Establish walkout date for leaving Github

[Marak]

Hello everyone.

I think it's great you've established this ultimatum, but I haven't found any indication for how long you've given Microsoft to make a decision.

It's important you establish a date in which you will all be leaving Github and transferring your projects. Without an organized deadline your threat of leaving just doesn't seem that serious.

[selfagency]

I agree that a date should ultimately be set, but I'm waiting to see what happens with the petition from the Microsoft staffers to their CEO before calling it.

[Marak]

@selfagency

Please correct me if I am wrong, but to my understanding Satya Nadella has already responded to the petition by Microsoft staffers which you are referring to. Satya is categorically denying Microsoft from any wrongdoing.

Is there another petition you are referring to?

I've copy and pasted his response below for context.

Team,

Like many of you, I am appalled at the abhorrent policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the southern border of the U.S. As both a parent and an immigrant, this issue touches me personally.

I consider myself a product of two amazing and uniquely American things — American technology reaching me where I was growing up that allowed me to dream the dream and an enlightened immigration policy that then allowed me to live that dream. My story would not have been possible anywhere else.

This new policy implemented on the border is simply cruel and abusive, and we are standing for change. Today Brad detailed our company's position on this issue, as well as the immigration legislation currently being considered in Congress, and I encourage you to read his blog post.

I want to be clear: Microsoft is not working with the U.S. government on any projects related to separating children from their families at the border. Our current cloud engagement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supporting legacy mail, calendar, messaging and document management workloads.

Microsoft has a long history of taking a principled approach to how we live up to our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more with technology platforms and tools, while also standing up for our enduring values and ethics. Any engagement with any government has been and will be guided by our ethics and principles. We will continue to have this dialogue both within our company and with our stakeholders outside.

The immigration policy of this country is one of our greatest competitive advantages, and this is something we must preserve and promote. America is a nation of immigrants, and we're able to attract people from around the world to contribute to our economy, our communities and our companies. We are also a beacon of hope for those who need it the most. This is what makes America stronger. We will always stand for immigration policies that preserve every person's dignity and human rights. That means standing with every immigrant who works at Microsoft and standing for change in the inhumane treatment of children at the U.S. border today.

Satya

This quote was taken from a Business Insider article found here

[Marak]

FYI, I think July 4th would be a good date to set the deadline considering it's America's Independence Day. 🇺🇸

[selfagency]

After Satya's letter, hundreds more Microsoft employees signed the petition. I don't think it's over yet.

[jerriep]

@selfagency Your pinned tweet states the following:

My mother's father was in Auschwitz....

On the list of customers for GitLab is Bayer:

Do you realise that Bayer was involved in the development of the gas used by the Nazis in the gas chambers? Do you realise that this company used Jewish slave labourers?

And let's not forget that Bayer now owns Monsanto. This is the company that developed Agent Orange. Ever seen what that stuff did to children?

May I suggest you make it very clear to your signees that they should not move to GitLab either - lest they are seen as hypocrites.

[selfagency]

The above is not only factually incorrect (Bayer's former parent company, IG Farben, had a minor stake in the company that made Zyklon B) but it is a continuation of your concern trolling that I already told you to take somewhere else. The fact that Bayer's parent company did something 70 years ago for which they apologized, paid DM 27,000,000 in restitution, were dissolved, and over which we have no control at this point in time, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there are human rights abuses happening RIGHT NOW that we can play a role in helping bring to an end. The same goes for Monsanto's production of Agent Orange in the 1970s (also more than 40 years ago), for which they already settled a class action law suit paying restitution to the victims. That is not something we can undo. This is something we can stop, NOW. Finally, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. There is nothing in this world that you can buy or use that isn't tainted by something evil in one way or another. Bearing that in mind, you have to pick your battles. This one seems to be pressing. Except to you, apparently.

[selfagency]

Frankly, I try not to be civil towards people whose only interest is to derail efforts to support the human rights of marginalized groups but I agree I'd rather not do it here.

