Currently, the Lemmy Project only uses Github for its repositories related to Lemmy’s development (e.g. Lemmy, Lemmy-UI). GitHub is a proprietary service, and it is owned by Microsoft. These facts open the door for a myriad of potential issues across the ecosystem, and community. I would like to clarify, though, that I don’t think that it would be a wise decision, currently, to remove Github as the primary location for development, but I would think that it would be a good move to mirror Lemmy’s repositories to a FOSS service (e.g. Codeberg). I personally would advocate for the use of Codeberg, as it is entirely open source, and non-profit, and they are currently working on implementing federation (through ActivityPub) – all these things, I think, align well with Lemmy’s role in the wider community, and its more general philosophy. In the future, I would ideally hope for a permanent move to such a service, but, in the meantime, I think it would, at the very least, be a wise, if not only benevolent, move.
I decided to post this here, as I felt that it didn’t seem appropriate to post it as an issue in any of the Lemmy repos.
It’s actually already mirrored to Codeberg, though it seems the devs haven’t pushed the changes for a couple of months.
Note that Codeberg discourages read-only mirrors though.
Looks outdated.
It’s actually already mirrored to Codeberg
My mistake! I swear that I did check before I posted this! I must’ve improperly searched for it, or somehting, because I really don’t remember seeing it when I looked.
it seems the devs haven’t pushed the changes for a couple of months.
Indeed, that seems to be the case. I wonder why?
EDIT (2024-01-19T00:45):
I think that I found what I did “wrong”, initially: I searched for “Lemmy” under “Repositories” on Codeberg (which didn’t display the Lemmy repos), where I should’ve searched under “Organizations”. Personally, I feel that this is a bit of a UX issue on Codebergs end; the main search should be a fuzzy search with options to fliter afterwards.
Removed by mod
Codeberg and other alternatives are used by 2 people, if not more. If a repo is hosted on such unpopular service, potential contributors must register a new account. This is very frustrating if you want to report just one issue or make one pull request. Self-hosted repos are even worse.
This problem can be solved by implementing federation. GitLab, Gitea and Forgejo already working on it, but really slow.
Codeberg and other alternatives are used by 2 people, if not more
It last reported it has about 400 members (people who pay money) , liberapay shows about 190 supports (and the number is slowly but consistently growing for years).
This is very frustrating if you want to report just one issue or make one pull request. Self-hosted repos are even worse.
It takes about a minute to make an account and store it in a password manager, it might be better because a higher threshold for contributing might mean a higher average quality of contributions.
Is there a problem with GitLab if used on gitlab.com? Would it be worse than GitHub?
Still subject to a company’s will in the cloud. For something like this (not doing anything in a legal gray area) it’s probably fine, though. For now, places like GitLab know they’d dissolve their trust with the world in an instant if they fucked around with a legal projects code (and github knows this too).
I think the point is less worry about corpos and more about “let’s support FOSS since an actual alternative exists”.
Unfortunately gitlab.com have been really cutting back on features for even open source projects due to money problems
how so?
Most potential contributors are on GitHub.
It’s yet another instance of the network effect.
It’s free (as im beer), it’s stable and it offers git integration. As usual, people prefer stability over amything else.
I completely get that. Codeberg is a non-profit open source project and these things tend to flop in a capitalist eco-system where the only thing of value is money and how much you can make of it.
I also mirror my stuff on GH to GitLab and Codeberg, but I consdier the main repos to be on GH. First I change stuff on GH, then mirror/push to all of the other repos.
Why not? They allow FOSS, so does it really matter if the hosting service itself is FOSS? Since it uses git, it’s quite easy to switch to another service if that ever changes, with the main issue being getting outside contributors to also switch. But starting out on something else would just add barriers to getting those outside contributors in the first place, so it’s not like that’s a strong argument in favor of starting with something else.
Using GitHub doesn’t violate their ethics and philosophy even if GitHub itself does. I see no conflict here.
Good for them.
Honestly I didn’t even knew that codeberg existed. A Open Source gitub would be pretty pog ngl
Okay, I‘ve read this now a few times. What does pog mean?
