Thank You GitHub

https://github.com/thank-you-github/thank-you-github

by stsewd • 9 years ago

92 68 9 years ago

GitHub is great and all that but pls fix the search. Just a simple dedup would be really really amazing. Like I would pay 20 usd a month for a better code search. Like where I don’t have to go through potentially 100 pages of results most of which are sometimes duplicates.

neildahlke• 9 years ago

Would something like this help you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XSf6XfYl64

Developed by a former colleague at http://near.ai/.

brennebeck2• 9 years ago

Not available yet? Looks interesting. How would it compare to Sourcegraph?

sdesol• 9 years ago

This looks interesting, but I would suspect if GitHub implemented wildcard matching, like this:

https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=tensorflow/tens...

they could significantly improve discovery.

aphexcx• 9 years ago

Or how about updating the godawful PR review process? Tools like Reviewable are light years ahead. Github is great, but come on, it's stagnant. They don't release anything anymore. They don't even have mobile apps for crying out loud!

KGIII2• 9 years ago

Err... I am stuck in the past. I can figure out sourceforge well enough, but I forgot the Git tutorial already. So, I may be missing something.

Why would you want a mobile app for github? What would it do?

ajdlinux6• 9 years ago

GitHub is fantastic in so many ways, but I think it would be remiss not to point out that the hegemonic platform for open source and Free Software development is itself a proprietary platform, run by a company whose business model is reliant on companies continuing to develop proprietary software.

It's also in many ways a single point of failure for many open source communities, and it will be very interesting to see what happens if GitHub ever folds.

adamnemecek4• 9 years ago

Should all sw be written by volunteers?

nickbauman• 9 years ago

I think what adjlinux is talking about is a tragedy of the commons, which your question sidesteps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

ajdlinux6• 9 years ago

No. I'm a professional open source developer who is paid exclusively to work on GPL and Apache licensed software. I basically don't believe in large-scale open source being a volunteer endeavour - it's futile to have a mostly-volunteer team try to compete against commercially funded teams.

manmal• 9 years ago

If Github folds, Gitlab or Bitbucket will take over, and we might hardly notice if they make an effort to copy over pull requests and comments.

pilsetnieks• 9 years ago

Git itself is open source; if Github would to away without warning, you could host your repo anywhere that supports git, or host it yourself.

There would be problems, however, with issues, comments, wikis, etc. as well as all kinds of package managers that rely on github.

tomjakubowski• 9 years ago

What are the most used package / dependency management tools which rely on GitHub? Many can install packages from there, or from any Git URL, but they tend to have centralized stores as well, right?

One example that comes to mind is Cargo. At least a couple years ago, the package index (but not packages themselves) for crates.io was stored in a Git repo hosted on GitHub. But (without checking, on a phone) I’m fairly certain crates.io doesn’t/didn’t rely on any GitHub APIs, just Git operations, so it would be easy to recover if GitHub just disappeared.

Rust’s CI operation, on the other hand, is somewhat tightly coupled with GitHub. Last time I checked, the software powering bors only support GitHub’s APIs; support for competing APIs like Gitlab were open tickets. But I’m sure in an emergency the team would be able to put together support for another project host.

ajdlinux6• 9 years ago

What I'm more interested in is how GitHub has reduced friction in developer workflows, as the Thank You GitHub statement discusses, and how fragmentation of the git hosting ecosystem would change that.

Right now, if I want to fix a bug in a GitHub hosted project, I log in to my existing GitHub account, report an issue, fork the repo, do the fix, submit a PR. If I have to use GitLab or Bitbucket, as I learned a couple of days ago when I had to submit a PR to a GitLab project, it adds a certain amount of friction (signing up for accounts, learning where all the right buttons are, etc) that I don't have when I'm using GitHub as the dominant platform which everyone else uses. If GitHub were to go away, would we end up with a single dominant new player that in turn provides a low friction workflow that everyone's used to, or would we have a more fragmented ecosystem?

Furthermore, GitHub has played a large role in cementing the role of Git itself as the community's preferred VCS - much to the detriment of competitors like Mercurial, it must be said. If GitHub goes away, how sticky is Git itself?

fictionfuture• 9 years ago

I don’t know why we are thanking a successful company that is making tons of money (as thanks)...

