← Back to context

Comment by whit537

1 day ago

We discussed this prior to launch, and obviously decided to launch as you see it. :) Our reasoning was that a) standardizing on GitHub URLs makes it easier to do automated analysis as part of the funding model, and b) any project important enough to matter will have at least a GitHub mirror. If you have counter-examples to (b), please comment them on GitHub (see what I did there?) or here and I will copy/paste for you. :)

https://github.com/osendowment/endowment.dev/issues/34

https://gotosocial.org/

Out of ethical disagreement they switched completely to codeberg. And they are certainly not the only ones, given signaling on the fediverse by other EU citizens.

They haven't pulled the plug on github yet, but my understanding is that Gentoo intends to drop it long term. In general, I would expect any of the projects that leave GH because they want to avoid being used to train AI would avoid leaving even a mirror behind (since that would defeat the point). (This is not intended as a value judgement, just saying that there exist projects that are doing this)

> any project important enough to matter will have at least a GitHub mirror

That might be true, but many of the mirrors are unofficial.

  • Noted in the abstract, thanks. Concrete examples more useful ofc.

    • Concrete examples: GNU software, musl C library, everything from x.org and freedesktop.org. Just have a look at the top 1,000 projects from the Debian popularity contest and you'll find many projects outside the Github bubble. Why not use the Debian package name in your nomination form instead of a Github URL? Any project important enough to matter will have a Debian package, right?

      If you're trying to come up with something like the "criticality score" based on repo metadata like the OpenSSF, you're likely to fail just like they did. Starting with Debian's popcon data makes a lot more sense, in my opinion.

      3 replies →