Then gets defensive when they say yes.
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Isn’t all of their concern kind of demonstrated to be unfounded? CoMaps forked the exact codebase being discussed and moved to Codeberg already, and they’re doing great now. Whatever it is that the Organic Maps team thinks is indispensable on GitHub is clearly not actually an insurmountable challenge to ditch.
I switched from OrganicMaps to CoApps recently. CoMaps is a fork or OrganicMaps. One of the things they fix is that they moved the source from Github to Codeberg.
I will never understand the Free software developers that go to bat for GitHub.
Microsoft hates you and everything you spend countless hours building for free. They steal your work and sell shittier versions of it for exorbitant profit that they do not share with the community. They contract with ICE. They sell AI tools to Israel to help them commit genocide, and their CI offering is a total fucking mess.
I use and donate[d] to OrganicMaps. I think they’re great, but I paused donations around the CoMaps split and have been waiting for the dust to settle. Their responses in the fosstodon thread seem so tone def: They’re asking about github on a mastodon instance and responding that it’ll be a worse product if they move. Thinking it’s time I give CoMaps a shot. [edit: add 2nd link for context]
According to the open letter those donations to Organic Maps were used for a personal holiday. Along with everything else in there, I’m not using it any longer.
How is it a worse product if they move?
They seem to think github’s PR, CI, etc features are head-and-shoulders above the rest, and are hand-waving concerns around vender lock-in. They’re also saying it would be painful to move because of the aforementioned vendor features that have them locked in. Really seems to miss why many go FOSS in the first place.
I’m a software developer with over 40 years experience. Much of it with FOSS.
Your argument in relation to GitHub does not take in the reality of the effort involved with migrating to a different platform, effort that is likely unpaid, has no logistical upside and stalls the development efforts of a project, not to mention breaking every single source code repository link across the wider internet, links that represent publicity and community engagement.
It’s one thing migrating after a service vanishes, it’s an entirely different thing to migrate due to the philosophical differences perceived by the ownership change to Microsoft. In my opinion, chanting FOSS is insufficient as an argument.
I have several projects and clients that use GitHub and while I detest copilot and the enshitification that the new ownership represents, I’m also aware that it’s likely that the sale provides financial security to the continued existence of GitHub.
I think it’s admirable that a project is asking its community if it should stay or move and I wish the developer(s) wrestling with this all the strength and patience in the world to work through it.
I know I’ve struggled with the same considerations and I’m still using GitHub … for now.
I don’t like GitHub either but the large userbase ensures increased attention, which means more adoption, which means more contributors. That’s why devs are always begging for “stars”.
Maybe, but if so, I bet it’s negligible. When it comes to discovery, there’s so many places I’d look for FOSS projects before going GH. Except maybe to check awesome-lists, but you don’t have to be on GH to be linked on one (and I’ve seen them popping up on Codeberg). GH’s design in general doesn’t seem to promote stumbling across new projects. Even if I’m wrong, one could always mirror on GH.
As for contributing, if someone is willing to go though the trouble to contribute, I’d hope they’d go through the trouble of signing up on a new platform. Maybe there’s a non-zero number of contributors who would not, and that’s an unacceptable for some projects. There’s also potential for more contributors if they trust a project is living FOSS principles and less at-risk of vender lock-in. The fosstodon thread shows people care about where a project lives. The arguments in favor of staying on GH seemed mostly inertia-based.
It’s not negligible
If something works, don’t change it. And GitHub, not being ideal, works pretty well.
I agree, and I can forgive OSS projects still using it, but if they’re inviting a discussion about it I’d hope they’d be more sensitive that:
- github is not static
- being on a Microsoft platform carries a significant risk (embrace, extend, extinguish).
- There are plenty of successful OSS hosted elsewhere and each one helps the whole system grow.