Why don’t we spend the time to thank the creators and supporters of open source projects instead?

milesokeefe2• 9 years ago

Those aren’t mutually exclusive, both are good things and deserve appreciation.

SquareWheel2• 9 years ago

Doesn't the four paragraphs linked answer your question exactly?

Before 2007, the way to participate in Open Source was fragmented. ... Nowadays doing Open Source is infinitely easier thanks to you, GitHub. You've provided the tools and the social conventions to make those days a thing of the past. Your impact in the Open Source movement is unprecedented.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC8• 9 years ago

No, that was just inevitable technological progress. Mind you that github did not invent git, nor the git workflows. Their primary contribution is that they extended git into a proprietary platform with network effects, so as to make everyone dependent on them.

scrollaway3• 9 years ago

I don’t know why we are thanking a successful company that is making tons of money (as thanks)...

I mean, other than to be nice to a service that a lot of people genuinely appreciate? It's also worth mentioning that Github is the primary reason why a lot of people have a job at all. Github resumes have immense weight in the industry nowadays.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC8• 9 years ago

Seriously? If github didn't exist, software companies simply wouldn't have employees? It is truly amazing how twisted a view people have of power structures ... the fact that github has installed themselves as a de-facto co-arbitrator for access to jobs is reinterpreted as a sort of philanthropic contribution to society.

ac2u3• 9 years ago

A little cringe for my tastes. It's important to remember that fragmentation in and of itself isn't inherently bad. It can be useful not to have a monoculture on how to get things done.

adamnemecek4• 9 years ago

Fragmentation in this case is bad. Like I wouldn’t contribute at all if each repo has some weird workflow.

blurbleblurble6• 9 years ago

I think it's kinda cool that different contributors can express their different creative/organizational (or disorganizational) styles, yet still be able to contribute bug fixes (and bugs themselves) on absolute strangers random projects. For me, it feels much more relaxed. I even made a pull request on a major project recently (sympy). In the past, I'd probably have felt very intimidated to do something like this. But the lax attitude on github made it very easy for me, socially, to reach out with my code.

That said, if I were to make a new github-like platform, the number one thing I'd probably do to decrease fragmentation is make automated testing as friendly as possible. In the same way that github made git itself friendly, tests need to be friendly.

ukulele2• 9 years ago

The skeptic in me sees this as a way to get a bunch of developers subscribed to a feed / notification. Will be interesting to see if the repo gets misused somehow.

milesokeefe2• 9 years ago

What’s the worst case scenario here? I can only imagine the devs just getting some spammy notifications and having to unsubscribe.

ukulele2• 9 years ago

No real danger, just seems like it could be used as a marketing ploy.

dopamean• 9 years ago

I look forward to all the negative comments here from people for whom GitHub is not serving their very specific need.

qaq• 9 years ago

I would't call a decently working search a very specific need :). But kudos to GitHub for all they have done.

KGIII2• 9 years ago

Github did not, in fact, help me change a front tire on my tractor! This is an outrage!

TheDong• 9 years ago

Github has done a lot to move the conversation from free software to open source.

"Open source" is now this thing companies do. It's now a PR and marketing trick, or sometimes an attempt to get free labor selfishly.

It is no longer about user's rights and freedom. Github has been a huge part of the slow bleedout of the free software movement.

I think this is the true damage that the combination of Github and "open source" companies have done to the software ecosystem.

rawrmaan• 9 years ago

I’m seeing a lot of hate in this thread. I think we tend to lose sight of the fact that things don’t just _happen_, people make them happen. GitHub has absolutely earned its dominance in my eyes, and although it may have shortcomings, I think it’s one of the most important inventions in the last ten yesrs, period.

When I look at the software I use to run my business, literally 100% of it is open source and has a community improving it and patching it on GitHub. There was simply not this level of open source enthusiasm and participation back in the Sourceforge “dark ages” (although even Sourceforge was hugely influential and a big step in software democratization if you compare it to what came before).

moron4hire• 9 years ago

I've come to believe that the parable of the Bucket of Crabs perfectly describes the majority of self-espoused open-source advocates that you will meet online. To them, if you are at all successful, then you must have gained it through the exploitation of users. Apparently users are not willing participants in software or something, I don't know. But I've never seen a group of people tear each other down quite like this vocal group of open source "fundamentalists".

ac2u3• 9 years ago

There's a couple of comments complaining about features that are a little out of place. But I wouldn't call it "a lot" of hate.

