On 07/13/2016 01:00 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 4:44 PM, Steven D'Aprano > <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> Even if Github was 100% open source with no proprietary extensions, and the >> *technical* cost of leaving was low, the single-network effect would still >> lock >> you in, which leaves you (to some degree) at the mercy of Github's >> management. >> Don't like the fact that they run their servers on electricity made from >> burning puppies and the tears of little children? Too bad, what are you going >> to do, move your project to some backwater VCS where nobody ever goes? You >> might as well be on AOL for all anyone will ever find your project. > > So what're you going to do? Move *now* to some backwater where nobody > ever goes, just in case GitHub ever turns evil?
No, you just run git as it was designed to be used. In a completely decentralized fashion. If Github had honored this aspect of git, there'd be no problem. A repo on GitHub would be just one of many publicly-facing git repos. But by refusing to allow federated pull requests, GitHub has most definitely created lock-in. I understand that in Python's case, pure cost wins out. Python.org could host a GitLab instance, which contains the repo tools plus ticket tracking, etc, and ordinary developers could push their changes to their own public git repos and send in pull requests and it would all work swimmingly. However this comes at considerable cost in terms of maintenance of the server and server software. So I can understand the allure of GitHub. It's shiny and free-ish. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
