no account is required unless you’re submitting code
it’s free
Submitting issues & discussions require an account. Using the search for code requires an account. On Lemmy this week there was also a post about viewing “Discussions” & “Wiki” being A/B tested or whatever with an account required to view. Which is to say, if submitting patches, issues, & or using some features requires giving up personal info & agreeing to Microsoft’s ToS to create an account, you have locked out users & their freedom isn’t respected if their autonomy to not create an account with a company known for predatory behavior cannot be respected.
lock-in
Users locked out sucks, but so does lock in. Sure you can set a non Microsoft GitHub remote & push to it, but I’m talking about the forge on whole rather than the tool that backs it. The more Microsoft GitHub features you rely on, the more the existance of a ./.github directory’s or otherwise gets cited as being too hard to move. As more features get locked behind authentication, so will the APIs that allow some ability to migrate. GitHub were the popularizers of the “pull request” model too which is severely limiting but is the only way you can operate on their site (no stacked diffs, mailing patchsets, etc.) which eliminates alternating review methods (while you could use a third-party, due to MS GitHub’s ingrained workflow to too many, I’ve seen alternatives being considered as “too hard” rather than “different” (even if could be “better”)). I’ve also witnessed some communities like Elm freeload on the “free” hosting & require all community packages be upload to only MS GitHub or you can’t publish & by proxy participate in the community (or in their case even refer to other remotes, VCSs, tarballs for packages (even private ones) but that is due to Elm having a terrible default package manager).
They’ve embraced a Git forge; they’ve extended the space with Codespaces, Sponsors, Actions, Copilot, even VS Code proliferation far beyond pre-acquisition GitHub; now we just await the extinguish part.
But you’re willing to gloss over all methods of contribution (unless the project owner explicitly provided alternatives) require accounts to a proprietary service owned by Microsoft, not owned by your project? Or they way the Microsoft GitHub way is entrenched in the larger community via education & peer pressure to join the social media network.
I don’t see Microsoft with both its history & its shareholder obligations to maximize profit to do anything but try to extinguish—corporations always aim to monopolize.
Everything you point to as ‘pros’ for Microsoft GitHub could be applied to GitLab, SourceHut, Codeberg, GNU Savannah, Notabug, Radicle, darcs hub, Smedeeree, Pijul Nest as far as hosting infrastructure where you don’t have to–and with the exception of GitLab being open core & a publicly-traded company, they are open source & not ran by corporations (some as for-profits, but indie, others, as foundations, others as community run). You’re conflating my (and many of our) distaste of capitalism/corporatism by rejecting Microsoft as if it means anti-access or anti-open source/anti-ethical source. Microsoft is 100% an enemy playing the long-con by vacuuming up all these developer adjacent services as megacorporations try to do (see their expanding portfolio of: WSL, Azure, GitHub, Codespaces, Sponsors, Copilot, VS Code, npm, Teams). I also believe it’s only a matter of time til they pull the plug on their APIs like Twitter & Reddit as the board of shareholders demand preventing migration (just like the “Search” is disabled).
There is also no shame in self-hosting these things & you can start hosting most DVCS with SSH + an HTTP server in front of the code even if it doesn’t have some web GUI to browse files so it doesn’t have to be that complicated. NixOS modules or similar can get you a cgit, GitLab Community, SourceHut, etc. all running without too much effort (services.cgit.enable = true), or forming a local collective & sharing resources is cool too & doesn’t need to be each project self-hosting. You can still have ‘barriers’ like authentication if you need that require agreeing to your community’s terms of service instead of Microsoft’s ToS–which is the system used by KDE, GNOME, & many other big FOSS self-hosted GitLab forges.
I’m also not against rejecting some of the tenets of “open source”–with OSI as its definitional gatekeeper–in favor of the copyfarleft, copy fair, Commons Clause, etc. that require corporations contribute code or finances as I don’t think it’s a difficult argument to say our current systems extract values from the Commons more than adding putting folks in positions of not getting to work on their valuable library that everyone relies on, but doesn’t want to help finance its maintenance (see Babel)… in which case, rejecting the corporations in favor of the Commons could be a greater goal than “open source is actually about”.
https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/ it’s been ongoing
Submitting issues & discussions require an account. Using the search for code requires an account. On Lemmy this week there was also a post about viewing “Discussions” & “Wiki” being A/B tested or whatever with an account required to view. Which is to say, if submitting patches, issues, & or using some features requires giving up personal info & agreeing to Microsoft’s ToS to create an account, you have locked out users & their freedom isn’t respected if their autonomy to not create an account with a company known for predatory behavior cannot be respected.
