Hacker News Reader

Comment by cscurmudgeon | Hacker News Reader

Last I checked Github itself is neither open source nor free.

It's a service designed around a free and open protocol, the other examples are binary software packages. You can use any local git repository as a drop-in replacement. Github is neither a dependency nor a walled garden for most people, but the other software on that list definitely is. Git is the tool people use, Github is just a public repository. There is no question that Github is itself closed source, but it doesn't really share key attributes with the other examples mentioned either.

People are getting very dependent on Github workflows beyond just the act of being a git repository. If all you need is a remote git repo, use gitorious, it is open source.

No, people use github for the social features, the wiki, the issue tracker, comments, etc. These features are not portable, and as a result if github went down, your entire workflow suffers.

Every single bit of which can be replaced with Gitlab, and in some cases, Gitlab has more and better features.

His point was that people could use bare git without github, but many use Github, which isn't free according to three of the four freedoms RMS lists in the essay [1], no matter how much we hackers might love it. Lots of people love Excel, too, but that doesn't make it free software.

[1] Github:

    (0) freedom to run the program as you wish - YUP
    (1) freedom to study & change the source - NOPE
    (2) freedom to make and distribute exact copies - NOT SO MUCH
    (3) freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified versions - NO

Sure, and I can eat Ramen noodles instead prime rib but I don't see how that's relevant. Github provides a service: hosting, a "community," etc.

This isn't the same kind tyranny as presumably binary distributed software. Right? That should be obvious, unless I am losing my mind.

In what respect do you have more control with a service than with a binary?

It's actually worse: you don't heave the freedom to use old versions when they push out an update, and you may lose access to it completely for any number of reasons, including 'we don't like you'. Granted, part of this lack of freedom is fair due to hosted services being different from just plain software, but the power over the users are there nonetheless.

Again, and I mean this in a nice way, how are your complaints remotely relevant? I'm really trying to understand...?

So if someone builds me a house and I pay them ... Is it immoral for them to have built the house without being some kind indentured servant to me for the rest of their lives doing whatever I want for whatever reason ...

That seems like a weird thing to say, but what you're saying is just as silly. Should I have access to unlimited resources from this builder and if they do not consent to my demands then they tyrants?

It's a service that I pay for and I have agreed to conditions of said service and I can choose to stop paying if I am not happy or I can sue if I feel the terms have not been met. I don't see the problem but I do see clearly the alternative is charity.

Someone else responded, a user jszz on this thread and said something crazy about Germany and how we need become a self-sufficient commune. I'm not sure what it meant and I'm not sure that anyone that holds this view knows what they mean. =(

In this analogy, they don't give you the blueprints for the house, and it's not available upon request. Wanna drill a hole in the wall to hang a picture? Better hire the same contractor or risk drilling into pipes or wires. Is the contractor no longer in the market? Well, tough luck!

Github provides an amazing service, but it's closed source SaaS.

But unlike many SaaS source-control sites, all your data on github is fairly easily available for bulk download via their APIs... It would of course be annoying to move to a different site, simply because any change in familiar tooling can be annoying, but it's quite doable to automatically migrate everything over.

I think github seems to have been fairly careful toeing the line, and I don't get the sense of being locked in the way I do with some other sites. They appear to be content to compete on the basis of usability and ease of collaboration, not lockin.

> how we need become a self-sufficient commune

Stallman always talks about community.

I don't really know anything about you, but I couldn't really understand the free software movement until I got that we are not advancing software as a community.

We are more like thousands of egotistical entities, the great majority in a "consumer" behavior, using software that someone (the "producer") writes and only he/she has the right and the capabilities to read and change.

In your house analogy, it was like someone (let's call her "Sarah") built a house for you, but in a way that you could not build a new room, fix the plumbing or even get your stuff out of it by yourself. Instead, you had to call Sarah, who would then decide if it was worth her time, and what should be the price.

You could just move to a new house with just your personal items and furnish it all over again, but as we inhabit bigger and bigger digital mansions, we can't escape the fate of always losing lots of things when we want to change. This situation may even coerce us to never change at all, even though there are so many fucking problems with this damn house.

