Private profiles are now generally available on GitHub

https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-29-private-profiles-are-now-generally-available/

by soheilpro • 4 years ago

109 64 4 years ago

oneplane• 4 years ago

Maybe I'm deviating from the general consensus here, but to me the social-network-isms in GitHub are an anti-pattern in business and undesired in such a highly useful utility service.

aliqot• 4 years ago

But the kids, they like it.

jchw• 4 years ago

The discovery features resemble "social network-isms" but have a lot of utility. Also, GitHub is obviously not only about business, and the symbiosis of what it offers for businesses as well as open source users is important to its identity in my opinion.

That all having been said, I do not disagree that in most cases, the "social coding" thing is a misnomer. GitHub's main contribution, in my opinion, was actually just putting source control and source code at the forefront of the project forge concept. Sourceforge felt like a nice website for projects to organize, but code storage felt at best like an afterthought. GitHub's forks and pull requests are what really make it shine, and the rest is mostly either bonus or noise.

bpodgursky2• 4 years ago

Eh, public stars and forks on OSS repos is a really valuable indicator of whether to seriously consider using a library IMO.

Not like, 3k vs 8k, but like 200 vs 0... help me understand if this is this a hobby project someone wrote and abandoned in a few days.

ComputerGuru2• 4 years ago

I have projects lovingly maintained for a decade (and responding to genuine issues with bug fixes within days) that have under five stars. Not a good metric.

netr0ute• 4 years ago

the social-network-isms in GitHub are an anti-pattern

I don't know, as the "social coding" platform never claimed to be anything different.

sieabah• 4 years ago

Don't worry you'll be vilified for disliking features by the tech community because they can't not have social features everywhere.

notatoad• 4 years ago

Do you have an actual complaint here, or just buzzwords? Calling something an “anti-pattern” or “undesired” doesn’t mean anything.

Your comment contains no substance that couldn’t have been conveyed by saying “I hate it”. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. That’s what I do. Is there an actual reason that the mere existence of social networking features is harmful to those of us who choose not to bother with them?

ianbutler• 4 years ago

They may become mandatory signals used for finding jobs? Thin line of thought maybe, but I honestly don’t mind the features I’m just trying to give a talking point to rally around.

cxr• 4 years ago

Widespread practices infect norms.

For example, thanks to the norms fostered on GitHub, you can no longer expect the average programmer to file good bug reports or to just interact in an appropriate way with the bugtracker.

We can't really talk about "wikis", either, without confusion about what a wiki even is—again, thanks to GitHub.

Rebelgecko• 4 years ago

What differentiates Github from any other git provider, except for the social network-isms?

bmitc• 4 years ago

Aren't private profiles in the opposite direction of social network-isms?

throwaway888abc• 4 years ago

Link for settings:

https://github.com/settings/profile

``` Contributions & Activity

Make profile private and hide activity

Enabling this will hide your contributions and activity from your GitHub profile and from social features like followers, stars, feeds, leaderboards and releases.

Include private contributions on my profile

Your contribution graph, achievements, and activity overview will show your private contributions without revealing any repository or organization information. Read more. ```

troymc• 4 years ago

While looking over my GitHub account settings just now, I noticed that you can now designate a successor:

By clicking "Add Successor" below, I acknowledge that I am the owner of the @ttmc account, and am authorizing GitHub to transfer content within that account to my GitHub Successor, designated below, in the event of my death. I understand that..."

https://github.com/settings/admin

Victerius• 4 years ago

@Dang, when will we be able to designate successors to our HN accounts?

TheAceOfHearts• 4 years ago

In the future children will argue over who inherits their parent's Hacker News karma. To avoid legal complications be sure to specify in your will which favorite child inherits your Hacker News legacy.

dotancohen• 4 years ago

It's important to note the difference between our online personas, such as HN accounts, and our online self-appointed responsibilities, such as our Github accounts.

I understand the reasoning for a clear path of succession of the latter. I do not believe that the former should carry on after our deaths. Our personas should die with us.

junon• 4 years ago

This has been a thing for years and years.

jwilk3• 4 years ago

About 2 years:

https://github.blog/changelog/2020-05-11-account-successors/

griko• 4 years ago

I got reached out multiple times and got hired twice based on my public repos and contributions. While I’d like to enable this option for privacy purposes, seems that the only way I’d use this if my employer requires me to do so.

pabs32• 4 years ago

Hmm, I wonder if there is a way to turn off some of those things but not others.

arunc• 4 years ago

GitHub is now owned by Microsoft. Just saying.

pabs32• 4 years ago

GitHub was just as bad before Microsoft bought them; a proprietary software as a service vendor using venture capital funding to provide a loss leader that lured people away from running and using open source infrastructure.

https://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html

bo0tzz• 4 years ago

This is what I would like too. I want my repos to be public, but my contribution activity to be hidden.

jwilk3• 4 years ago

Making the profile private doesn't hide your public repositories.

anshulag• 4 years ago

What do they mean by “now generally available”? AFAIK, private profiles were available before also.

computerfriend• 4 years ago

Yeah, was this in an open beta before? I have been using it for my work account for a while.

input_sh• 4 years ago

Yup, introduced as a beta feature in April, now it's here to stay.

From https://github.blog/changelog/2022-04-21-private-profiles/)

Private profiles are in public beta

barbariangrunge• 4 years ago

Personally, I found gitlab has been quite nice for many years now and I've had free private profiles there since I signed up. It's a great service

johnebgd2• 4 years ago

It is great but last I used it there wasn’t any kind of free tool like dependabot built in.

pragmatick• 4 years ago

https://gitlab.com/dependabot-gitlab/dependabot

Haven't tried it yet, though.

amir734jj• 4 years ago

The same. I love gitlab ci/cd.

johnebgd2• 4 years ago

Just in time for Netlify to discontinue support for private GitHub repositories for free plans.

Good thing cloudflare still has free Cloudflare pages support for private GitHub pages.

radicalriddler2• 4 years ago

Do you have a link to where they've said that, that really sucks, I've had a much smoother experience setting up pages with Netlify than Cloudflare.

maybevain• 4 years ago

I scanned the last couple months of their blog posts and could not find anything to support that claim. The docs or pricing page don’t seem to indicate anything like that either.

The only related thing I found was that free accounts are limited to one user that can trigger deploys in private repos, while anyone can trigger deploys in public repos (assuming I understood the announcement correctly).

vidyesh• 4 years ago

Most people got confused with the wording in their recent policy change for the free plan.

They recently changed the policy for Organization-owned repos. The continuous deployment for organization-owned private repos is no longer allowed in the free plan.

But personal account's public and private repos are still part of the free plan.

jamil7• 4 years ago

Netlify shouldn't be trusted anyway, I've seen them randomly terminate an account and take all the associated sites down.

jacooper2• 4 years ago

In terms of features, CloudFlard Pages wiped the floor with the competition, nobody is even close.

Unless you care about centralization, then you might still use GitHub Pages or Vercel.

Diti• 4 years ago

But still no way to opt-out from GitHub Copilot when using public repositories? I would have expected private profiles to give that option.

anvic2• 4 years ago

If you don't want people training models on your code then do not make it public.

harperlee2• 4 years ago

You can make code public and still legally restrict its use (see: GPL).

jwilk3• 4 years ago

Previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31115642 ("GitHub: Private Profiles beta", April 2022, 125 comments)

nora-puchreiner• 4 years ago

It's always been available, although tricky: click "report abuse" on your account, write something, and voila - you have a working account, invisible to others: they see your profile and activity page as 404.

Private profiles are now generally available on GitHub

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