Lib.rs has previously been editorializing the crates within the search algorithm on their site based on their own personal preference. However, they recently have taken it a step too far in labeling the bitcoin repo as unmaintained despite active development taking place for the past several years. Several others have also taken similar actions.
While I share the sentiments about cryptocurrency being a solution that is in search for a problem - libs should not editorialize the contents while still claiming to be “more complete and accurate crate information than crates.io”
Today the came for cryptocurrency, if we don’t speak up - tomorrow they will come for monads and other category theory goodies.
on the one hand, I completely agree with the maintainers stance here:
I think there are whole fields that don’t deserve to be treated seriously, and it’s a good thing to discriminate against them, e.g. homeopathy and astrology. I would expect a medicine-oriented website to openly warn its readers that homeopathy is a made-up pseudoscience, even if the firm believers in homeopathy felt this is inflammatory, and people selling sugar pills were upset about their reputation being tarnished.
but I do not agree with disinformation. Modifying a package to state it’s deprecated is slimy and underhanded. You’ve already put warnings up everywhere. You do not need to resort to tactics like this.
disinformation is what got the world into the shitty state it’s in. if you spread disinformation you’re no better than the cryptoscammers that do the same.
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https://crates.io/search?q=git (finds dead placeholder, no git2 in sight) vs https://lib.rs/search?q=git (finds git2 first)
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https://crates.io/search?q=option (dead placeholder again, and every crate that contains “at your option” in license) vs https://lib.rs/search?q=option (finds
Optionhelpers and cli parsers) -
https://crates.io/search?q=database vs https://lib.rs/search?q=database
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https://crates.io/search?q=error (7-year-old crate, podcast-api!?) vs https://lib.rs/search?q=error (anyhow + thiserror first)
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https://crates.io/search?q=sedre (typo) vs https://lib.rs/search?q=sedre (did you mean serde?)
crates.io is fine when you know the name of the crate you want (navigation searches), but is full of noise for broader queries. It doesn’t eliminate namesquatted garbage nor obsolete crates. It searches all text including tangential boilerplate. It shows fewer results per page. OTOH lib.rs filters out the noise. It also understands words with multiple meanings and ensures all meanings are included (e.g. search for “http” knows to include “http client” and “http server” and asks you to clarify which meaning you wanted).
Today the came for cryptocurrency, if we don’t speak up - tomorrow they will come for monads and other category theory goodies.
To defend a scam technology like cryptocurrencies with a line that was originally about people being shipped off to concentration camps is disgusting.