[selfagency]

I think your suggestion of July 4 is a good one. The question now is how do I tell everyone who's signed?

[Marak]

@selfagency -

I can think of a few ways to achieve this either using the Github API or by doing by it manually.

The easiest course of action might be opening a new issue and then using the @username feature of Github to send alerts to each user who has signed. Probably should only take 15 minutes. I don't think edits will work and too many alerts in a single message might cause a problem. Might want to make a new comment on the issue per every 25 users.

[selfagency]

that's a good idea.

[therobinkim]

The addition of a deadline changes the nature of the document, so I think you'll need to create an explicit opt-in strategy. A couple of ideas, for brainstorming purposes:

• Create a new section of the doc that says "these are the people that have agreed to leave by ____" and people can PR their names into that section.
• Create a separate branch or new repo where the deadline exists and people can PR their names into it.

[Marak]

Comrades, is there any status on this?

I'm starting to doubt the resolve of the people who are supporting this action against Microsoft.

It's time that the people on the list start showing Microsoft this is serious by migrating their projects and deleting their Github accounts.

I'm certain if users who signed like @sindresorhus, @jamiebuilds, and @seldo are the first to move than others surely will follow by example.

[rbstrachan]

@Marak TL;DR - We should set a leaving date before asking prominent contributors and devs to permanently delete their accounts.

Let's not jump the gun. I am very serious, as I'm sure most of us are, about leaving GitHub. I have already migrated my projects over to GitLab in the event that Microsoft does not drop the contract, however, asking prominent contributors and developers like @sindresorhus @jamiebuilds and @seldo to permanently delete their accounts before a resolution has been met is, in my opinion, slightly presumptuous.

I agree that a leaving date should be set but as is stands the petition by Microsoft's own employees is not yet over which makes it hard to choose an appropriate date. I would personally focus on setting a deadline after there is an outcome from the Microsoft petition, and then ask people to delete their accounts should a resolution not be reached.

[elibdev]

@rbstrachan The walkout date would definitely need to be communicated to the people who have signed, but I don't think that we should wait for the internal petition in Microsoft to show results. I'm doubtful that we'll see a public resolution anytime soon. Microsoft has only shown signs that they intend to downplay the ICE contract.

I think their plan is to just try to sweep it under the rug until they can secure much larger government contracts. Here are a few reasons I think Microsoft will continue to just try to downplay this:

1. Microsoft is heavily reliant on government contracts and is still in the process of trying to secure the JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract, which will move Department of Defense operations to a private cloud provider (for an estimated $10 billion, the largest in history).
2. Microsoft is currently bidding (and likely the front-runner) for another estimated $8 billion Department of Defense contract DEOS (Defense Enterprise Office Solution).
3. Trump has been very vocal talking trash about Jeff Bezos, with Amazon being Microsoft's primary competitor for the JEDI contract, which probably makes Microsoft think they are the preferred cloud provider by the current administration.
4. I don't think Microsoft has as strong of an internal culture of discussion and debate as Google does, which was crucial to enabling Google employees to effectively organize against the Project Maven contract.
5. this tweet by prominent Microsoft employee Sarah Drasner saying "I'm frustrated by the ICE situation. I'm trying to do everything I can to affect change, but I'm not sure it's going as far as I want it to.", which makes me think the internal petitions may not be as effective as we hope.

I think a walkout date will be the most effective if it is supplemented by clear demands. Maybe we could update the README to include the list of demands Microsoft employees included in their open letter:

Acknowledging this responsibility, we request that you:

1. Cancel the existing Azure Government contract with ICE immediately.
2. Draft, publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Microsoft nor its contractors will work with clients who violate international human rights law.
3. Commit to transparency and review regarding contracts between Microsoft and government agencies, in the US and beyond.

