> First, for independent programmers, I think it's incredibly simple and straightforward to move your personal open source projects off of GitHub.
> Second, although you likely don't pay GitHub to host your open-source projects, they still make money from them!
> Third, GitHub's web interface has been in a steepening decline since the Microsoft acquisition ...
> Finally, I think open source communities, with roots in hacker culture from the 80s and 90s, form a particularly fertile soil for this sort of action.
I'm a programmer. I've set up Gogs, run various Git repos remotely and locally. I understand how simple it is. Simplicity is not the issue.
I host many open source projects on Github, gratis, care of Microsoft. They make money from them? Excuse me while I clutch my pearls.
The web interface is nice enough so that it sets the standard by which I judge other front end GUI wrappers around Git. Is it in decline? I don't know, maybe, but it's still good enough from my perspective. Using Gitlab or Sourcehut is painful. I'm glad they both exist but the UI, in my opinion, is not as good as Github.
Github is, for me, about sociability. I'll go where the people are. I can host my open projects, repos, blog posts, etc. on a server I control but that's not the point. I want people to see my projects, be able to participate in a meaningful way and be social with other projects. In theory, all these can happen on a private server. In practice, the people is what makes the platform attractive.
There are decentralized suggestions in the post, which I appreciate, and I'd like to see more information on how to use them and build a community around those, as that's the only real alternative to centralized platforms that I can envision.
It feels like Web 3.0 might be coming very slowly, it's just not based on crypto at all.
No one cared when Obama used ICE for 8 yrs. If Hillary was using ICE no one would care. People care because the media told them to.
The idea of removing all detail so that the average bystander says an apple is the same as an orange is a common partisan political trick these days and it's a crying shame to her to fight this silly illogical pablum day after day.
(That said, I'm not boycotting GitHub because of ICE, despite my firm position that ICE and DHS should be disbanded and replace with enforcement mechanisms similar to the ones we used before these very new and agencies filled with thugs. We also need accountability and prosecution for the criminals that fill the ranks of ICE and CBP. Boycotting GitHub isn't my cup of tea for accomplishing that)