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> Also from my experience of trying to leave GitHub, you just end up having a couple of projects on your alternative platform, and everything else on GitHub.

> And if you want to build a community, you will quickly find out that the majority want to stick to GitHub, and leaving it can kill your projects chances of getting contributions.

That's a defeatist attitude and a self-fulfilling prophecy at the same time. As more and more people leave GitHub (hopefully not to go to the same alternative), it becomes less and less of a must-have. The reason these things are somewhat true today is because of the network effect, and it's precisely that effect which we must actively attempt to squash by leaving.

Parent is talking about a fundamental feature of networks. A denser and larger network has much more useful network-related features, and if one company has a significant majority of the total addressable market for a network, it's a massive ask for people to extricate themselves and rebuild a network somewhere else.

It's why Facebook is still on top even though everyone hated it for a while; YouTube is the *only video platform, etc.

But we are developers, not my grandma. We ‘know better’ but haven’t been doing enough about it.

You are overestimating how many developers care about this really.

> Leaving GitHub wont change that, OpenAI is training its models on every bit of code they can have, sourcehut, codeberg etc. If its public, they will train on it.

Not every bit of code, they are respecting proprietary licenses.

When MS puts the code for Windows, Office, Azure and everything else in front of ChatGPT, Copilot, whatever other AI learning model they have, then perhaps they have a leg to stand on.

Otherwise, they're just being hypocritical to claim that no injury is being done by using code for training, because they are refusing to train on any of their code.

Right now it just looks like they are ripping off open source licenses without meeting the terms of the license.

https://www.lelanthran.com/chap7/content.html

AFAIK that has nothing to do with the license, it has to do with whether the code is public. You don't want the AI accidentally revealing proprietary non-public information (e.g. imagine someone had a secret API key in a private repo and copilot leaked it; that'd be a huge incident), so you don't train it on that information, regardless of what it's licensed under.

You could make a similar argument for not training on GPL code, but it's a lot easier to programmatically determine whether or not code is public than it is to programmatically determine what it's licensed under, particularly when you're training on massive amounts of unlabeled data. Not to mention it's way easier to delete an accidentally-added snippet of GPL code from a codebase than it is to "unleak" company secrets after they've been publicly revealed.

> Not to mention it's way easier to delete an accidentally-added snippet of GPL code from a codebase than it is to "unleak" company secrets after they've been publicly revealed.

How often do you think anyone will notice that some part of a proprietary codebase is copied substantially from GPL code? I think it's going to be very rare and a lot of this code will fly under the radar. The GPL was always a kind of legal jiu-jitsu, turning copyright against itself and allowing non-commercial entities to protect themselves from uncompensated exploitation. Models like copilot, if they're legal, upend the status quo tremendously. Even though your code isn't (always) used directly, a commercial entity like Microsoft will slurp it up and sell the resulting model back to you for $9.99/mo.

> Every time a project uses it, its a pain to deal with.

Sorry, but I consider that a plus.

One of the primary problems with GitHub right now is the "drive by" nature. Everybody is on Github because a bunch of idiotic big corporations made "community contribution" part of their annual review processes so we now have a bunch of people who shouldn't be on GitHub throwing things around on there.

Putting just a touch of friction into the comment/contribute cycle is a good thing. The people who contribute then have to want to contribute.

I like sourcehut, I'm just not a fan of email oriented collaboration workflow, so I dont use it. And the rest of the world isn't either, if the success of github is anything to go by. I get that Drew likes it, the greybeards are used to it, it works, it's adequate, and it keeps things simple, but I just never could do it. I don't like git either tbh, I grumble while I use it. IMO the perfect collaboration suite would be something like fossil with RSS feeds for every action.

I believe the goal is to build a minimal UI for those that don't prefer which is fine, but email & pull requests aren't the only model here. Look how much tooling is created to try to fit stack-based diffs atop Git+GitHub instead of using a different platform.

