[TreesCanCode]

Not poster but in a similar position myself.

What about incomplete projects? Messy/hacky experiments? Completely idiotic/backwards stuff done for fun? Play-projects purely attempted for "ha I did it!"? Legally-grey (or blatantly illegal) projects? Or even school projects? I have hundreds of projects that fit in those categories, and none will ever be made publicly available. Sometimes it's just not good form to make a project public, other times it's clearly harmful to do so.

Nevertheless, I preserve my projects privately just in case I ever resume work on a whim, or want to reference what I did in the past (or more likely, what I did wrong). And now I can put them online privately for free, sharing with those I deem appropriate.

[vog]

> incomplete projects?

It depends on what you mean by "incomplete". 50 lines of code which do almost nothing useful are probably not worth publishing. But why not publishing a half-complete project? Publishing may help you find contributors. And the early feedback helps you to decide if your project is worth more intense attention.

> Messy/hacky experiments?

If the code is not too bad, I publish even that stuff (as long as it is big enough to be notable), e.g.

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/vserver

> Completely idiotic/backwards stuff done for fun?

I recently published such a project and got surprisingly great feedback:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3061050

> Play-projects purely attempted for "ha I did it!"?

Why not? You never know who'll like it anyway, e.g.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hosh/

> Legally-grey (or blatantly illegal) projects?

Depending on how much trouble this might cause, you probably shouldn't upload it anywhere. Even a "private" repository on GitHub/BitBucket might be too risky.

On the other hand, I know about a Free Software clone of a game that used the original graphics and music. Not quite legal, but the game was very old and the right holders obviously didn't care. However, after publishing the project got a little fan base that eventually included graphic designers and musicians, who replaced the proprietary stuff step by step with their own creations. So the game changed from "legally-grey" to "solid free". This would never have been possible if the game hadn't been published.

> Or even school projects?

My school projects were about the first ones I published, and I'm pretty proud about what I wrote in that age, e.g.

http://davis.sf.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/voji/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/volt/

Later I also published some notable university project works (sorry, German language):

http://www.profv.de/uni/

However, these are only project works. I will never publish specific solutions to homework excercises, as this would only help cheaters and nobody else.

[pyre]

  > Depending on how much trouble this might cause, you probably shouldn't
  > upload it anywhere. Even a "private" repository on GitHub/BitBucket might
  > be too risky.

I don't think that he was talking about using BitBucket to host your malware repo. Probably more along the lines of projects that aid in the downloading of possibly copyrighted music/videos (for example). It's a legal grey area because you really don't know if your are on the wrong side of a law until a court makes a decision since there is no clear-cut way to know.

Some other examples:

1. You want to keep track of your dotfiles that you use at work. In general, this may be ok to put public, but it may contain work-specific stuff (hostnames, configurations, etc) that might get you in trouble for publishing publicly. For example, my work shell config has aliases that include connection information (sans password) to internal databases.

2. Resumes and/or cover letters. If you update your resume to say that you're looking for work, or looking for work in another area, this could give info to your current employer that you don't want to hand out. You might also want to keep your cover letters in version control if you use something like LaTeX or have specfic parts that you want to be boilerplate (e.g. description of yourself and/or your exerience). If you keep this in public, then everyone knows when/where you are applying for work, which may not be desirable even if your employer doesn't care.

[chops]

On the other hand, I know about a Free Software clone of a game that used the original graphics and music. Not quite legal, but the game was very old and the right holders obviously didn't care. However, after publishing the project got a little fan base that eventually included graphic designers and musicians, who replaced the proprietary stuff step by step with their own creations. So the game changed from "legally-grey" to "solid free". This would never have been possible if the game hadn't been published.

I voted you up specifically for this bit. This is great.

What game was cloned, and what is the name of the clone?

[nknight]

Sounds an awful lot like he's talking about OpenTTD, a "clone" of Transport Tycoon Deluxe that has some "interesting" history even aside from the media assets.

[flexd]

> However, these are only project works. I will never publish specific solutions to homework excercises, as this would only help cheaters and nobody else. Which is why (lite) private repoes would be nice. I wouldn't want to hand out all the answers to my school assignments but I'd still like to keep them tracked with git (depending on the size). At the moment I've just put my coding folder inside Dropbox which in a way acts like version control (in the sense that I won't lose the code.

[greengarstudios]

what's the Free Software clone of a game?

[vog]

This term means that a proprietary game has been rewritten completely from scratch as a Free Software project.

Usually, the game principle stays the same, but has its own codebase, and different graphics and music. Sometimes names are changed, too, if the original names were trademarked. After some time, the Free Software clones usually surpass the original game in almost every aspect.

This is a great way for a fan community to push forward their favorite game long after the producers lost their (commercial) interest in it.

This is also some kind of sustainability, as it ensures the game won't die with the hardware it was produced for.