How Github has changed the open source world

http://honza.ca/2011/03/7-ways-github-has-changed-the-open-source-world/

by honza • 15 years ago

114 49 15 years ago

jmuk• 15 years ago

I would agree with the author, but I am still wondering why other platforms do not win. I mean, for example, SourceForge or code.google.com. Except for the first point, most hosting sites provide exactly same functionalities. Then, I guess, the point is 'easiness' or fancy/cool user interface.

arkitaip• 15 years ago

GitHub has managed to take advantage of the Git hype and make code social in a way that SF or Google Code never could. Today's SF, although powering lots of high profile floss projects, feels increasingly dated with its traditional developer-user model. Google Code is arguably even less social and definitely lacking in features. GitHub, finally, looks great, is easy to use and has a lot of small yet very neat features that making coding easier.

helper• 15 years ago

In this respect, I think github's killer feature over sourceforge is its focus on people instead of projects. Perhaps we could call it an increased democratization of open source.

Sourceforge is centered around projects. You have to register and get approval for each project separately (at least you did a few years ago, it has been a long time since I last went through the exercise). This left a significant percentage of projects with descriptions of the author's intent, but no actual code. It also meant that any third party contributions had to go back through the author (who might have lost interest).

I have never seen a project on github with no code. There is no approval process. You simply push and you are up and running. Forking allows others to start contributing right away without any action from the original author (and github really encourages you to fork projects). Then the tools that github provides makes collaboration way easier than it was in the past (pull requests vs emailing patches).

I agree with all of the things the author notes, but I really think this is github's killer feature. (Hope I didn't come off as too much of a github fanboy).

apotheon14• 15 years ago

BitBucket actually does everything GitHub does on that list of ways that GitHub supposedly changed the world. In fact, I find the BitBucket interface generally easier to use and easier on the eyes -- and, my God, the colors on the GitHub issue tracker pages are fucking awful.

. . . but somehow GitHub gets so much attention that many people think it's the only code hosting site in the world, just like so many idiots think that Ubuntu is the only open source operating system in the world.

kneath• 15 years ago

Bitbucket has public, discussable Pull Requests? I'd love to see them.

mnutt2• 15 years ago

Perhaps because Github came out first, and pioneered most of those features?

Not to say that BitBucket isn't a nice UI, but what major features did they invent? (not a rhetorical question)

androidjim• 15 years ago

Everything? Does BitBucket support git? I thought it was using Mercurial.

Mercurial is great, but it's not git. It's a hassle to have to learn two ways of doing everything. (Being intimately familiar with git's required these days, especially for Linux and Android programmers. Mercurial's not.)

X-Istence2• 15 years ago

I have only recently become a major convert into the DCVS world coming from Subversion and CVS before it. When I first started going I found that git was rather hard to for me to wrap my brain around, especially since it so radically changed the way certain commands worked. So I looked at Mercurial and felt much more at home as it felt like Subversion.

Since then I've wrapped my brain around Git and absolutely love it. I now have accounts on both Bitbucket and Github and both work equally well for what I want. The only feature that I feel is missing from Github is the ability to create unlimited private repositories for free, if not at least, on their lowest paid tier.

I tend to create random projects haphazardly, and while I like to have it versioned and "backed up" somewhere where I can invite friends to collaborate with me, I don't want some of these projects out in the open. Some of them are research projects for new products I am developing, others are projects I am working on with friends that could potentially be monetized.

Don't get me wrong, I understand where Github is coming from, and being familiar with both Git and Hg is not going to hurt, it is annoying on a context switching level to have to remember how to do something in hg and then in git when switching between projects.

At the point where I am in my career I don't yet make enough money (after paying student loans, car insurance, etc...) to spend money on monthly billing paid services.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

* When I first started going I found that git was rather hard to for me to wrap my brain around, especially since it so radically changed the way certain commands worked.*

I've found Git really easy to use coming from SVN. My main problem has just been the Windows tools haven't been as intuitive as Tortoise. What issues did you first have with Git?

X-Istence2• 15 years ago

git revert did not do the same thing as svn revert, that was the first major issue I had and I put git on the shelf because of it. Only in the past year or so have I started using a DCVS. For the most part I was definitely a subversion fan boy ;-)

sid0• 15 years ago

Check out the hg-git plugin. I use it all the time to clone projects from github using hg.

duck• 15 years ago

8. Get people using Git (and more generally, get more people using version control for their projects)

9. Made it popular to post more than just projects (off hand I'm thinking about dot/config files)

10. Make it easier to actually provide patches to open source projects

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

With github, it generally feels like the focus is on a developer, whereas with something like sourceforge the focus is on the project/code. I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing either - I think it's generally been a positive shift.

apotheon14• 15 years ago

The same is true of BitBucket, and kinda Google Code as well, you know.

davidwparker• 15 years ago

I'd agree about BitBucket, but Google Code doesn't nearly focus on the developer like the other two. It's not really made for/with the general sense of community and conversation.

panic• 15 years ago

It may be true that github focuses on the author (after all, projects are github.com/AUTHOR/project), but I'd say that focus is secondary to the code. Compare a project page on sourceforge (e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus/) with one on github (like https://github.com/jquery/jquery). A sourceforge project page is just a vague arrangement of links, while github shows you the source and README right away. The author is given about the same amount of space on the page in both cases.

