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Comment by jonpaul | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a good opportunity to use [Gitlab](https://about.gitlab.com/) and a perhaps even a hosted Gitlab install? I know there are commercial hosted Gitlab providers, I can't seem to recall any though - a cursory Google search isn't returning much ATM.

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All this makes me wonder if there's a p2p form of Git based on torrents, a "block chain" or similar where there isn't a master server to take down.

My sarcasm detector is broken, so I can't tell if you're joking or not, but git is distributed by nature. It's only centralized when we insist on putting everything on a single host.

Yes, you're right of course. However seems like having a master git repository server is the best solution for using Git in teams. Especially large teams. Like, all open source project uses something like Github or Bitbucket these days. People aren't going to share patches via email to each other. In any case, you need a place to share code and it's easiest when that is a server that is owned by a single person or entity. Maybe this is where torrent tech could be useful. Magnet links need no central authority or server running to make a central copy accessible. There's just a group of machines running, no central place law enforcement could focus on. When you have thousands of machines across the world, DMCA is not practical.

    > People aren't going to share patches via email to each other.

Why not?

You're spot on and this platform (Gitchain) is being developed right now... I've posted the link above.

Thanks for the link! What an awesome project.

What about the Digital Ocean droplet for Gitlab? Pain free install and looks decent.

Digital Ocean's TOS are pretty awful, so I would bet there's a good chance that they would take the server down when the MPAA comes knocking.

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