why github and not codeberg?
badwidth? $$$ from microsoft? (traffic, free training for copilot, ..)
It is free and robust, and there is not much bad Microsoft can do to you. Because it is standard git, there is no lockdown. If they make a decision you don't like, migrating is just a git clone. As for the "training copilot" part, it is public, it doesn't change anything that Microsoft hosts the project on their own servers, they can just get the source like anyone else, they probably already do.
Why not Codeberg? I don't know, maybe bandwidth, but if that's standard git, making a mirror on Codeberg should be trivial.
That's why git is awesome. The central repository is just a convention. Technically, there is no difference between the original and the clone. You don't even need to be online to collaborate, as long as you have a way to exchange files.
Definitely I can access the source code. The review tools are not on GitHub. But is it even possible to host my proposed changes elsewhere, not on GitHub? I suppose that the answer is negative, but surprises happen.
This is a relatively theoretical question, but it explores the "what bad Microsoft can do to you" avenue: it can close your GitHub account, likely seriously hampering your ability to contribute.
You submit patches to Phabricator, not to GitHub.
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contrib...
> To submit a patch for review, we use a tool called moz-phab.
That does mean you need an account on Phabricator, but not on GitHub https://moz-conduit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/phabricator-use...
Yes, in fact it is only possible to submit patches through Phabricator. You cannot submit patches through Github.
Recently I also got "rate limited" after opening about three web pages.
Microsoft can do something to you, and that is to arbitrarily deny you access after you've built a dependence on it, and then make you jump through hoops to get access back.
People who haven’t used it logged out recently may be surprised to find that they have, for some time, made the site effectively unusable without an account. Doing one search and clicking a couple results gets you temporarily blocked. It’s effectively an account-required website now.
I can't find it now, but sometime in the past week or so I saw something that (IIRC) related to the BBC (?) blocking a ton of badly-behaved obvious scraper traffic that was using Meta (?) user-agents but wasn't coming from the ASNs that Meta uses. The graphs looked like this ended up reducing their sustained traffic load by about 80%.
Items where I'm doubting my recall (since I didn't find anything relevant doing some quick searches) are marked with (?)
You're really going to make me clone a project locally to do a search. I just end up using google to search github. It's so stupid.
The usual way I notice I'm not logged in is by getting blocked after interacting with ~3 different parts of the site within a minute. If I search, click a single repo, and stay in that repo without using search, it seems to go OK, but if I interact with search and then a couple repos, or search again, temp-banned.
And sometimes even using the exact repo name in Google search, I cannot see the corresponding (non-popular) repo.
This might be a country-dependant thing.
However, it is clearly not correct to say that you were banned from GitHub. It’s like saying “I was banned from Google because I refuse to use computing devices.”
Not really a ban, just self flagellation, which, again, whatever works for you.
Github seems to have no legit need for a user's phone number. Since there's not even a way to tell them to go pound sand, I'd say opting out of disclosing sensitive information they don't need by not signing in/up and equating their unreasonable demand with a ban is respectable.
I mean, obviously you disagree with them being generally reputable, but you must realize that’s not a broad opinion, and they are certainly better at preventing data breaches than the average company that stores phone numbers.
Sincerely though, I hope you get your GDPR request sorted.
Are you talking about Microsoft here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Controversies
Not mine and it sucks that this means I'm not welcome as FireFox contributor anymore unless I move countries just to register a monthly contract for a dedicated GitHub-accepted SIM card.
Once you trigger phone-number verification requirement your account is globally shadowbanned and support blocked pending SMS code verification. Aside from the privacy issue it's completely blocking people in the several countries (beyond the ones offially totally banned due to sanctions) to which GitHub won't even try to SMS/call.
Remember that registering a second account would be violating GitHub ToS.
Nothing has changed regarding being a contributor. Bugzilla, Phabricator, Lando. You don't really interact with GH other than read-only needs as code search. (Which, funnily, is currently the most rate-limited thing on the whole of GH ;D) — but luckily as long as there's the Hg mirror, Searchfox continues to being used for that as well.
Far less than these?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40592789
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12305598
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Privacy...
This is unlikely.
I've been gone for a few years now and have no insight into this decision, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. Having said that, I think that, for better or worse, GitHub is probably the best location simply because it provides the lowest barrier to entry for new contributors.
I know that's spicy enough to trigger dozens of keyboard warriors hitting the reply button, but every little thing that deviates from "the norm" (for better or for worse, GitHub is that) causes a drop-off in people willing to contribute. There are still people out there, for example, who refuse to create an account on bugzilla.mozilla.org (not that this move to GitHub changes that).
Given the post above, issues regarding self-hosting were at least part of the reason for the switch so a new self-hosted arrangement is unlikely to have been considered at all.
I don't know what the state of play is right now, but non-self-hosted GitLab has had some notable performance issues (and, less often IIRC, availability issues) in the past. This would be a concern for a popular project with many contributors, especially one with a codebase as large as Firefox.
Of course Mozilla is free to make their own choices. But this choice will be read as the latest alarm bell for many already questioning the spirit of Mozilla management.