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by coliveira 1961 days ago
This sounds like an indictment of git. It was supposed to make it easier for OSS developers to collaborate, but it turns out that you become bound to a monopoly like Microsoft. Why can't git users develop an easy to maintain server, like svn and fossil did, for example?
4 comments
qbasic_forever 1961 days ago
Read-up on the history of git. It was not designed to be a new panacea of OSS development. It was designed to keep the Linux kernel development running smoothly after their commercial source code host dropped them--that's it.

Running a git server is actually very easy, just run the git-daemon command: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Git-Daemon This is actually easier than running something like Gitlab that requires setting up a database, a reverse proxy, or even an entire runtime environment like Kubernetes, etc.

You're falling into a trap of conflating git with Github. Github took the mechanics of git and built a slick, centralized, commercial source code host on top of it. They made a social network that engaged users and gamified writing code. Lots of folks are working on similar commercial and open source variations of the same. But in all those cases git is just a part of the tech and not tightly coupled to the success (or failure) of them.

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tootie 1961 days ago
That reminds me that it's been years since I bothered moaning that the industry chose git over mercurial.
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guidoism 1961 days ago
Not sure this is an indictment of git. It still works great without central servers (unlike svn) but GitHub just makes it nicer for most people. And with GitHub the wiki is just a git repo so I’m guessing it would be easy to take with you. Not sure how the GitHub issues work so that would be a pain to move away from.
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iforgotpassword 1961 days ago
This is not about git. Git is probably easier to set up and maintain than svn. This is about everything else github offers like issues, pull requests, discussions, wiki, ....
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Jnr 1961 days ago
There are great "easy to maintain" servers like Gitea. I run it myself to mirror some things that I would not want to lose.

But self hosted Gitea and other alternatives won't scale easily (and would not be cheap). The biggest attraction to Github for me is the user base and scale, not the UI/UX.

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