I like the idea @therobinkim had about adding a section to the README to make the walk-out date opt-in. I think we can make the walkout even more effective if we show solidarity with the internal Microsoft petition by adding their demands to add to the pressure and support the employees fighting against it before there is any public resolution to the internal petition.

[rbstrachan]

@edbedbe Well put. From what you say, a walk out date is in order sooner than I thought.

I do have one question, though. If Microsoft's own employees' petition is doing little to change the situation, what more could ours do? What quality do we have that Microsoft's own employees don't?

Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping this works and I intend to honour my promise. What I'm asking is; what makes our situation so unique?

[elibdev]

I think the Microsoft employees would probably have more leverage on the company's decision, which is why I think it would be good if we could lend our energy to support their efforts. I thought the list of demands in their open letter was very clear, and it might help them if we used the same language.

[PaulFree14]

What quality do we have that Microsoft's own employees don't?

we're not getting payed by microsoft. it's way more easy to walk out if your not depending on a paycheck

[randolf]

@rbstrachan It's not about being unique, and in fact the diversity of different petitions is more of an advantage anyway because it shows that more people are concerned about human rights and in different ways (and any observer can discern that the petitions aren't mere copies of one another, but rather that they came to be independently).

[randolf]

@edbedbe We should definitely reference their petitions to show support. We should continue with our current linguistic style, and resist changing it because everyone who's signed it already has signed what was written at present. Changing the wording after they've signed it would, technically, require that they sign it again to signify agreement with what would amount to a very different petition if we were to make such a major change.

[cfanoulis]

So, do we mark the date yet or meh?

[selfagency]

FYI— I have gone forward with moving all of my repos to BitBucket. I highly encourage others to begin the process.

[randolf]

It appears that there is a link at the top of the BitBucket web site's home page to a guide to importing projects from GitHub (and GitLab) repositories: https://www.bitbucket.org/

[janriemer]

Github was founded on 4/10 (10th of April) according to Wikipedia. How about due date being 10/4 (4th October). 🔌 It is enough time to inform all signees about this date. October would also be a nice pun regarding Github's Mascot.🤓

[ghost]

Ping! we need this. if we want to make noice, we need this.

[janriemer]

Informing the signees

Are their any objections against me informing all the signees this weekend that due date is 10/4? Because I would do it then and open a separate issue for this. We have to get moving on this! Otherwise nothing will happen (this issue has been opened over 2½ month ago!).

---

CLI for exporting your data

I'm also working on a cli tool for exporting your data as json from Github (plan for release is this weekend 🤞; stay tuned). According to GDPR a company is actually obligated to provide a way for you to export your data that the company has stored about you. But Github seems to not really give respect to their users that much in this regard (whether it can hold up to GDPR is at least questionable). They are calling it "Data Portability Tools" in their privacy policy. But it is a real cheek considering the usability (you must curl their apis!). And you can only export your repos. Your stars and follower/following are not considered. The CLI tool will solve that.

[janriemer]

Hey guys, @selfagency it's now official: export-my-github is here! You can use it to export your data that you have on Github to your local hard drive. Caution: There might be dragons :dragon: I'd love to hear your feedback.

[jbeard4]

I wanted to mention that I have also started to archive my projects on Github and move development to Gitlab. I have already moved my main project, SCION, and I am going to migrate my other projects soon as well. If anyone is interested, I wrote about this move, and what it means to me, here.

[Marak]

Do we have any status on the top five signers of this petition leaving Github?

I'm starting to suspect putting these popular user names at the top of the list was more of a publicity stunt and not a serious intention to leave Github.

I'd appreciate it if these top users would make their intentions clear or be removed from the list:

• Lea Verou @leaverou (MIT, W3C CSS Working Group, Prism, Mavo, Dabblet)
• Sindre Sorhus @sindresorhus (AVA, XO, Awesome)
• Thomas Fuchs @madrobby (Zepto, Script.aculo.us, Ruby on Rails)
• Laurie Voss @seldo (LGBTQ.technology)
• Jamie Kyle @jamiebuilds (Babel, Yarn, Flow, Parcel, Marionette, Lerna)

[ghost]

I've dropped GitHub for Gitlab. I can confirm it's great. It comes with a WEB IDE (basically using the barebones version of vscode), the UI is a lot nicer than on here, too. @Marak It would be great if these guys moved to Gitlab, it's better, and it would move a lot of the community over to an open source solution, which also has FREE private repositories.

