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Open Source Programming

Developers Frustrated with GitHub Prod For Changes In Bug Reports, Transparency 99

DeveloperTech reports that a group of GitHub developers have posted an open letter, with nearly 1300 signatures, expressing dissatisfaction with GitHub's processes and policies, and in particular the site's level of transparency. A slice of the letter: "Those of us who run some of the most popular projects on GitHub feel completely ignored by you. We’ve gone through the only support channel that you have given us either to receive an empty response or even no response at all," he wrote. "We have no visibility into what has happened with our requests, or whether GitHub is working on them. Since our own work is usually done in the open and everyone has input into the process, it seems strange for us to be in the dark about one of our most important project dependencies."
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Developers Frustrated with GitHub Prod For Changes In Bug Reports, Transparency

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    what do you want for free???
    • Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @04:41PM (#51346671)

      But consider that GitHub would be nothing without the amazing number of free and open projects that it hosts, or without the free and open Git system that runs it.

      They can still provide quick and personal support for a cost, or require payment for all support if that's the business model that suits them best. But to say they will provide free support and then not really do it or not really provide insight into the status of the ticket, that can frustrate potential paying customers and those who would have paid for better support from the beginning.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        You don't really expect GitHub to be engaging in any actual business, do you? Xey're too busy jacking each other off and philosophizing about which pronouns to add to the Code of Conduct this week. User support is a burdensome and exploitative concept, much like slavery, and must be abolished.

  • It's free (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @04:18PM (#51346507) Homepage

    The hosting of open-source projects is free, but the company still needs to make money. They use the open-source portion of their business to drum up paid business. They still need to pay for the servers, coders, and network bandwidth that keep the thing going. I wouldn't get angry when a free service doesn't do everything I ask of it.

    • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @04:21PM (#51346525) Homepage Journal
      They should make their money off of concerts and selling tshirts and merchandise.
    • by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      The key complains are mostly complaints about common behavior of other users.

      1. Ability to force issue submitters to supply more data.
      2. Some alternative to +1 issue comment overload.
      3. Some way to block pull requests or issues submissions that don't fit certain guidelines.

      I strongly disagree with 1 and 3, as they're likely to stop some people from submitting things at all by making it harder to do so.
      I too have had crappy issues and sloppy pull requests submitted. I'd rather have those and start working wi

      • Um, I'm missing something; what exactly is a "sloppy pull request"? Leaving the pull open? If I want to look at a project I just download the zip, no need to open a pull. Are these users that want to contribute to projects?
        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          The way Github works is if someone wants to contribute, they fork the project, make changes and commit to their tree and then request that the original project pull the new commits. I'd guess the problems are like with patches, not rebased on current head, commits that aren't specific enough like mixing white space changes with code changes in a project that likes these separate, not responding to suggestions to fix their work etc and then leaving the pull request open.
          Personally I like the old fashioned po

      • by pjrc ( 134994 )

        I use github, where I manage dozens of open source projects and I contribute to many more.

        All 3 of these are real problems, especially #1 "Ability to force issue submitters to supply more data".

        Except they're not asking anyone to be "forced". They're asking for customization of the new issue page to prominently display guidelines, and for a template that specific users fill in, rather than the current blank box.

        Most users are terrible at reporting problems. They don't tell you which version they're runnin

        • by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

          I maintain a few dozen projects myself and have contributed to some big projects.

          I agree posting a good issue report is a problem. I also think that any missing information can be requested by the developers and I'd rather have an incomplete issue report than no issue report at all. I guess it depends on the type of users; my projects and contributions usually focus on developer tools.

          I understand the desire for quality issue reports and quality pull requests, but every added restriction will ensure some pe

  • Sourceforge (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @04:19PM (#51346515) Homepage Journal
    That is why I only use sourceforge. It is completely transparent. As an added bonus I get malware with my downloads.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      They addressed that years ago. It's not infected with the SJW bug, so yeah ill host on sourceforge, thanks.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Host your own then

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Move to gitlab.com, which is more open (the code is all open source and you can host it yourself if you want)

    • by Anonymous Coward

      gitlab (the server-side software package) is interesting, but gitlab.com (the repo hosting service running an instance of gitlab) is still less stable and responsive than github.com. This is mostly an infrastructure thing. They need fatter pipes and moar servers, but that's costly.

      Right now, the problem is that github.com has become the Facebook of code hosting. Everyone is already on github.com. If you're not on github.com, you don't exist -- just like that if you don't have a Facebook page, your resum

  • by Stormwynd ( 314235 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @04:44PM (#51346683)

    Perhaps they should consider GitHub, which IS open source (except for some Enterprise Edition specific features that they charge for). Users can run GitLab Community Edition themselves on their own machines, or use the hosted gitlab.com version (like github.com).

    https://about.gitlab.com/

  • git? (Score:1, Troll)

    by rubycodez ( 864176 )

    most projects' structure don't need git, using "thing that Linus wrote" isn't a reason. no one wants to go to a restaurant that puts swiss army knife in lieu of spoon next to soup.