I think it's mostly a response to ground the hyperbole a little. There's usually no need to do the marketing for an organisation with (arguably) a monopoly of mindshare already.

I think that's why people talk up the underdogs more when they're mentioned, because as users/consumers it's in our interests to have some competition.

blurbleblurble6• 9 years ago

I looked at this post when there were 6 comments. 5 of them were negative and the 6th was non-positive.

benwilber02• 9 years ago

The author should rather be extending a loud "Thank you" to Linus Torvalds. While he didn't invent DVCS, he certainly mainstream'd it with git. Github would not have existed without Git.

Linus invented both Linux and Git. It's incredible what that man has accomplished in his life and how he's affected the software field and the world in general.

bobx11• 9 years ago

In my opinion, GitHub succeeded in spite of git, rather than because of git. I see beginner spend a lot of time on issues merging and rebasing. They simply would not continue (outside the hard core technical crowd) if it weren't for GitHub making the nice pull request screen and rendering markdown. They did a way better job than bitbucket did back in the day and here they are in top. Just my experience.

netmask• 9 years ago

Sourceforge

djrobstep• 9 years ago

What makes people engage in bootlicking like this?

I'd rather people supported underfunded open source projects rather than engaging in marketing for VC financed for-profit companies.

crispinb• 9 years ago

You'd have a hard time arguing that people signing up there are doing so for benefit from on high, so 'bootlicking' is misplaced.

Perhaps people just appreciate what they actually find, in their real lived experience, when they use the service?

blurbleblurble6• 9 years ago

I kinda understand how people don't like this. They are looking off into the horizon and seeing even brighter futures. That's fine, but you don't have to be a hater about it!

Can we just acknowledge just how much of an improvement github is over the olden days? Seriously. And as far as social media websites go, Github is surely one of the most ethical of them all.

Github popularized git in a time when svn and cvs were the standards. Don't forget about those sad, sad times! We are in such a better place now! They also recognized the power of git to completely lower the bar for participating in open source projects.

"Pull requests"? "Forks"? That stuff didn't exist in the mainstream developer imagination. It was fringe. Now it's the default!

And I'm not trying to say that github is the best model or platform or anything like that, I just appreciate how easy it makes it to participate in open source development. It's clean, it's simple, and it works.

GitLab and BitBucket, those are awesome platforms too. But Github struck a chord in a time when people hadn't even heard the melody yet.

I hope the future brings something even better. But I'm still definitely gonna give props to github for holding it down.

Grue3• 9 years ago

And as far as social media websites go, Github is surely one of the most ethical of them all.

Is censoring stuff on behalf of Russian government ethical? [1]

Github popularized git in a time when svn and cvs were the standards. Don't forget about those sad, sad times! We are in such a better place now!

Is that a good thing? We could've had a better VCS like darcs!

They also recognized the power of git to completely lower the bar for participating in open source projects.

Thus lowering the bar of open-source projects.

"Pull requests"? "Forks"? That stuff didn't exist in the mainstream developer imagination.

Forks have certainly existed since open-source model existed. Pull request is an anti-pattern anyway.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/12/05/to-get-off-russias-blackli...

flamtap• 9 years ago

Pull request is an anti-pattern anyway.

Would you consider elaborating on this? I'm curious to hear what some negatives of the PR model might be, as I've recently taken a personal interest in dev workflows.

majewsky• 9 years ago

Also, pull requests weren't "invented" by Github. Popularized, yes, but not invented.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC8• 9 years ago

What the fuck?

Today, participation in the development of Free Software is more difficult than ever as tons of projects make it impossible to contribute unless you use a proprietary piece of software to do so--namely, github.

