7 ms·

Questions for whoever was involved with this decision or might know: Why was Sourcehut chosen? Any specific appealing features? Any alternatives considered?

remram 4y ago
The fact that it's not intended to be a free service (only free during alpha [1]) is a non-starter. Asking people to change their workflow is bad enough, asking them to stop getting it for free is a joke. [1]: https://sourcehut.org/pricing/ https://sourcehut.org/pricing/
- ddevault 4y ago
  If you don't pay, someone else will. GitHub is funded by private investors demanding a return, which incentivizes behavior like repurposing your code to facilitate mass license infringement. SourceHut is entirely funded by its users and is therefore only accountable to their needs. SourceHut's fees are very cheap ($2/mo) and users who cannot pay for any reason are offered free service. If you will only use services that you don't need to pay for, that's your choice, but you should respect the choices of others who consider these incentives and their outcomes more important.
  - remram 4y ago
    This is the tragedy of the commons all over again, and all of us in the open source space know very well how that goes. I agree with you that the world where open source code is not hosted by private companies is a better one. However if our plan is to rely on the already-insufficiently-supported/rewarded maintainers changing their workflow, changing tools, and paying their own money (however low), we won't get there. Just like I think a world where all important software is open source is a better one. To get there, we just need corporations to give maintainers some of their own money. We are not getting there.
    - ddevault 4y ago
      We think the workflow is better, and no one was born knowing how to use GitHub, either. SourceHut is very affordable and the price is well worth the cost. If you want FOSS to be sustainable, FOSS platforms have to be sustainable, too. SourceHut is a corporation that donates to FOSS projects, by the way. We sponsor many projects and we're planning on building more tools to get maintainers paid for their work.
      - remram 4y ago
        Again, I am not saying this isn't the right way or that you are doing anything wrong. I just think that if we are asking people giving away their code for free to do a migration and learn another tool for the greater good, for free, and before that they also have to put in their credit card number and pay their own money... people won't do that, righteous as it may be. A call for action is all the more effective if that action is easy. The Software Freedom Conservancy's call has a lot of background but if the proposed action is "host it yourself" or "pay money for SourceHut", I worry that we will not move forward.
        Aeolun 4y ago
        > people won't do that, righteous as it may be On the contrary, it means only people that really want to be on Sourcehut will do so. Which is probably for the best, certainly while it’s still in an alpha state. Slow and steady wins the race.
        remram 4y ago
        Again, not talking about SourceHut but the give-up-GitHub movement. Only having a few committed users join SourceHut is great for SourceHut. Having only a few committed users leave GitHub is not great for GiveUpGitHub.
        xigoi 4y ago
        The others can go to Codeberg, Notabug, etc.
  - LegionMammal978 4y ago
    If a user stops paying (excepting free service for those unable to pay), will their repositories be deleted? My main concern is link rot: if a project was created on GitHub in 2012, links to it will almost certainly point to the same code today, even if the owner has long forgotten about it, so long as they haven't actively deleted their account. I've found that the same is rarely true for bespoke self-hosted Git servers. Many disappear within 3 years or less, without any redirects to a new location; I've had to copy many of these repos to my GitHub account from a local copy. So how worried do I need to be about the longevity of sr.ht links?
    - ddevault 4y ago
      We will place your account into a read-only mode following a grace period if you don't pay up. I hate link rot and I have no intention of contributing to it with SourceHut.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Don’t you lose more transaction fees on $2 month than you actually receive from it?
    - ddevault 4y ago
      No. Our transaction fees are 2.9% + 30c, the standard rate for Stripe. So we make $1.64 from the $2/mo plan.

remram 4y ago

The fact that it's not intended to be a free service (only free during alpha [1]) is a non-starter. Asking people to change their workflow is bad enough, asking them to stop getting it for free is a joke. [1]: https://sourcehut.org/pricing/ https://sourcehut.org/pricing/

ddevault 4y ago
If you don't pay, someone else will. GitHub is funded by private investors demanding a return, which incentivizes behavior like repurposing your code to facilitate mass license infringement. SourceHut is entirely funded by its users and is therefore only accountable to their needs. SourceHut's fees are very cheap ($2/mo) and users who cannot pay for any reason are offered free service. If you will only use services that you don't need to pay for, that's your choice, but you should respect the choices of others who consider these incentives and their outcomes more important.
- remram 4y ago
  This is the tragedy of the commons all over again, and all of us in the open source space know very well how that goes. I agree with you that the world where open source code is not hosted by private companies is a better one. However if our plan is to rely on the already-insufficiently-supported/rewarded maintainers changing their workflow, changing tools, and paying their own money (however low), we won't get there. Just like I think a world where all important software is open source is a better one. To get there, we just need corporations to give maintainers some of their own money. We are not getting there.
  - ddevault 4y ago
    We think the workflow is better, and no one was born knowing how to use GitHub, either. SourceHut is very affordable and the price is well worth the cost. If you want FOSS to be sustainable, FOSS platforms have to be sustainable, too. SourceHut is a corporation that donates to FOSS projects, by the way. We sponsor many projects and we're planning on building more tools to get maintainers paid for their work.
    - remram 4y ago
      Again, I am not saying this isn't the right way or that you are doing anything wrong. I just think that if we are asking people giving away their code for free to do a migration and learn another tool for the greater good, for free, and before that they also have to put in their credit card number and pay their own money... people won't do that, righteous as it may be. A call for action is all the more effective if that action is easy. The Software Freedom Conservancy's call has a lot of background but if the proposed action is "host it yourself" or "pay money for SourceHut", I worry that we will not move forward.
      - Aeolun 4y ago
        > people won't do that, righteous as it may be On the contrary, it means only people that really want to be on Sourcehut will do so. Which is probably for the best, certainly while it’s still in an alpha state. Slow and steady wins the race.
        remram 4y ago
        Again, not talking about SourceHut but the give-up-GitHub movement. Only having a few committed users join SourceHut is great for SourceHut. Having only a few committed users leave GitHub is not great for GiveUpGitHub.
        xigoi 4y ago
        The others can go to Codeberg, Notabug, etc.
- LegionMammal978 4y ago
  If a user stops paying (excepting free service for those unable to pay), will their repositories be deleted? My main concern is link rot: if a project was created on GitHub in 2012, links to it will almost certainly point to the same code today, even if the owner has long forgotten about it, so long as they haven't actively deleted their account. I've found that the same is rarely true for bespoke self-hosted Git servers. Many disappear within 3 years or less, without any redirects to a new location; I've had to copy many of these repos to my GitHub account from a local copy. So how worried do I need to be about the longevity of sr.ht links?
  - ddevault 4y ago
    We will place your account into a read-only mode following a grace period if you don't pay up. I hate link rot and I have no intention of contributing to it with SourceHut.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Don’t you lose more transaction fees on $2 month than you actually receive from it?
  - ddevault 4y ago
    No. Our transaction fees are 2.9% + 30c, the standard rate for Stripe. So we make $1.64 from the $2/mo plan.