As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.
For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don’t we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.
Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.
So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?
@OsrsNeedsF2P But that’s the problem we need to fix, not the reason to give up. There will be more people on Gitea and Matrix if you try. There is also more people on Reddit and Twitter, yet here we are.
If you try. Have you ever maintained any sort of large FOSS project? Have you ever run infra for FOSS? Even if you control your own DNS, you somehow became your own Domain Name Registrar, you bought the fiber all the way to your internet backbone provider, you are still compromising somewhere. For those of us that actually maintain and run foss projects it’s a massive pain in the ass. There’s nothing to “give up”. It’s all about using your personal resources wisely. I can’t spend time trying to get gitea up and running when I can quite easily use GitHub and lose absolutely zero functionality. And it’s not like any project I put on GitHub is somehow worse off than on gitea, they’ll function exactly the same since I only use MIT licensing.
I wish I could upvote you more than once.
It all really comes down to making choices that make the most use of the extremely limited resources (time, money, spoons) you have as a maintainer.
@foosel If that is the case, then how did the choice of using an open-source license even get through? It sounds like you are confusing commercial thinking (we have to get more users, we have to be where the users are, we have to support them, we have to meet the KPIs…) with the open-source. You don’t have to do any of those.
@tyler Also note how you went from “we want projects with users” to “oh it’s so hard to provide services to so many users”… at least stick to your argument. One thing is for sure - actively keeping users away from open platforms is not going to increase the users on these open platforms. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Do what you want, I’m just pointing out that you seem to be working against yourself.
@tyler Also note how you went from “we want projects with users” to “oh it’s so hard to provide services to so many users”… at least stick to your argument. One thing is for sure - actively keeping users away from open platforms is not going to increase the users on these open platforms. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Do what you want, I’m just pointing out that you seem to be working against yourself.
I literally didn’t make any of these arguments. You’re just setting up several strawmen to attack. And no, I’m not working against myself. Using non-OSS software has nothing to do with ‘working against’ FOSS software. I can all but guarantee you use non-OSS software every single day which was the actual point I was making and you so conveniently ignored. Whether it’s the software that runs the car you drive, or the software for the train you take to work, or the software in your cell phone, there is lots of necessary non-FOSS software out there and you’re completely ignoring that any given person’s time and energy can only be spent on so much.
@tyler So why are you doing open source anyway, if not for the philosophy? You are completely undermining that by forcing your contributors to stick to proprietary walled gardens. Last time I checked there were hosting providers for both gitea and matrix.
@tyler So why are you doing open source anyway, if not for the philosophy? You are completely undermining that by forcing your contributors to stick to proprietary walled gardens. Last time I checked there were hosting providers for both gitea and matrix.
none of my users have to use any walled gardens. My final artifacts are pushed up to the respective artifactory like npm, maven central, rubygems, pypi, etc. all of which are artifact repositories set up by non-profit foundations that anyone can use. You are talking about being open to contributors, which is an entirely separate thing from users. I’m not forcing anyone to contribute, and no one is forced to use my projects. I can pretty much guarantee I’ve contributed to more OSS in the past year than you have in a lifetime, and it’s going to continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. So you can fuck right off
Reddit and Twitter aren’t comparable here. I’m not bound to the fediverse just because I post here. I can still use Reddit if I want. I don’t care much if my posts aren’t seen by anybody here either.
Code hosting is a different story. It’s not ideal to host on both Github and Gitea at the same time. It’s a mess to keep track of multiple issue trackers at the same time. If you chose one you’re kind of bound to it, so you better choose the alternative that increases the chances of future success of the project.
You could host on Gitea and mirror to GitHub. Obviously, users may be less inclined to sign up to your Gitea instance, but I hope people being unwilling to register becomes less of an issue once Forgejo (Gitea fork) implements forge federation.