Corrado• 15 years ago

As a Ruby developer its sometimes hard to know if a particular Gem is still being actively maintained or if there is a better, more recent alternative. I find that Github does an outstanding job solving both problems. If there haven't been commits in the last year (6 months?) I'll generally look elsewhere. That elsewhere is generally the "Network" page. :)

apotheon14• 15 years ago

Y'know, there are some projects that haven't had commits for a while because they do exactly what they're supposed to do, and don't need a bunch of commits. I consider it a good thing when a project gets to the point where nobody can find any bugs and they stop adding features because it has enough of them already. I sure as hell don't want my quick, clean, elegant, productivity enhancing window manager to turn into a featuritis infected monstrosity like OpenOffice.org, after all.

---

edit: Actually, my window manager of choice has basically been abandoned by its developer several years ago, and it's still bug-free, stable, and lacking basically nothing. I finally came up with a feature enhancement I'd like it to have today, after using it for five years with no complaints or wants -- and that enhancement is really just an improvement of an existing feature.

More to the point, it's an enhancement that no window manager has, so I'm likely to need to write the code for this feature enhancement myself if I want it badly enough. I may pick up maintainership for the project to do just that.

Think about that a moment: one feature enhancement requested in have a decade, merely an extension of an already existing feature, and it's something entirely new to window managers as far as I'm aware. This thing has had no need for additional code in all that time, and it has been better as a result of all that.

46Bit• 15 years ago

This feature bloat is exactly my issue with a lot of commercial software - especially Photoshop. With each release, it includes a load of junk most people don't want, but new ways to make files incompatible with old ones so that people have to upgrade, as well as bug fixes that should in reality have got patches.

mnutt2• 15 years ago

As a ruby dev, this happens to work (for better or worse) because if you're not updating, it may not work with the latest version of ruby/rails/whatever. If I see a rails-related gem that had its last commit in 2009, I know some work probably needs to be done to make it work with rails 3.

Perhaps a better metric is the most recent commit combined with the number of open issues. Or maybe just the number of open issues, judged by their severity.

Peaker2• 15 years ago

While that may indicate the excellence of the project, it may also indicate a lack of imagination, on your part.

krakensden• 15 years ago

What window manager, by the way? I'm in UI-rage mode at the moment, and stability sounds beautiful.

stdbrouw• 15 years ago

That problem is alleviated by the fact that, for libraries, updates to documentation are commits as well, so even a very stable piece of software still needs the occasional commit to update a FAQ or somesuch. All in all, I've been surprised how well activity meters work when vetting software.

apotheon14• 15 years ago

argh, typo

Half a decade -- not have a decade.

jasonlynes• 15 years ago

i do the same. generally if the project is even on GitHub, that's a great sign it's got life.

SingAlong• 15 years ago

From what I've seen, a Github profile now influences the hiring process too.

harryh2• 15 years ago

This is definitely true. I'll often check to see if a candidate has a github account when making a hiring decision. Having some interesting/good code up there can definitely move the needle a bit on a hire/no hire decision.

Pyrodogg• 15 years ago

When looking into a candidates work do any of the other platforms or services come to mind at all or is it solely Github that you check?

mpd• 15 years ago

Absolutely. A record of solid past work can help overshadow a poor interview (nervousness, etc.) in my eyes.

If I can see the sorts of things a candidate has worked on in the past, I can more tailor the interview and ask more engaging questions. I want to know what they're passionate enough about that they will give up free time to pursue it.

None of this is specific to Github.

michaelbuckbee• 15 years ago

An item that is not in the list of 7 and of vital importance to open source projects is the "ease of forking".

I've spoken to a couple different Open Source app maintainers who have basically said: GitHub made our community of contributors better by making it so easy to fork smaller portions of the codebase.

Where before they would basically just take abuse about issue/features (Why don't you support Markdown instead of direct HTML entry in your CMS, or whatever). Now they can just say "fork off" and have whoever complains maintain a separate codebase with their custom additions.

js4all• 15 years ago

True, but isn't Git the initial game changer?

glenjamin• 15 years ago

I'm intrigued that no-one mentions launchpad yet, it has roughly the same feature set, but doesn't put the code on the front page.

defroost• 15 years ago

> Force projects to include a good README

As much as we would like to believe code can be self-documenting, in most cases it is not. Having no README file can make your project more opaque. I probably shouldn't mention this in these parts, but one example of an active project without any README at all is PG's Arc. https://github.com/nex3/arc

I will concede that the Arc project does have a website that covers install instructions, but for new languages where nearly all users are newbies, having no README on GitHub can be an inconvenience.

apotheon14• 15 years ago

The complete lack of licensing information on many projects is something that Google Code tends to "fix" much better than GitHub, though -- even if Google Code is a little inferior in some other ways. It would be nice if sites like BitBucket and GitHub would do something to encourage people more strongly to actually tell us about the licenses used in their projects.

gersh• 15 years ago

I love github as much as anyone. However, why is it that Git still drives non-technical people crazy? Why do those people prefer dropbox over Git?

How Github has changed the open source world

Related Stories