GitHub could be acquired by Microsoft

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2018 at 01:28:26AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
[...]
> In any case, I've always thought it was absolutely sick that that even
> though GitHub/BitBucket/GitLab/Launchpad/etc. all provide basically
> the same features on top of the standard ***distributed*** version
> control systems, they are all completely incapable of talking to each
> other or acting as interchangable viewers on a single set of common
> project data. So much for the "distributed" in "DVCS".

Exactly!!!  Git was built precisely for decentralized, distributed
development.  Anyone should be (and is, if they bothered to put just a
tiny amount of effort into it) able to set up a git server and send the
URL to prospective collaborators.  Anyone is free to clone the git repo
and redistribute that clone to anyone else.  Anyone can create new
commits in a local clone and send the URL to another collaborator who
can pull the commits.  It should never have become the tool to build
walled gardens that inhibit this free sharing of code.


> What I've ALWAYS felt we needed, and even moreso now, is a tool to
> commoditize these "VCS Plus" services. So we can just FORCE the choice
> of GitHub/BitBucket/GitLab to be "Whatever frontend the user prefers",
> and everything gets cross-synced and interlinked, etc., and bring the
> "distributed" back to DVCS, rather than chaining each project to a
> centralized walled garden.

Yes.


> Keep in mind, if we had been commoditizing and decentralizing
> repository hosting, issue tracking, PRs, user accounts, etc. right
> from the start like we should've been, then this MS buyout of GitHub
> would've been entirely irrelevant to everyone outside GitHub itself.
> That's what happens with single points of failure. And the reason
> VCSes even went DVCS in the first place.

Indeed.  Remember the Amazon AWS blackout that affected hundreds
(thousands?) of websites?  That's what happens with centralized systems.
Yet people just never learn...


T

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