I'm mostly familiar with gitlab, what does github provide for free above and beyond that? I like that I can run my gitlab pipeline on my machines and sync to a free gitlab instance. I like that I don't read about security vulnerabilities in gitlab pipelines nearly as often as github actions. I like gitlab issues as they are fairly minimal.

GitHub registry, GitHub actions and GitHub Codespaces are unlimited for public repos, in addition to all enterprise features.

That's without talking about nice to have features like GitHub Sponsors, the for you tab, the (arguably) more popular UI layout, It's simply a better platform for Open source projects

> gitlab doesn't even compare in free features.

What features is GitLab missing? I don't know, I'm curious.

Unlimited package registry, unlimited Action run time, premium features unlocked and more. Also, the free tier on GitHub gives more for private repos too!, unlimited orgs, 2000 Ci minutes etc. It's just plain better, and It's because Microsoft can afford to play the long game, GitLab can't anymore.

I believe he just wants to do his bit by removing his activity from github towards lowering their dominance numbers in the space. I don't think he intends to stop those LLM code models.

This whole open source thing is the biggest farce on planet Earth. Someone with a good knowledge about geeks and their behaviour concocted up this open source bullshit. So now talented people give their skill to the "whole" and they have to beg for contributions and donations to get by. And other geeks (not suits with ties) finance the ones they sympathise with. It's ridiculous.

And faceless entities use their hard work for who knows what, but mostly to fatten up their already oversized corp and give back NOTHING.

And people, seemingly without common sense suck up to companies that rob them, and even disseminate their shiny new "free" tools.

This would be a Hugo-Nebula award winner novel if it wouldn't be reality.

This is such a misrepresentation of the open-source landscape. Yes, there are people working on open-source projects who beg for donations; but there also are open-source projects maintained by full-time employees (Eleventy, paid by Netlify; React, paid by Facebook; Angular, paid by Google; Next.js, paid by Vercel; Linux, paid by various companies; etc.). If a person thinks that his efforts will be better compensated elsewhere, he can always start looking for a paid job.

People should not beg for their work for a start. If you use it, you should pay for it. A small fee, or a fee that is set by the dev.

I use a lot of open source software and directly pay for approximately none of it.

Do you behave differently and pay for it today? What do you use to accomplish (track and manage) that?

That's the problem there are no systems in place for it. So if there is no UI for payments on github, people will never stop for a moment to think about what they take for granted.

You just described proprietary software. It's a philosophy incompatible with free software.

You aren't required to pay for a gift, which is what free software is.

Nah, nope. You usually don't get the source for proprietary software. Just like you get medical care when you are in an accident, same should apply to work done on os software. Somehow devs should be compensated for their work on os soft.

Yikes. You sound very bitter. Is there a story behind that bitterness?

There's a wide variety of people in the open source community at large. And a wide variety of motivations for contributing. I for one am happy that open source software is a thing. It's been a net good for mankind. Sure, there are abuses, and I'm sure many things could be improved. But I'm glad it's there all the same.

Nah, not at all, just don't like power structures that feed on benevolent naivety. Of course it's good, but compensating those people should be the norm. Where is the payments side of github for example? So it's open source but in order to clone the rep you should spend 1 bucks on it, or if you want a bug/feature addressed you could name a price or the dev can set the price on it?

Because the holy sacred cow must not be agitated... suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

And people rationalizing the all devouring machine, hell, it is just bonkers.

> compensating those people should be the norm. Where is the payments side of github for example? [..] if you want a bug/feature addressed you could name a price or the dev can set the price on it?

Github does have monetization. It has "sponsors", and you can create a "sponsor" level that is basically "I will consult with you and prioritize bugs you choose".

It's totally normal for a developer who wants to monetize a popular open source project to offer consulting or "pay for me to work on your bug". That's already there.

... However, I would like to provide an alternative view. I am personally very happy that monetary compensation is not the norm in free software. I find joy in coding, but I find far more joy in coding when there's no money involved. When I am able to work as much or as little as I want, without feeling any form of financial obligation to others (which inescapably comes from being paid), I am happier.