Users locked out sucks, but so does lock in. Sure you can set a non Microsoft GitHub remote & push to it, but I’m talking about the forge on whole rather than the tool that backs it. The more Microsoft GitHub features you rely on, the more the existance of a
./.githubdirectory’s or otherwise gets cited as being too hard to move. As more features get locked behind authentication, so will the APIs that allow some ability to migrate. GitHub were the popularizers of the “pull request” model too which is severely limiting but is the only way you can operate on their site (no stacked diffs, mailing patchsets, etc.) which eliminates alternating review methods (while you could use a third-party, due to MS GitHub’s ingrained workflow to too many, I’ve seen alternatives being considered as “too hard” rather than “different” (even if could be “better”)). I’ve also witnessed some communities like Elm freeload on the “free” hosting & require all community packages be upload to only MS GitHub or you can’t publish & by proxy participate in the community (or in their case even refer to other remotes, VCSs, tarballs for packages (even private ones) but that is due to Elm having a terrible default package manager).They’ve embraced a Git forge; they’ve extended the space with Codespaces, Sponsors, Actions, Copilot, even VS Code proliferation far beyond pre-acquisition GitHub; now we just await the extinguish part.
How can I learn more about alternatives to pull requests and other tools or processes for code review?
deleted by creator
But you’re willing to gloss over all methods of contribution (unless the project owner explicitly provided alternatives) require accounts to a proprietary service owned by Microsoft, not owned by your project? Or they way the Microsoft GitHub way is entrenched in the larger community via education & peer pressure to join the social media network.
I don’t see Microsoft with both its history & its shareholder obligations to maximize profit to do anything but try to extinguish—corporations always aim to monopolize.
deleted by creator
Everything you point to as ‘pros’ for Microsoft GitHub could be applied to GitLab, SourceHut, Codeberg, GNU Savannah, Notabug, Radicle, darcs hub, Smedeeree, Pijul Nest as far as hosting infrastructure where you don’t have to–and with the exception of GitLab being open core & a publicly-traded company, they are open source & not ran by corporations (some as for-profits, but indie, others, as foundations, others as community run). You’re conflating my (and many of our) distaste of capitalism/corporatism by rejecting Microsoft as if it means anti-access or anti-open source/anti-ethical source. Microsoft is 100% an enemy playing the long-con by vacuuming up all these developer adjacent services as megacorporations try to do (see their expanding portfolio of: WSL, Azure, GitHub, Codespaces, Sponsors, Copilot, VS Code, npm, Teams). I also believe it’s only a matter of time til they pull the plug on their APIs like Twitter & Reddit as the board of shareholders demand preventing migration (just like the “Search” is disabled).
There is also no shame in self-hosting these things & you can start hosting most DVCS with SSH + an HTTP server in front of the code even if it doesn’t have some web GUI to browse files so it doesn’t have to be that complicated. NixOS modules or similar can get you a cgit, GitLab Community, SourceHut, etc. all running without too much effort (
services.cgit.enable = true), or forming a local collective & sharing resources is cool too & doesn’t need to be each project self-hosting. You can still have ‘barriers’ like authentication if you need that require agreeing to your community’s terms of service instead of Microsoft’s ToS–which is the system used by KDE, GNOME, & many other big FOSS self-hosted GitLab forges.I’m also not against rejecting some of the tenets of “open source”–with OSI as its definitional gatekeeper–in favor of the copyfarleft, copy fair, Commons Clause, etc. that require corporations contribute code or finances as I don’t think it’s a difficult argument to say our current systems extract values from the Commons more than adding putting folks in positions of not getting to work on their valuable library that everyone relies on, but doesn’t want to help finance its maintenance (see Babel)… in which case, rejecting the corporations in favor of the Commons could be a greater goal than “open source is actually about”.