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Comment by hypeatei

20 hours ago

I think GitHub should allow disabling PRs. I don't believe most big corporations are interested in dealing with fly-by contributions because it might make them look bad or be riddled with quality issues.

Also some projects like the Linux kernel are just mirrors and would be better off with that functionality disabled.

While that is true, I feel like it is irrelevant here since it seems like Okta definitely wants (and perhaps needs) the fixes. God only knows why GitHub still forces it on though. Early on it might've been some mechanism to encourage people to accept contributions to push the social coding aspect, but at this point I have no idea who this benefits, it mostly confuses people when a project doesn't accept PRs.

  • > Okta definitely wants (and perhaps needs) the fixes

    They definitely don't want them if their process requires signed commits and their solution is 1) open another PR with the authors info then sign it for them, and 2) add AI into the mix because git is too hard I guess?

    No matter how you slice it, it doesn't seem like there are Okta employees who want to be taking changes from third parties.

    • I think that they absolutely still want the free labor. All of those signals just suggest that they're not willing to reciprocate any effort that you put in when you contribute.

GitHub actually can natively mark a repo as a mirror (or could? I can’t find an example now, but they have always been rare). The book-with-bookmark icon before “user / repo” in the page header is replaced by a mirror-and-reflection-ish–looking thing, and the badge after it changes from “Public” to “Public mirror”. Unfortunately, forcing you into “social coding” (wait, is that no longer on the homepage?) takes priority, so that mark can only be given out by GitHub staff through manual intervention, and it doesn’t often happen.