Re:Codeberg – Fast Open Source Alternative to GitHub
by kelnos on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:26PM
(#35486550)
> FOSS maintainers need to...
This is a common misconception. We don't need to do anything. We build things on our terms, and set policies how we see fit. If that increases friction so that people like you decide not to contribute, that's a shame, but that's a trade off we're willing to make.
And regardless of all that, advocating for a single platform for anything (whether proprietary or open source) is just a bad idea. GitHub does have a lot of things going for it, but it's a single point of failure, run by an entity that can decide to change the terms of the service in any way it pleases. We might hope and assume they won't do anything destructive (since most destructive things would be detrimental to themselves as well), but stranger things happen.
At any rate, your complaint is fairly specious: Platforms like Gitea (which Codeberg uses) and GitLab are similar enough to GitHub that the usage flow for third-party contributions is pretty similar and requires virtually no effort to learn. (In fact, Gitea and GitLab have been criticized in the past for copying GitHub too much.) Sure, if you were going to use a Gitea- or GitLab-based provider to host your own stuff, you'd have to learn quite a bit more if you were coming from GitHub. But just making a contribution isn't much of a hurdle to jump: the main hurdle is having to create yet another account, though many Gitea and GitLab instances allow you to sign in using OAuth and your GitHub credentials.
It's fine that you don't feel the desire to make principled stands on things like this, but it's unfair of you to talk down so harshly on those of us who do. I'm sure you have some causes that are important to you that I don't share, but I wouldn't criticize you for those, or for how you decide to spend your spare time.
This is a common misconception. We don't need to do anything. We build things on our terms, and set policies how we see fit. If that increases friction so that people like you decide not to contribute, that's a shame, but that's a trade off we're willing to make.
And regardless of all that, advocating for a single platform for anything (whether proprietary or open source) is just a bad idea. GitHub does have a lot of things going for it, but it's a single point of failure, run by an entity that can decide to change the terms of the service in any way it pleases. We might hope and assume they won't do anything destructive (since most destructive things would be detrimental to themselves as well), but stranger things happen.
At any rate, your complaint is fairly specious: Platforms like Gitea (which Codeberg uses) and GitLab are similar enough to GitHub that the usage flow for third-party contributions is pretty similar and requires virtually no effort to learn. (In fact, Gitea and GitLab have been criticized in the past for copying GitHub too much.) Sure, if you were going to use a Gitea- or GitLab-based provider to host your own stuff, you'd have to learn quite a bit more if you were coming from GitHub. But just making a contribution isn't much of a hurdle to jump: the main hurdle is having to create yet another account, though many Gitea and GitLab instances allow you to sign in using OAuth and your GitHub credentials.
It's fine that you don't feel the desire to make principled stands on things like this, but it's unfair of you to talk down so harshly on those of us who do. I'm sure you have some causes that are important to you that I don't share, but I wouldn't criticize you for those, or for how you decide to spend your spare time.