[randolf]

@def14nt That's a great idea. We should also keep this project open and active though so that future GitHub users can participate in it too -- late is still better than never, after all.

[ghost]

I agree that some of these people signing up is starting to seem like a publicity stunt, but I also disagree with that for another reason.

The problem is that contributors may be unfamiliar with the GitLab/BitBucket/whatever UIs, so it isn't as easy as "swapping over". The problem is - like many other services - is the community pull GitHub has, whereas GitLab seems to have less (but that's slowly changing). This means that if one were to switch, then contributors and others might not make the jump over to the new service, rendering the project with less support from it's community.

Another problem is that links don't change themselves. If one were to delete their GitHub account, then all links to that account - and all projects from it - would be dead.

Methinks the solution here is a slow ease over to the new service, meaning make the original GitHub repo mirror the new repo, so people have chance to settle in and re-apply their stars etc.

Maybe we could start nominating people, too?

p.s I did this with my favourite markdown editor, check it out :)

[selfagency]

what we actually need is a way to federate issues and such from independently run git servers, regardless of what platform they run on, similarly to the way mastodon/gnu social/etc. federate content (activitypub/activity streams/matrix). being locked into any platform is the root of the problem which is why tim berners lee, for example, just launched solid. i would rather run my own gitea server and have a way for people with their own instances of a git server to be able to comment on issues, submit PRs, etc. without having to have an account on my server or me on theirs. btw, gitea is great if you're looking for an open source github clone.

[ghost]

You can run GitLab independently btw @selfagency

[selfagency]

i know. it would be great if gitlab, gitea, github, bitbucket, and everyone else would settle on a standard and implement it.

[selfagency]

as of today microsoft has completed their acquisition of github. it is time to walk if you haven't already.

[ghost]

@selfagency Is anything going to come out of all of this? The people that have signed haven't said a word. I'm starting to question if this is even a good idea.

[ghost]

@selfagency https://blog.github.com/2018-10-26-github-and-microsoft/

[selfagency]

@def14nt there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and you gotta pick your battles. imho, i'd rather not give my business to a company that helps facilitate ethnic cleansing. if microsoft isn't going to stop providing backoffice support to ICE, i'm not going to give microsoft my business. will this make one iota of a difference to microsoft? probably not. will it make me feel better about where i host my software and who i pay to do so? yes.

[ghost]

@selfagency You're kind of wrong there. If big projects like Ruby on Rails, Flow, Babel, and Yarn move away, it'll look pretty bad for Github.

[ghost]

I also use Windows 10, but give Microsoft no telemetry by disabling the network. Hope it puts a smile on your face :smile:

[jbeard4]

@def14nt I agree, it would have an impact if big projects were to move off of Github, however I can also see why this would be particularly challenging. In the case of big projects with multiple collaborators, they would need to reach a consensus to move development to a different platform. Transferring the code and issues to Gitlab is fairly trivial, but getting people to organize around a different infrastructure is challenging. Nobody wants to lose their Github stars, and nobody wants to create friction for developers.

Ultimately, everyone is going to have to follow their own conscience. This is true for individual contributors as well as project organizers. But at least this project asks the question of whether centralizing OSS development around a closed platform, now owned by Microsoft, with all they are doing to support ICE, is a good thing for the OSS community.

[janriemer]

@jbeard4 Totally agree!

But at least this project asks the question of whether centralizing OSS development around a closed platform, now owned by Microsoft, with all they are doing to support ICE, is a good thing for the OSS community.