Also, how is it even remotely sensible to compare the state of github today to the state of not-github a decade ago? If anything, the proprietary nature of github and its network effects is likely to have hampered progress in the development of Free Software collaboration tools. It's not exactly like you need a proprietary middleman in order to not exchange patches by manually attaching them to emails in a world with ubiquitous broadband internet.

scrollaway3• 9 years ago

Speaking as someone who's participated, led and created several open source software projects and organizations, you're wrong. Github is the primary reason why open source is thriving today. GitHub and GitHub Pages have made it both easy and free for FOSS projects to get contributors set up and managed, market themselves and be more than an obscure project on a nameless site.

The centralization that Github provides is essential to lowering the barrier of entry for new contributors, and those are what makes or breaks a project. So yes, you do need a middleman; or at least you need something. You're welcome to attempt solving the problem, in the mean time you can't start claiming that they "hampered" progress, that's just delusional.

mynameishere• 9 years ago

Open source software was in fact doing just fine before a particular company started hosting a particular type of version control software. It's a commodity service and I find it bizarre that otherwise intelligent people are beguiled by a brand name.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC8• 9 years ago

Speaking as someone who's participated, led and created several open source software projects and organizations, you're wrong. Github is the primary reason why open source is thriving today.

OK, so what do you think would the world of free software look like today if github had never existed, and why do you think that?

GitHub and GitHub Pages have made it both easy and free for FOSS projects to get contributors set up and managed, market themselves and be more than an obscure project on a nameless site.

Why do you think would the alternative solution that would have been developed if github had not been around not have been able to achieve the same?

The centralization that Github provides is essential to lowering the barrier of entry for new contributors, and those are what makes or breaks a project.

Why do you think that the centralization is essential?

So yes, you do need a middleman; or at least you need something.

What specifically do you mean by "something"?

You're welcome to attempt solving the problem, in the mean time you can't start claiming that they "hampered" progress, that's just delusional.

Does that mean then that your implicit claims about alternative histories are also delusional? I mean, your claims about how github is better than what the world would look like if github had not been around obviously also imply some idea of what you think the world would otherwise look like (i.e. worse). Is that speculation on your part also delusional?

ajdlinux6• 9 years ago

Speaking as someone who, per my other comments in this thread, also dislikes how GitHub is a dominant proprietary platform in an open source community - I have no choice but to agree with you.

I remember SourceForge. It was the best we had, but it sucked! There was a days-to-weeks long approval process for new projects, advertising everywhere, and a ridiculously unintuitive UI. And SourceForge was basically the best option as far as finding free hosting for generic open source projects.

GitHub on the other hand is beautifully simple and easy to get started with, and I generally quite like working with it.

blurbleblurble6• 9 years ago

I love github. And I also think it'd be awesome if some of these haters put their heads together and made something positive on DAT/IPFS that could replace github altogether. They could include features for bug/feature bounties, better project management tools, etc.

Like come on, don't just gripe about it, make something cool... the time is now! And in order for you to make something that's actually cool, I hope you can pull your head out of your butt and acknowledge that github was amazing for its time. Recognize what makes github awesome. It's not the fancy project management stuff. It's the simplicity and focus of the open ended, social, collaborative platform. It lowered the bar. It made it easy to jump in, no matter how much clout or recognition you had. It made it normal to fork a project off the bat, in case you accidentally found yourself fixing a bug or wanting to make a little feature change.

So yeah, github is awesome and it's getting old. Let's appreciate it and get to the next level.

smpetrey• 9 years ago

If it wasn't for Github, I wouldn't be where I am today. For that, I'm pretty thankful. Sure Github has its flaws, and the product is still evolving. But all-in-all, it's been a transformative ride. Thank you, to everyone at Github. I owe you so much. :)

firloop• 9 years ago

I'd like to thank Gitlab for competing with Github, it makes both products better.

iNeal• 9 years ago

Not that I have anything against this (I do love GitHub) but pretty sure it's against their ToS to create multiple accounts.

chx• 9 years ago

Just another data point: Drupal uses its own bug tracker and the workflow is that anyone can participate in an issue with various contributions. Two of these are uploading or reviewing a patch. But another is reading the issue and writing a new summary which given a long enough issue is invaluable. Or adding new tags -- which can be totally new. Or re-titleing the issue. Read: https://groups.drupal.org/node/313068#comment-955593 for a better writeup on theese.

Thank You GitHub

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