Hi,
I think it is good to be pragmatic about such things. GitHub offers a
lot. Including:
- Most potential contributors are on GitHub. Far fewer people are on
GitLab, let alone a project-specific forge.
Sincerely I’m not convinced: contributors are IMO users, so people who
already know Nix{,OS} and use it. Offering an easy way to participate
of course encourage and help and yes GitHub is well known to many, so
it help, but a simple package “install and start work with all you
need” can be even simpler and being “curious” for newcomers might be
also a boost of small potatoes contribution by curiosity.
Whereas the downsides brought forward seem to be hypotheticals:
- GitHub was acquired by Microsoft. But so far I haven’t seen any
negative impact.
Oh I’m not disturbed by that, for me “You-name-it inc” or Google,
Microsoft or some other company make no difference. I do not even
care if the company behave openly and seems friendly or not, because
things might change, at any point in time. My point is about being a
proprietary service, no matter who hold it.
If is used as a simple “public repository” switch to another is a
matter of change remote URL, not much more, so not a real issue.
Use proprietary feature in their workflow on contrary is an issue
when something change.
- Data collection. But it is not made clear what data collection
GitHub is currently doing that is problematic.
It’s not much a matter of “how much data collection cost” is not
an acceptable price IMO (and in that sense probably GitHub is
better than GitLab, it collect probably less).
Of course, it is completely valid to be principally against Microsoft.
Not my case, I’m against Microsoft model, non Microsoft as a single
company. I’m against using proprietary services even if they are from
Foo FOSS contributors ltd. It’s ok if such services are standard FOSS
tools so migration is easy, not otherwise. For the same reason I’m not
against GMail, as long as it’s IMAPs and SMTPs are usable without issue.
And in that sense I dislike GMail because of it’s non-standard IMAP,
but I dislike far more Proton or Tutanota because they do not offer
anything standard. For me they are not “good player” but trap awaiting
to trigger.
I am nearing my forties, so I love e-mail. But this discussion comes
up often (e.g. in the context of SourceHut) – to many young people
e-mail is basically dead or at least obsolete.
True and another good reason to teach them freedom. We need to teach
freedom especially in a world where universities do not teach it
anymore (almost).
The idea of sending and reviewing patches by e-mail is completely
alien to them.
And they are partially right since they do not know any good MUA,
with easy and reasonable defaults to use. Another reason for me
to push that model, with pre-coocked MUAs that can be used as
immediately as Claws or Thunderbird.