[amiga386]

I didn't say they were lying. It can be true that their new search is better but costlier to run. They can focus on that in their PR, along with how shiny and new the shiny new search is, to distract you that they are removing anonymous search and making the site worse.

Nobody made them turn off the old search, they chose that, and they bundled the two together in one PR push.

Fancy new search = carrot. Remove anonymous search = stick. Carrot and stick work together to drive more signups, more logins, more data tracked, more data sales, more money.

[pcl]

I completely understand where they're coming from.

Maintaining two separate search stacks for different user groups sounds like a nightmare. Multiply that by every feature that increases in complexity enough to bubble up on the cost-center metrics, and it for sure makes sense to prune complexity at the cost of secondary-feature functionality for anonymous requests.

[Alupis]

Besides all of that - Github has zero obligation to provide Free services to users, let alone non-users.

The person you are responding to doesn't even want to make a free account yet expects to be able to use all of Github's services for free. That's some wild entitlement.

The disconnect here is unreal...

[nicce]

> The person you are responding to doesn't even want to make a free account yet expects to be able to use all of Github's services for free.

To be fair, definition of free depends. OPs argument was that they pay with data. That is not free if you think that you lose something. It is different question do we value it similarly.

[kelnos]

Sure, and if they don't want to pay with data, then they don't get to use the free search. While I don't love it, it's well within GitHub's rights to set those terms. They pay the bills, they get to decide who uses it, and how.

The real problem is that a company like GitHub (now owned by Microsoft, of all companies, sheesh) has a strongly market-leading position in the idea of "publicly-hosted git repositories". Even if they were giving away everything fro free, and not tracking users, that would still be concerning.

[Alupis]

Ok then, so that's like going to a restaurant and complaining the food costs money. Metaphoric "duh".

[Dylan16807]

That's not accurate. GitHub is still getting lots of data from people without accounts, and providing open access helps them get more users in general.

If we have to do a restaurant analogy, it's like going to a restaurant (buffet?), opting out of premium, and still wanting access to a particular food item. It's not automatically ridiculous.

[Alupis]

The OP is literally standing outside the restaurant looking through the window and complaining about not being allowed to eat for free.

> GitHub is still getting lots of data from people without accounts

This doesn't matter. If you want code search, you must log into a free account. Why is this controversial? Github isn't a charity - they don't exist to benefit freeloaders that won't even create a free account. Life doesn't need to be this hard folks...

[amiga386]

It's like going to a museum that houses all the world's great treasures because it's funded by billionaires and they outbid all the smaller, shabbier publically-owned museums that _could_ be housing them in their own countries.

The treasures belong to humanity, not the museum, but they get the honour of hosting them, and that glory reflects on their reputation (which they use to sell commercial artifact-hosting services).

Entry is completely free, and for 16 years they gave you a map as you entered. But now some marketing genius has decided you don't get a map unless you give them your name and address and join their "friends of the museum" marketing programme.

These are not good signs for someone who wants to be custodian of the world's great treasures. I would argue it would be better for the world if the treasures were housed in local museums instead.

[justinclift]

> Github has zero obligation to provide Free services to users

If they didn't, most (all?) of the major OSS projects that use them would have to find an alternative.

Those major OSS projects are why Github is the "central" OSS hosting place.

If they move on, then it's unclear if GitHub would remain all that central after a few years. "Probably not" is my thought, though I could be wrong. :)

[ranger_danger]

They should already be finding an alternative IMO: https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

[tayo42]

I have an account but github with forced 2fa is annoying to login with when I'm logged out. When your in the middle of something and suddenly have to go through a login flow, password manager, 2fa, just to look something up, maybe small, but I find it annoying

[smcnally]

One day I’m going to share stories here of how the "Columbia House Record Club" worked to watch people assume the foetal position and rock themselves to horrified sleep.

[pelasaco]

Its not hard to understand why a service like exercism has no money. People want everything for free

[fragmede]

Same with Twitter, tbh

[smcnally]

I don’t begrudge them requesting an authorized user account for some cases. YMMV. They balance this against allowing more open access to other projects, features and functions. Their balanced approach seems reasonable.