If the norm was to pay or be paid in free software, I would not find joy in it. I would likely not participate.

By analogy, let's say that me and some friends get together to eat food, and each bring a meal. You might say "oh, that is a waste, the person who made a meatloaf could have sold that for money. Everyone at this meal should be paying each other for their cooking, and the person who cooked the most ends up making some money". Do you not see how that would ruin the feeling of cooking for your friends and enjoying time together?

To me, the free software community has a similar thing. Because the norm is assuming people are just trying to build stuff, not make money, it makes it a far more pleasant activity.

> And people rationalizing the all devouring machine, hell, it is just bonkers.

To me, the truly bonkers thing is people letting capitalism eat them. "You have to have your grindset, optimize your time to make money", it seems bonkers to me. People trying to rationalize their existence not by finding communities and trying to help others, but by trying to make their wealth as large as possible, often at the expense of happiness.

It should be default. They are nowhere to be found when you click on code, to get the clone url for example. It's still up to you whether you pay or slack, the code will be there, it's free, just it would weigh down on your conscience. It's a safety net and a way to say thanks to the devs.

There are a lot of people who do it, because they like what they do (esp in the beginning, while it's not a maintenance nightmare), but would also like to have some side income from it, but they are timid/shy to ask for it. So the burden should be on the service provider to provide these services and not on the developer. The dev can even opt out of it (like you) if he wants to, but I think that would be the very minority.

You pour your heart into a project, others use your project like it's a free service, but in the end nobody gives you nothing for it. All you get is stars and forks, and some stats. Wow, thank you for the exploitation of your naivety.

You can buy the favorite beer, coffee, hamburger from the money flowing in, and that's your tangible reward for your efforts.

I disagree that compensating FOSS contributors should be the norm. That would open people up to a huge can of worms (labour laws, liabilities, etc).

> Because the holy sacred cow must not be agitated... suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

While this is a pretty harsh take, I can't help but to feel that articles like "Software below the poverty line" support at least aspects of it: https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html

I don’t think open source per-se but certainly permissive licenses like Apache were a mistake. They’ve just allowed business to either get free things to make a profit while contributing nothing back or to literally create a business by selling the Apache licensed programs in the cloud.

> So now talented people give their skill to the "whole" and they have to beg for contributions and donations to get by. And other geeks (not suits with ties) finance the ones they sympathise with. It's ridiculous.

Is it? I can't think of a single professional dev making money right now that isn't making money because they did not have to reinvent the entire tech stack that they are skilled in.

If there was no open source, we'd all be making a lot less, and the state of tech would be far far smaller than it is right now.

If there would be no open source, people would pay for libraries. Now we have open source, and a lot of devs are not compensated. End of story. No proper solution. That's all.

Roughly the same applies to newspapers. Ohm please do not turn off advertisements so we could keep the lights going.

Digital beggars everywhere.

> If there would be no open source, people would pay for libraries.

Nonsense. The cost of creating non-trivial software (say, 20+ dependencies, all needing payment) would put software out of the reach of ordinary people, meaning that there will only be a small niche of developer jobs.

Which means that most people making a non-zero income from writing software today would have been making a zero income from writing software in your hypothetical alternate universe.

There's a lot of butterfly-effect type results as well - due to how capitalism works, the majority of people who are capable of writing software would never be able to compete - whoever the bug players are, they could simply buy them out, shut them down or even product-dump.

FOSS levels the field somewhat: FOSS is a force multiplier, in that whatever FOSS creates can be used to create more software (even non-FOSS), reducing the dependency on one or two incumbents who were lucky enough to get there first and cornered the market.

Without FOSS, we'd all be running IE6 on Windows 98, because there'd be no competition.

I think you have issues with interpreting the idea as a whole, so you cling to one sentence and base some totally out of touch assumption on that very sentence.

Yup.

FWIW, I keep thinking about some kind of dual licensing, FOSS and something-something-royalties. (Sorry, IANAL, so haven't gotten any further.)