On 17 September 2012 23:10, Ben Finney
The worrying part is that most people who *say* they're using Git are using Github. I have heard rumblings that Github is problematic: it's non-free compared to Git being free,
Unfortunately, where github is concerned, I think there is some FUD also, which may not always be true. They give you full access to your all your data, using open protocols. So it is not as bad as some other closed source cloud solutions that don't give you access to any of your data. Unless you pay to host private projects, most information is public information, so privacy issues don't apply (unless say cloud based mail solutions). Unlike other cloud solutions, they appear to be actively developing the code and constantly improving it. I get the impression that their support will be good too (not that I have ever needed it). It is true that github is closed source, and you cannot make changes yourself (probably the biggest limitation), host it on your own servers (not without paying lots of money for the enterprise version anyway, and even that doesn't allow you to make your own changes), or host private code (without paying). There is also the issue that we have to trust their closed source code to be secure and prevent unauthorised changes (using gpg signed git tags can help here for git repositories but not the issue tracker).
it's centralised where Git is federated,
Nothing stopping you pushing your git repositories to other servers.
You could even synchronous the issue list and wiki if you wanted to.
There is always going to be the issue that us, as software consumers,
expect to see an "official" upstream version of the code, and git
doesn't do anything to change this. Not a github issue.
For synchronising the issue list, in Debian there is the following
package, never used it myself:
Package: sd
Priority: optional
Section: universe/perl
Installed-Size: 856
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers
it requires users to use protocols that are incompatible with Git.
What protocols are incompatible with git? The issue tracking isn't done using git, most issue trackers don't support git however, even open source ones. Everything else (including wiki) uses standard git protocols.
In short, it undermines and defeats most of the benefits of a federated free-software tool.
Really?
The problem is that github is most emphatically not git. If a person using git (and therefore send-email) wants to collaborate with someone using github, one of the two of them has to give in and use an interface they deliberately decided not to use. There’s no way around it: github does not supplement git, github replaces git. Deciding whether to use github versus just git is an either/or proposition.
There is nothing that says you can't use github alongside some other
hosting website. Just push your git changes to both.
github happens to be the best available right now. gitorious is
perhaps the best I know of that is open source, but is rather
complicated to install and maintain, and doesn't have a number of
features github does, e.g. integrated issue tracking.
There is also an open source github clone, which is, ironically,
hosted on github. Not used it, so I don't know how good it is:
http://gitlabhq.com/
https://github.com/gitlabhq
Anybody who is seriously concerned with github being closed source,
perhaps should look at this.
--
Brian May