Comment by andrew_

2 days ago

the loss of network effect.

I have never once in my life cared about where a programming language kept its source and I think if anyone is using that as a basis for decision-making, they are truly a moron.

  • You’re telling me you would be as likely to contribute to a project hosted in CVS as compared to git (and on GitHub)?

    • I don't care if it's on GitHub at all, it's not hard to work with any arbitrary git remote. CVS would be a weird choice, but it wouldn't be a dealbreaker on its own. Fossil or some other modern alternative VCS wouldn't be a red flag or weird at all.

      But I wasn't talking about contributing to the language, which is a weird standard to use here since Zig isn't interested in outside contributors. I was talking about choosing a programming language for use for some professional or personal project. I don't give a fig what version control solutions the team chooses to use if the language is good and solves my problems, and I would consider it very strange if someone tried to argue that I shouldn't use some language because they put their code on a non-Microsoft owned server.

      1 reply →

What I assume you mean is not the network effect, where more users of a product makes the product more valuable. That's still true for Zig as more users increase the ecosystem, funding potential etc. regardless of where the compiler source lives.

I think you mean to say something like barrier to entry for contributors? Where having to sign up for a new service will discourage some engagement with the core repo.

Linux kernel is not even run on github. Somehow people manage to find its source and contribute to it.