I feel this is getting too metaphorical, so I'll end up here. When Stallman's point gets into your head, you see that this is just an instance of a more abstract class of problems with our societies (he has a wide range of controversial opinions outside software world). It really is about being part of a community.

Ummm why can't you just install your own git, wiki, etc from open source if you desire?

Ah yes, the 'I like these people's marketing, they must be good' method of lulling one's cognitive dissonance to sleep.

Isn't it weird to refer to Github or any other company providing a service as "not open source" or "not free" in a libre software sense?

What is the alternative for you all? Charity? I'm being serious.

The alternative is for the whole US to strive for actually being the alternative; the self sufficient decentralized yet United States. If Germany, Singapore, China and Japan provided alternatives, while we continue to hold on to old ways, like: not investing as much into energy efficiency, or thinking outside the box like Germany -> we will lose to white labeled and foreign hosted OSS. To solve this we would need a social market economy [0] or at least a mandate to tax for fractionally financed civic OSS, open hardware (self sufficient micro servers), data, and R&D.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

I'm really struggling to understand what this means ... It doesn't makes sense. Can you help?

This thing you are talking about United States and this and that ... It is some kind of alternative to Github or hosted services?

I don't know if it makes sense ... Oh wait how would these governments get money to support all charity?

I knew I went too off topic...What I mean by Singapore is the mandated efficient renewable buildings, Germany: it's social market economy and how they are paying people for energy, China: it's investment in renewable energy, Japan: the same. The alternative of a centralized structure is a decentralized or hybrid one. The equipment for what I suggested in other terms would have to be treated as a public good, taxed by the services it provides or as a government subsidized one. Which as an efficient microserver: communication, entertainment, and the option to subscribe to private services. The ideology here is getting the most people to use a box by paying for them to maintain it. The box just happens to be energy efficient to the point where one can exchange selling their excess electricity or storage for private services / nodes / other microservers. Another form of continuing this route is to be able to use energy, storage, or cpu / gpu as a currency or collateral. Also if one decides to give up control of their servers for hosting, or scientific research one can. It's this idea we're trying to evangelize at r/Nucleus.

I believe freeing software will eventually free the regulation on transactions, energy, and communications. Something like a government subsidized team that controls a vagrant-mesos-docker for connecting CJDNS nodes (the SaaSS). Time Warner cable and all of these other companies who don't run OSS are stopping the digital divide and prohibiting peer communications. WebRTC and websockets are enough!

The topic should be on why BSD software is more important right now than GPL. Since we're talking about freedom.

Don't bother making sense of extremist blabbering. I used to try to reason with religious fanatics, people who believed in homeopathics or quackery like ear candles, socialists, etc., on the basis of 'everybody has their right to an opinion' and 'it might be true'. And those two are still true, but the right answer to those two assumptions is 'yes but not all of them are equal', and 'the onus of proof is on those with prima facie extraordinary claims'.

Don't get sucked into arguing on a rational basis with people whose sole method of conviction is appeal to emotion and looking profound through obscurity.

I'm here to disprove my convictions and find the correct answers if something is not possible. Not to boost my ego. You could have easily said don't waste your time: he doesn't know 100% what he's talking about.

Take a look at Newsblur: There's a free tier, or you can pay for hosting, but at the end of the day the sources[0] for the software you're using are freely available so if the service fails, or the author makes changes you don't like, or you find yourself needing customisations that aren't appropriate for the author to provide, you can keep using the software by hosting it yourself or finding someone else to host it for you.

[0]: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur

You might also find the Franklin Street Statement[1] to be an interesting read -- it tries to set out a useful collection of ideas for services that respect the users' freedoms.

[1]: http://autonomo.us/2008/07/14/franklin-street-statement/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AGPL_web_applications

I am not saying Github should distribute their source, but Github and their fans should stop the "holier than thou" attitude.

It's a service, doesn't really fall into the same category as software you install on your machine (which you trust). You have no reason to trust their servers, but ultimately you're not giving them control over your hardware anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com