It means “good”, “agreeable” or “desirable”. It’s modern slang so I don’t blame you.
Just for completeness, “ngl” stands for “not gonna lie” and means something akin to “in my opinion” or “to be honest”.
Short for “PogChamp”, which is a Twitch chat emote featuring an expression of surprise like “😯”. Is used to be a picture of streamer GooTecks until I think he made some comments supporting Jan 6th and twitch changed it (in the worst way possible, but that’s another story)
So saying something is “pog” means you are excited/hyped for it. Other uses include “Poggers” or “Poggies”. Over time it’s worked its way into the larger Internet slang lexicon as Twitch has grown.
I’m all for open source services, but realistically, what potential issues are there with using GitHub?
Every contributor has a copy of the Git repo, so isn’t the worst case basically losing access to issues and similar data? And even that is very unlikely.I can’t give you an exhaustive list, but I’m, for example, not a fan of:
- Needing an account at Microsoft for reporting issues, contributing code or searching code in repositories. Microsoft operates in the ad/tracking business and is known for violating laws.
- Microsoft will potentially link this account data with LinkedIn or other Microsoft services in the future.
- Microsoft violates the licenses of code hosted on GitHub to train their AIs.
- Microsoft is known for creating lock-in effects and EEE, generally putting humanity worse off for their own profit. I’d rather not contribute to that, neither with code nor socially.
And just in general, Microsoft will enshitify GitHub one day. Its inevitable for every free service run by a public for-profit corporation. You can count on this as much as you can count on climate change.
So why wait until it starts happening? Get started with the move now.
They make a lot off of paid repositories and enterprise contracts, id be shocked if they had to enshittify it
Needing an account
But you’ll need an account at whatever place you’re reporting issues. If you want, you can always post those issues to Lemmy instead, and someone will let the devs know.
LinkedIn
What is the practical implication of this? I guess maybe advertising and whatnot, and that could be a good reason for moving most of the development to another platform when that happens.
I think there should always be at least a read-only mirror on GitHub (perhaps with issues and PRs that are auto-synced with the other platform) for visibility.
AI
Microsoft can easily reach out to other public repos hosted with other services if it wanted to. I’m not sure if they do, but I doubt it would be a huge burden to do so.
The larger issue here is copyright infringement, and I would love to see additional protections for this to require AI to get consent before training on a given repo. This is a legal battle, not a hosting battle.
Needing an account
But you’ll need an account at whatever place you’re reporting issues.
The important takeaway, from the original point, was that the account is specifically associated with microsoft – this may not exactly be a palatable idea for some people.
If you want, you can always post those issues to Lemmy instead, and someone will let the devs know.
If one is going to go through the effort of making a post on Lemmy, why not just cut out the middleman and open an issue? The difference in effort is rather small.
LinkedIn
What is the practical implication of this?
Invasion of privacy.
AI
Microsoft can easily reach out to other public repos hosted with other services if it wanted to.
Sure, but it is far more effort to have to make API requests to a third party (which can easily be throttled) instaed of just pulling directly from your local database. On top of this, this sort of behaviour can be publically tracked and reported since Microsoft can’t just obfuscate their actions internally. Every instance would be able to see the huge amount of API requests being made, and potentially report them.
GitHub is a good idea because way more people use it. For the few that can’t or won’t use it, they can use lemmy and someone will make an issue.
That’s the main reason for not going with an alternative. They’ll get more participation with GitHub than an alternative.
They’ll get more participation with GitHub than an alternative.
This is why I mentioned in my post that, as it currently stands, I didn’t think that it would be a wise idea to completely switch away from GitHub in favor of something like Codeberg.
You can self host gitea and begin mirroring the Lemmy repos yourself right now.
Are selfhosters not doing this now? If you’re a coder and selfhosters you should absolutely host gitea and mirror repositories, it’s fun! And makes things like yt-dlp that much harder to squash out
Indeed! But, I think that it would be preferable for it to be handled officially.
Yeah devs should definitely take on extra work that serves no purpose whatsoever.
