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.

[ghost]

@selfagency I didn't tell you to drop it. I suggested, which are two very different things. If people haven't lost interest, where's the other issues? I'm getting sick of people like you trying to twist what I'm saying, when you miss the point completely.

If you really want to keep your finger on the pulse, so to speak, on the people that have left since signing, why haven't you opened an issue with a title like Have you quit? (or something similar, maybe a different method), which would assert the usefulness of this petition.

[ghost]

@selfagency I say this because this really does seem to be dying. The people that have the most active repositories to manage (e.g Babel) just don't think it's worth it to convert their repo to a different platform, and I can understand that. You lose stars, watchers, and you have to learn a whole new system when you choose to leave Github. That's not even mentioning people that would have to change (github -> gitlab).com.

I understand why you've opened this, and I, and many others, applaud you, but do you really think people are just going to convert at the flick of a switch? That would break workflows, CIs, issue management, pull requests, history and a lot more, for a service that isn't backed by one of the "big companies". Maybe, instead of just a petition, we could come up with a program that would ease this process slightly?

And this is exactly why we should be using an extension of git for issues/PRs, and not proprietary systems that can't be converted. hub might be a solution for this, but I've never heard of it before, so YMMV.

[selfagency]

If you think it's shitty that people who committed to leaving have not, take it up with them. Hold their feet to the fire instead of giving me grief for that fact that they haven't made good on their word.

[ghost]

@selfagency Could we ask them all for an update, maybe? We need to get shit moving faster than this if we ever want to get this done.

[randolf]

@def14nt I don't think it's reasonable to expect a petition organizer to also write software to ease the transition to a particular alternative. This petition, in my view, has not lost relevance. Although I haven't completely stopped contributing to GitHub-hosted projects, I have reduced my activity in large part because of what this petition highlights (I don't like using certain vendor's products, but there are some instances where this isn't always a realistic option for me).

You mentioned that there are systems that depend on GitHub, and that's certainly a reasonable concern. It's also indicative of a policy decision by some organizations to be reliant on GitHub -- what happens in the event that GitHub, for whatever reason, ceases to operate? Do those organizations have a back-up plan that they can switch to in a timely manner?

If GitHub was fully open-source and free for download (it wasn't, the last time I looked into this), I'm confident that many groups and organizations would set up their own private instances of GitHub just for their own closed-source projects. Some folks may argue that this would be disadvantageous for GitHub, while others may argue the opposite, and many of said groups and organizations would likely want to keep their private GitHub systems up-to-date with the new releases which would certainly speak to maintaining GitHub's relevance.

I see no problem with keeping this petition project open, and keeping it open ensures that more people who share these important concerns can sign it when they happen to encounter it.

[ghost]

@selfagency p.s Maybe you could be a bit less abrasive to newcomers, too? I understand this is important to you, but you constantly throw around the word "trolling" when it's not always applicable.

[selfagency]

This petition has been repeatedly targeted by campaigns on 4chan, Reddit, and elsewhere for defacement and trolling. You'll forgive me if I don't give people who come here to raise objections the benefit of the doubt.

[ghost]

350

[ghost]

I'm starting to see that this petition is losing attention because of these people that have signed up without any intent to leave this platform at all. I really hope this petition doesn't stall, as it was started with a good heart.

One would say it would be wise to contact some of the news sites to give this a bit of a leg up, because it looks (to me) that this petition desperately needs it.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

[randolf]

@def0x099 The fact that people are still signing this petition is, in my opinion, a good thing. For those who can leave this platform, I applaud. For those who can't (e.g., their employer standardized on it and is not interested in finding an alternative), signing the petition is still an important thing to do because it shows that ongoing support persists.

I think that encouraging people to sign the petition is important, as is supporting those who decide to take their business elsewhere. Overall, more support in any degree is always good, be it signatures, people taking their business elsewhere, and media attention.

[jbeard4]

Recent and related news - now Github has signed a $200k contract with ICE: https://mobile.twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1181745056698572802

It seems like now would be a good time to reach out again to those who have signed the petition.

[millsp]

Some of the top signers receive a part of their income from GitHub, through 100ds of repos they maintain... and I hardly see them leaving, which seems quite hypocritical. If one wanted to walk out of here, they'd just do it.

[daemonspudguy]

I signed it, and will move personal stuff to GitLab, but I need this account for other things.

[william-silversmith]

Not sure if I'm ready to sign and leave, but one thing that might be more convincing to me is if there was a trigger upon reaching some threshold of signatures that was large enough that I would be convinced that it might have an effect rather than solely imposing a personal cost. This would also add pressure as the activation threshold nears. It also makes signing feel cheaper and easier as you only have to do something if everyone does it. The trick is setting a threshold large enough to have an effect (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? Some estimate of active users is required.) while setting it low enough that it is achievable within X number of months or years and also finding ways to help people comply once it's reached.