Hello,
Two cents of a non-qualified non-programmer here.
On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 10:54:15PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
Lotta people use Gitlab precisely because you can self-host a Gitlab instance - but you can use them as a service provider it's easy to leave.
The beauty of git is that it is decentralized and doesn't even need something like Gitlab to develop software collaboratively. Alessandro summed up the situation already.
What I see as the crucial part is the "social" component. I'm afraid this somewhat derails Alessandro's intended discussion as my point totally ignores "who" the current owner of github is.
If you have a project and are looking for more developers to join it, you need some kind of visibility so potential developers get aware of you. In that sense, github serves as a social network and its current state is close to amazon or ebay - and that is what I suspect is why they even bothered to buy it.
Sure, you can set-up your own ebay-like website or join one of the existing alternatives, but if you really need to get rid of your old stuff by the end of the week, your best bet is where the most eyes will see your offer.
So the gap we may need to close is how potential developers (and employers) get to know your project, and its code that might be hosted in the living room of your parents in law on a RasperyPi.
than most other companies -- but they are the same ones who wanted to kill us out of the market, before turning into friends who still would love if we disappeared.
Doesn't matter to me. They could have turned by 180° and LOVE us! I don't want us to rely on "good faith" that this may be the case. We need a decentralized infrastructure that makes their intentions irrelevant. Like if they'd take part in torrents. File transfers would be faster if they joined, but still be possible if they wouldn't.
Greetings,
Guido