GitHub could be acquired by Microsoft

[Russel Winder]

On Thu, 2018-06-07 at 10:17 -0700, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d-announce
wrote:
> […]
> 
> 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.
> 

I think there is an interesting tension between using a DVCS as a DVCS and no
central resource, and thus no mainline version, and using a DVCS in
combination with a central resource.  In the latter category the central
resource may just be the repository acting as the mainline, or, as with
GitHub, GitLab, Launchpad, the central resource provides sharing and reviewing
support.

Very few organisations, except perhaps those that use Fossil, actually use
DVCS as a DVCS. Everyone seems to want a public mainline version: the
repository that represents the official state of the project. It seems the
world is not capable of working with a DVCS system that does not even support
"eventually consistent". Perhaps because of lack of trying or perhaps because
the idea of the mainline version of a project is important to projects.

In the past Gnome, Debian, GStreamer, and many others have had a central
mainline Git repository and everything was handled as DVCS, with emailed
patches. They tended not to support using remotes and merges via that route,
not entirely sure why. GitHub and GitLab supported forking, issues, pull
requests, and CI. So many people have found this useful. Not just for having
ready made CI on PRs, but because there was a central place that lots of
projects were at, there was lots of serendipitous contribution. Gnome, Debian,
and GStreamer are moving to private GitLab instances. It seems the use of a
bare Git repository is not as appealing to these projects as having the
support of a centralised system.

I think that whilst there are many technical reasons for having an element of
process support at the mainline location favouring the GitHubs and GitLabs of
this Gitty world, a lot of it is about the people and the social system: there
is a sense of belonging, a sense of accessibility, and being able to
contribute more easily.

One of the aspects of the total DVCS is that it can exclude, it is in itself a
walled garden, you have to be in the clique to even know the activity is
happening.

All of this is not just technical, it is socio-technical. 
 
-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/digitalmars-d-announce/attachments/20180607/6b585e70/attachment.sig>