sell the company to someone who will run the opensource projects in the
"charity mode" to improve their image (and there are basically just two
companies with enough resources who'd be willing to do that - Google and
Microsoft)

I think Microsoft has been trying desperately to "be cool again" lately and
this buyout is most probably part of their strategy "look how great we are
and what we do for developers". So I'm mildly optimistic here, at least for
the near future, until some Steve Ballmer v2 becomes a CEO...

Cheers,

Jiri
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