    • by c4757p ( 4213341 )
      And yet it's the simplest, easiest to use version control system I've ever used. That's why I use it, not because any of the projects I'm working on are the size of Linux.
      • by SQLGuru ( 980662 )

        Actually, it isn't the easiest to use......otherwise when you search "how do I _____ in git?" you'd get a bunch of links with the exact same basic answer instead of 15 links to 25 different combinations of commands........

      • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        That must mean that git is the only version control system you've ever used.

        Mercurial and subversion are both simpler to use, even CVS, but CVS wasn't fully functional. Git feels like it was written by some kernel hacker with no thought for all for the ordinary people that would end up using it.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The github client is actually pretty nice. It hides a lot of the functionality of git, and makes managing your projects easy. Having said that, better revision browsing would be nice.

      The best thing about git is the include-by-default model. We use subversion at work and people are always forgetting to include critical files as they create/add them.

      • The best thing about git is the include-by-default model.

        Really? You still have to git-add the files. I mean sure it will warn you, but it doesn't pick new things up by default. That's what continuous integration or at least automatic unit tests on all branches are good for (among other things).

        Personally, though, I don't like the github client. I think it obscures too much of git and ends up making things harder rather than easier. I like the web interface github provides though. That's handy.

      • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        Git doesn't even pick up changed items by default never mind new ones.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I should clarify that GitHub and most other clients do a "git add -A" by default, which adds all new files that are not excluded and updates any changed/deleted ones.

  • Launchpad.net has git support now. The bug tracker is very good. Oh, and it's open source so you can actually help fix issues!

  • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @06:11PM (#51347265)

    Gitolite [gitolite.com], Gogs [gogs.io], GitLab [gitlab.com] all work great on VPSes. Even Amazon's free tier.

    This is like complaining to Dice about Slashdot and expecting something to change.

    • Gogs is very nice and easy to deploy. Not a full-featured as github, but getting there.
      • I actually like it because it's not as full featured.

        GitLab is a bit on the heavy side. Gogs runs very fast on the smallest VPS digital ocean has while GitLab was not.

    • This is like complaining to Dice about Slashdot and expecting something to change.

      You mean like dropping Beta, which they did in fact do...

  • by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Thursday January 21, 2016 @07:07PM (#51347537) Homepage Journal

    I read the letter. Here's a Cliff's Notes for all you guys who don't read because why evenbother:

    Some anonymous devs who are so addicted to github that they probably maintain their grocery list there wrote a letter with a bunch of feature requests. These users re mainly bitching about the fact that users of their own projects don't seem to be able to read or follow instructions. Naturally these people are smart enough and forward thinking enough that they have proposed a perfect solution which requires GitHub to do a shitload of work for free despite the fact that the problems will remain because the users still won't read. A surprising number of other developers clearly can't read or think either and as such signed off on this silliness. Naturally, these well meaning individuals posted all of this to yet another github repo despite the fact that there are many better places and formats to use.

    Journalists have picked up the story and have jumped so some pretty wild conclusions, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that they really can't read either.

    • Don't worry I read it. A bunch of people complained about something. Big deal. People complain about everything. Github is in a situation where they can pick and choose what they care about.
    • Can someone TLDR; this guy's TLDR;? I can't read paragraphs of more than two sentences. KTHXBYE!!:))))))))))))))))
    • by Hulfs ( 588819 )

      As a paying user of github, they have a valid point about the "me too"/"+1" type comments users are forced associated with issues they wish to see resolved (the other two points are kinda dumb).

      There really should be a star'ing or upvoting system associated with them as a way of noting interest in an issue's resolution rather than forcing people to, essentially, spam the issue comments making them harder to track the procession of actual comments regarding the issue's resolution.

      Add to this that most of the

  • by null etc. ( 524767 ) on Friday January 22, 2016 @10:09AM (#51350323)

    My friend told me that one of the most popular websites in the world, for developers, doesn't let users sort their list of repositories in any way, or even control the pagination or let users see the entire list of repositories all at once. I told my friend that since repositories are the single most important thing that users need to access from a version control system, this couldn't possibly be true.

    Then I visited github.com. I was wrong.

  • I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recent flood of SJWs attempting to force 'Codes of Conduct' onto some of the more high profile projects hosted at Github and elsewhere (eg. PHP, Ruby, Python). From what I've seen, Github may be complicit in this and it may explain why they are slow to respond. Many frustrated developers want a way to shut them down and keep them out. Eric S. Raymond recently wrote in "Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs" that their infiltration is a clear and present danger to

/earth: file system full.

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