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Github is not something that should be replaced. Rather, a different kind of model needs to exist. Before Git, there were things like Subversion, for instance. All of that slowed way down after Git showed up to the party because people liked the fact Git was "easier to use" and eventually networking effects. When Microsoft purchased Git, the death knell had all ready sounded, but nobody was listening.

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How would subversion fix this problem exactly? It would still be a centralized forge that Microsoft could still control/ruin. In fact, more centralized than Git, which itself was designed to be decentralized (though admittedly most people don't use it that way).

Microsoft didn't purchase "Git", they purchased Github, the largest forge for Git. Git will continue to exist no matter what Microsoft does.

Also, I have absolutely no desire to ever, ever go back to SVN. When I was a junior engineer in my first software job, every Friday I would have to do The Merge, which would usually take most of the day because it would be spent solving all the merge conflicts. When I discovered the git-svn thing, it was like manna from heaven since it made a 4+ hour job take around ~45 minutes.

Your apparent problems with Git the source control system aren’t what any of this is talking about, this is about GitHub as a platform. SourceForge is your better “pre-git” analogue here, and it, like SVN, still exists and is actively maintained and used.

I am aware of what this article is talking about in terms of platforms. Sourceforge might be a better analogy. What I was saying is that development of other source control like Subversion halted as Git entered the scene. Git was first version control, subsequently a platform.

But Git isn't the platform. It's still just a version control.

The article itself is explaining other platforms that work with Git, of which there are dozens. The `git` program itself isn't even developed on Github; it's developed on the kernel.org site [1]. Git != Github.

There's still development for SVN, Perforce still has plenty of paying customers, and Epic games themselves released a new version control a few weeks ago [2], so it's not like everyone assumes that version control is a "solved" problem. I'm honestly not sure what your point is.

[1] https://git.kernel.org/

[2] https://lore.org/

Here is a simple question to highlight my point. Do you think Github would exist had Git not first existed?

I know SVN is still developed, but it is no longer really treated as a solution. That is why we are talking about Git and not Subversion.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be called Github, but I'm sure there would be some equivalent "MercurialHub" or "MonotoneHub" had Git not been created.

Even before Git, there was Bitkeeper (which in some ways was arguably better), and that was what they used for the kernel until some drama with Larry McVoy happened. If there wasn't that drama, I think some kind of BitkeeperHub might have eventually happened.

Yes, Git overtook it, but I still don't really understand your point; it's not about Git, it's about a centralized forge.

>Yes, Git overtook it, but I still don't really understand your point; it's not about Git, it's about a centralized forge.

What you aren't understanding is that all software development proceeds first by an underlying philosophy that evolves into other solutions inspired by the software that came before it. Git inspired the way Github works. You are trying to separate the two into distinct entities when they are really a flowing into one another.

Sure, but GitHub sort of runs contrary to what Git's philosophy, which is why I'm arguing that "Git" is an irrelevant variable with regards to the problems with Github.

Git, as a software version control platform, is supposed to be decentralized. It's designed to mimic the way that kernel development was done, with a lot of separate repos and email being used to merge in diff files.

If anything, Github really brings the subversion model to Git; Git primarily just has categorically better merging than SVN.

>Sure, but GitHub sort of runs contrary to what Git's philosophy, which is why I'm arguing that "Git" is an irrelevant variable with regards to the problems with Github.

Ah, well that makes your position clearer. It does "sort of run contrary" but it also doesn't totally "break" what Git was trying to do. You still have your local copy but your ability to share it is centralized.

The next iteration for SVN MIGHT have been to have some kind of p2p website to share sources since it all ready had a centralized way to share the code. That's usually the way things bounce around. Higher centralization/decentralization/back to centralization. Git kind of arrested that evolutionary curve with a quasi-decentralization and a centralized sharing hybrid.

The issue isn't the technology (git, subversion, cvs, etc), it's that developers FOMO and glom on to what every other developer uses so you end up with these huge silos that they inevitably complain about.

But WHY they glom on to it and not say, Subversion is my point. We can imagine an alternative world in which Subversion mutated into something more like Git. Why doesn't it exist? Because Git came in and everyone decided it was "the answer to all things".

There's a mercurial, a very similar idea built in a very similar times. It was supported by BitBucket until recently.

I've always liked Mercurial--particularly the simplicity of it.

SVN can't branch, not easily.

I've recently seen https://v-it.org/, although the naming ("social software") is strange, the idea seems to be great: automatically maintain your own feature set of the software even if not all of the features are present in the mainline.

Git is not, in any way, easy to use. SVN was the major predecessor to Git and its simple linear history model was much easier to understand and use for most people. However, Git is more powerful.

Please by all means, sketch out a version control design that's better than both Subversion and Git.

git was harder to use (harder to reason about), but it did something cvs/svn didn't do, so, harder or not, it made something possible vs not possible.

Did you confuse github with git? Indeed centralized git in Github is hardly any different from svn.

>Did you confuse github with git? Indeed centralized git in Github is hardly any different from svn.

I used shorthand since I assumed people here were smart enough to assume that Microsoft buying Git would be understood as Github and not Git. It has proven to be a bad assumption.

I don't know, maybe that's because people are somewhat used to see other people confusing Git with GitHub.

There's no way everyone knew you're so smart.

>There's no way everyone knew you're so smart.

Could be because everyone is so eager to assume I'm so dumb. ;) Regardless, the communication wasn't clear enough to convey the meaning, and that much is on me. I won't make that mistake again.

The article in which you are replying to is specifically about different git-compatible forges, not just Github. If you use "Git", people are going to (correctly) think you're referring to the version control software, not Github. This isn't weird.

You may want to read this comment again and really evaluate it as if you didn't write it. Maybe shop it around. Ask your wife, or better some random people with the names scrubbed so they don't know it's you, to tell you who is the asshole and exactly why. What about the statement exposes the asshole by it's own self-contained internal logic? I know, it doesn't matter what 9 out of 10 say, even if they all say the same thing and point out the same reasons, all that proves is "it has proven to be a bad assumption" that everyone else isn't an idiot eh?

Man that's convenient. Why didn't I ever think of that genius way to resolve everything? Oh right, duh.

"The one that was wrong about soimething, and then when shown, doubled down and blamed everyone else."

"The one than said everyone else disappoints them, and doing that while being in error themselves is just an extra shovel full."

I'll cop to my own smarminess, but that came later, as reaction, not an action.

that thing was not decentralisation, btw - it was cheap branching. Branching in SVN is an ordeal that basically copies the whole project into a new folder with separate history and then good luck merging it later. Branching in Git is trivial and doesn't even require any communication with the server admin.

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