Pjotr Prins <pjotr.publi...@thebird.nl> writes: > First of all > github provides me an internet personae. Anyone who wants to assess my > work can visit github and get a clear picture of what I am working on. > This is a valuable resource, but I can probably move it elsewhere > without too much loss. Github has a nice way of showing work, though, > and it is easy to see what organizations I am contributing to and what > type of comments I post. I always tell students that the github track > record is more important (to people like me) than the publishing > record in scientific journal. […] I therefore use github to assess and monitor > other peoples work. Hosting your code elsewhere, as long as it has a > decent interface, is good enough for me - I'll change that > recommendation to something more generic. Commenting on multiple sites > will need multiple accounts.
This is what I find scary. I’ve received job offers from people who apparantly judged my skill based solely on what I published on Github. Ironically this happened right after I moved most of my projects to my private server, so there wasn’t really much to look at anyway. There also appear to be a number of researchers who think they can derive trends and representative statements about free software from a survey of what’s on Github. > People wrote me that they are concerned about other trends. For > example the Julia language is basing its package infrastructure on > github and therefore compromises robustness for convenience. The only > setup that is robust is a distributed setup - i.e., to not depend on > one party. The “devtools” package for R is also a popular way for people to install software directly from Github, giving others an incentive to use and publish their code on Github. Does Julia really *depend* on Github, or is this a more generic dependency on any git repository? > If github changed its ways (e.g., add advertising, a new charging > model, sell user behavior to 3rd parties or government) or its > policies (i.e., repository incompatibility with GPL - they are border > line already) and we would want to move out, it would be incredibly > hard, not least because some of our software is built on top of > github's interface and API. And because github's software is non-FOSS > we'd be stuck somewhere in a dark land. Things like that have happened to hosters in the past. It’s not just a “what if” scenario. People are forgetful. > I hereby decide I am going to (gradually) move all my projects off > github and remove my main account. This won't happen within a year, I > expect, but it is clear to me that I need to do this. I will still > have github accounts, but plan to change them on a regular basis. I applaud this decision. I have done something similar by removing *most* of my personal projects from there, except for those that I’m required to work on at my job and those where I still haven’t taken the time to work off the issue tracker… Changing accounts regularly seems like a good idea, too. -- Ricardo GPG: BCA6 89B6 3655 3801 C3C6 2150 197A 5888 235F ACAC https://elephly.net
