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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

Does Github have a feature to just switch all my private repositories to public when I die?

Weirdly, the hard part here is reliably knowing when you died. Messy solvable in a localized way. Really, really hard to solve on a global scale.

Why not make it trigger on not logging in for N months, and after ignoring multiple attempts to notify you? This is what Google's inactive account manager does.

But Google's inactive account manager doesn't then publish all your emails on the open web.

There could be any secrets (API keys, etc) in a GitHub repo.

I was going to speculate more about how GitHub could handle this, but it turns out they already have a system where you name a successor and they get control of your public repos 7d after GitHub receives a death certificate or 21d after an obituary. But they don't include private repos: https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/setting-up-an...

That sounds like extortion to me. Like, stop using github and we will make all your stuff public despite you originally intending it to be private.

We're talking about an optional feature for developers who want it, that you have to go and turn on.

(And it should have very clear warnings before you turn it on so you don't accidentally make things public that shouldn't be. Plus, there should probably be some sort of way to tag which repose would still need to stay private even after your death.)

We are talking about the developer opting in.

Eh, if I don’t respond for a few months I’m probably dead enough. It’s something you’d enable yourself, so you’d know that all your repos were made public if you ever wake up from a 6 month coma.

If your executor sends GitHub a death-certificate, that problem is completely resolved.

A deadman switch should be good enough.

There is a feature to nominate a successor who can do certain things to your repositories when you die.

Yeah, I just want to avoid having to bother anyone.

Feature proposal: it should display the comparison between the cost of licensing the software, and the cost of hiring a hitman.

This would be a useful feature. Though how will it know when you die?

Telegram allows you to auto-delete your account after a configurable number of months of inactivity. That neatly side steps the "how to prove someone is dead" problem.

But, not the “temporarily incapacitated or otherwise unable to login” problem.

Coma, incarceration, etc.

Yes, it's answering a different question.

But it puts the onus on the user to decide what they want to happen in those circumstances rather than leaving on Telegram to decide whether such and such person is living or dead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch

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