That is why we need a Github clone on the SAFE network. The SAFE network is nothing less than a new internet, fully decentralized and distributed. It has even the possibility to build a complete new economy on the internet - gone are the days of privacy exploitation (some call it advertising)! SAFE is currently in Alpha 2 with Alpha 3 on the horizon. They are also partnering with Solid.

[jbeard4]

@janriemer I'll look into this, thanks. For now, I think running a Gitlab instance on Digital Ocean, or using their hosted service at gitlab.com, is a good first step.

[ghost]

I'm waiting for Microsoft to make their first move to change Github. They're laying low right now, because it seems that acting would be bad for business, because so many are wary of Microsoft as a company, and a large amount of the ones that aren't have a relationship with Microsoft (a job). I can see Microsoft's involvement with Github as a very incremental one, where they tap the prices up more and more, until people retaliate.

When that happens, we should advertise this repository and other projects related to leaving the Github platform, as that would give other small projects like GitLab and Gitea a helping hand, and it would be a great means to retaliate, as mentioned above, and it would empower the smaller open source alternatives, so that's two birds with one stone.

Additionally, can we actually arrange this leaving date? Is everyone that put their name down actually on board? I understand that migration is difficult, but if it is not available, then send in a pull request with your name revoked from the list.

An idea for another online Git service: one where everyone helps, like torrenting or tox. Wonder how you could pull that off...

[jbeard4]

@def14nt You might want to look at git on IPFS. https://medium.com/@alexberegszaszi/mango-git-completely-decentralised-7aef8bcbcfe6

[ghost]

OMG! Is it really down again?!

[randolf]

@def14nt I don't think that forcing people to move is going to be helpful in garnering support. After all, a lot of people involved in open source projects do so on a volunteer basis, and may not have time available to make the change happen (at least not immediately).

I think it's better to keep promoting this project without a definite commitment expectation (positive encouragement is certainly okay though) because that makes it easier for people, and it also helps to promote awareness in an ongoing fashion.

With regard to Microsoft making changes to GitHub, I'm concerned about this too, especially in light of their terrible track record when it comes to quality and security, and their long and not-so-friendly history of resisting closed source software (which, in my mind, makes their motives suspect).

One of the important ideas that I think this project also promotes is that Microsoft is a very profitable company that puts money before people, and it highlights ICE as a particularly dreadful real-world example of this. This project puts a certain pressure on Microsoft as well as other organizations to not support separating innocent children from their families, and so ongoing long-term support of this resistance needs to be open and continuous because those children need to be reunited with their families immediately instead of being left in jail cells and treated like criminals that they most obviously are not.

This project is not just about moving away from GitHub to send a message to Microsoft, it's also about a much more important issue of the human rights of thousands of innocent children who have unfairly, unjustly, and forcibly been removed from their families.

[ghost]

Really think this should be dropped. It hasn't had a scrap of activity for a while.

@selfagency People have lost interest, and it's time to be honest.

[selfagency]

It hasn't had a scrap of activity because a) I rarely come to GitHub anymore because I made good on my commitment to leave; b) I was banned from Twitter for standing up to white supremacists so I can no longer organize around the petition within my network; c) no one else has taken it upon themselves to reach out to and organize others. The only thing there is to be honest about is the fact that GitHub has become as ubiquitous as Google and Facebook and so much of the development world has come to depend on it, that leaving can be detrimental to one's advancement as a developer. This is a very bad thing and demonstrates the dangers of centralization and walled gardens which is now doubly the case for GitHub with its acquisition by Microsoft. Why you think you have any place to tell me to "drop" a principled stance against Microsoft for its participation in our racist immigration regime is beyond me but hey, go off. I also pulled everything I had off of Amazon Web Services. That I have greater conviction and am more willing to suffer the risks and consequences of leaving GitHub and others aren't is on them, not me nor this petition. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[selfagency]

Oh, and there's going to be a feature story on this petition in the California Sunday Magazine next month. Because people have lost interest. 🙄