We’re no longer using our old ftp, rsync, and git links for distributing OpenSSL. These were great in their day, but it’s time to move on to something better and safer. ftp://ftp.openssl.org and rsync://rsync.openssl.org are not available anymore. As of June 1, 2024, we’re also going to shut down https://ftp.openssl.org and git://git.openssl.org/openssl.git mirrors.
GitHub is becoming the main distributor of the OpenSSL releases.
Those are fairly weak arguments honestly, none which have anything to do with the features on GitHub itself. In fact, this could have been written by someone who has no development or project management knowledge
Open source projects also don’t pay for GitHub.
Here’s one counterargument. One of our projects failed because we wasted so much time arguing about the hosting that we didn’t get much done. We moved between a few different services and wasted time comparing shortcomings between them.
In practice, migration from GitHub is actually super easy if you ever wanted to because they literally have an API for everything. It also is a really comprehensive service, and a lot of the open source ones are missing things
Im not a fan of Microsoft, but GitHub works really well and you can rely on it to be fully reliable (there have been few outages)
So does GitLab, Codeberg, sourcehut or self-hosting your own instance of GitLab CE, Gogs, Gitea or Forgejo. Why use GitHub? Especially, when developing open source software? Why use a proprietary software forge run by a Big Tech corporation that uses your code to train some AI model?
Again, the productivity is what matters. You dont think they could train copilot if it’s hosted on a remote git repo?
Also, are you going to do the self hosting for them? It uses a lot of resources and time to self host. Again, nobody knows this better than us.
Also, what have you contributed to openssl lately? Resources? Money?
Switching hosting isn’t a two second job either. There is a serious hit to productivity during migration for everyone, including distros.
Are they allowed to use vs code to develop too? Or do they need to change?
Nothing helps open source succeed better than productivity. Also, if they can train copilot with open ssl, good luck. Apparently the code is difficult
Also, there is always the possibility some of these smaller ones go bankrupt. GitHub is highly unlikely to
I don’t know how GitLab would make anyone terribly unproductive. I see many FOSS projects or even entire (proprietary) software companies choosing GitLab for source code management. In fact, the company I work at (a government contractor) uses GitLab, as well as many other FOSS tools. And it’s definitely not a FOSS company, our main customers are the police and military.
Sure, but their first choice for a data source is GitHub. For other platforms, they would need to develop and maintain an indexer/crawler (which you can block), which costs time and thus money. Just think about it, why would you upload my code to a platform, when you know that the owner of that platform actually hates FOSS and only wants to profit from it?
What has Microsoft recently contributed to the FOSS community? I mean truly contributed. Why should a FOSS project use their proprietary products when other free (both as in price and as in freedom) alternatives exist?
Dumb argument. The code editor/IDE is a personal choice of each developer. The software forge isn’t. I really doubt that anyone at OpenSSL is using VSCode (a bloated JavaScript mess) for C development. But if you need to use it, there’s VSCodium which is completely open source and removes the Microsoft tracking.
So is GitLab
The switch process will be terribly unproductive. Also, even the process of discussing the change is a nightmare. Don’t forget all the backend stuff that needs to change too from all downstream. It’s not as easy as using the API and tools to copy the repo in this case… Everyone from Fedora to Zedora is affected on their side because the upstream address will change
Microsoft actually contributes a lot to open source… Why would they need an indexer / crawler? They already index everything using bing… Then they just need a git pull.
Because they work… Switching platforms offers no real benefits in any way, and Github is free for open source projects.
Yeah… Sure… Every developer I know these days except one uses VSCode. And we took him off the main team in our company because he was taking too long to do things (because we are all using copilot).
What exactly do you think Microsoft is tracking? Do you think they’re peeking on developer webcams? Nope… https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry . Crash reports are normal… Its all GDPR anyway. I don’t care if Microsoft knows what language I’m developing on
Cool… I’ll just leave this here: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/0-click-gitlab-hijacking-flaw-under-active-exploit-with-thousands-still-unpatched/
People should use what they want. It’s actually bad for the community when people who contribute nothing try to project manage projects they have nothing to do with. It’s their decision… If you don’t like it, fork OpenSSL to Gitlab and do your own thing… Trust me, you’ll notice that choosing Github vs Gitlab doesn’t affect project success.
I don’t know why you are trying to paint the picture that everything except GitHub is extremely unstable and makes everyone unproductive. It’s definitely not the case, I can tell you that from years of experience in both corporate and FOSS software development. Haven’t heard from any project that migrated from GitLab/Codeberg/sourcehut to GitHub, it’s always the other way around. I often see abandoned GitHub repos with links to new repos on Codeberg or sourcehut. Because people don’t want to use Microsofts proprietary garbage. And somehow they don’t have any issues with suddenly being unproductive after switching away from GitHub.
Bing is such a piece of shut (just like most other Microsoft software) that I actually forgot it existed, because no normal person on this planet uses it
What programming language do you use? JavaScript?
For example? Name a full FOSS microsoft program that can be used on it’s own. Most of the things I see on github.com/microsoft are just some obscure libraries or other developer tools that no one uses. Sure, VSCode. But the build you can download from Microsoft’s website isn’t even FOSS. They don’t offer downloads for Code - OSS. The new Windows terminal? Only usable on the otherwise completely proprietary, bloated, ad-infested, data-extracting Windows operating system. Terminals aren’t used by most people either, I think I could almost call this a developer tool. The Windows Calculator? Wow, what a great contribution to the FOSS world. And meanwhile they make billions from selling proprietary software. Microsoft never truly supported the FOSS community and likely never will.
No software is perfect. Just look at all of the critical vulnerabilities Windows has had, EternalBlue (CVE-2017-0144) is a perfect example.
Of course it’s their decision, but it’s my right to criticize it, because I think it’s a bad decision.