Re:It Doesn't Work
by whatevah5982 on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:24AM
(#26619165)
This is a result of the popularity of Github. Low barriers are good, but as a result of this you're getting also inexperienced/low-effort people alongside the rest. And they're the majority. Github is so popular that it has become almost a one-stop shop for some users, while explicitly _not_ catering to non-technical users at all.
One thing that worked pretty well for me was to move to Gitlab. Very few people currently bother to create an account on another website to report an issue, and as a result the quality of feedback and reporting has always been very high. Gitlab has also less gamification, which helps in keeping project popularity from skyrocketing just due to stars and network effects instead of actual project merits.
I initially moved a single project when GH was acquired by Microsoft. GH/GL are totally equivalent for me, but due to this I ended up moving all my public projects and never looked back.
That would be a pretty easy thing for GitHub to fix, just add a prominent banner about reading the code of conduct files for the repo before sending issues/etc. Could you file a support request?
Is there a decent alternative for open source projects?
Only really self-hosting. But many would consider the admin of that to push it away from the definition of "decent".
Re:It Doesn't Work
by leephillips on Sunday March 28, 2021 @07:46PM
(#26616018)
You can host a git repository on any server. The Linux kernel is not developed on github, is it?
Github is far from just a git repository. It's a ticket tracking system, a discussion system, a release binaries host, a CI/CD component and a pastebin. The linux kernel has no CI/CD, no binaries, it doesn't even have a centralized server (only a copy of Linus' tree) and does everything through mailing lists.
Re:It Doesn't Work
by leephillips on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:15AM
(#26622979)
Well, if you want all of those things in one place, then that means github, practically by definition. But the example of the kernel shows that open source can carry on, on a massive scale, with no need for that.
GitLab also has all of these features, and it had many of them before GitHub, like built-in CI/CD. But for some reason I'm being downvoted for suggesting it on HN, curious why.
Sourcehut
People used to glance over codes of conduct (as in RTFM first, post on such channel, and other practical stuff like that, not like the ones projects are creating today) before contributing, and did so with the intention of interacting for a while.
Projects always tried to remove barriers for casual collaboration, but nobody managed to remove the long-term nature of it before. Now, well, too much of a good thing stops being good. Github finally fully succeeded, and this may be the main reason to abandon the platform.