@Karneolius @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz long-form response to the various threads of discussion ongoing here https://sr.ht/SrVd.txt
Conversation
Notices
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 13:58:40 UTC Drew DeVault -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:01:58 UTC Drew DeVault @Karneolius @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz derp, forgot the links
[0] https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/02/Email-driven-git.html
[1] https://dpc.pw/blog/2017/08/youre-using-git-wrong/ -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:20:55 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz anyway, where were we? Oh yes, replacing GH with a federated alternative.
1) I have used CLI Git. It's a great mountain bike, but it doesn't replace a high-speed train (GH), because even with the email-based functionality, it lacks the *many* other tools that make GH or #GitLab useful; issues, wiki, etc etc -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:21:19 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz right, but I propose putting these things into git.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:22:10 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz or even just providing useful data export tools would be good. I don't think ActivityPub adds enough value to justify the overhead and complexity-add.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:25:02 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz 2) your new tool sounds great, and I'll definitely check it out. But it doesn't build in everything that a standard code forge builds in, as GH and GL do, it is not an adequate replacement for them for most of their users. The evidence for this is that despite projects like Linux working just fine with Git+email+websites for years, most projects continue to use GH, or switch to GL. For similar reasons, IRC+email+websites does not lure most users away from #Slack.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:26:29 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz can you expand on
> putting these things into git
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:27:47 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz
>most projects
>most users[citation needed]
Perhaps *new* projects tend to appear on these platforms. However, most projects that use git+email+etc tend to be perfectly happy doing so. I think the few that switch do so because a tool like sr.ht doesn't exist.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:28:01 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz git is a generic distributed object store on top of which a version control system has been built.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:31:36 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz 3) GH's use case is not limited to software. I was part of a consultation for official government policy in #NZ (#NZGOAL Software Edition) that used GH to draft policy documents. In another case, GH was used to draft a CC-licensed text book. It's a collaborative editing platform that can be used to write manuals, books, anything made up of text. Most of the people working on these things are not engineers and will never need advanced software engineering tools.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:32:10 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz right, they're not in my target audience.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:34:43 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz oh, and I would say that git's primary use case is software in practice. I've never denied that non-software projects use git
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:35:16 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz look you can deny the obvious if you like, but I don't see how it helps us. It's clear that a huge number of people and peer production projects use GH and Slack, you've complained about this in your own blog posts! I see no evidence that number is dropping (yet), nor evidence of a switch to git+email+website, much a I would be thrilled by that. But as for projects migrating to GL:
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/List_of_Community-Hosted_GitLab_Instances -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:37:23 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz what would be a better back-end than Git for non-software collaborative editing tools to use? I'm genuinely interested as I've been trying to boostrap a Git-based platform for policy development
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/gitocracy -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:38:09 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I think you misread what I said. There are many projects who use GH/etc, but there are also many that don't, *especially* if we apply some kind of filter on project scale (and projects of scale are my primary target audience).
Also, I've personally been spoken to by several projects interested in moving from GH to sr.ht as it matures, including some important low-level projects which form the foundation of our technological empire. -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:38:50 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I'm not suggesting that git is not suitable for these use-cases. More like sr.ht isn't
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:39:04 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz right, they're in #GitPub's target audience, which is why it is needed, despite the fact that you and other CLI-based software engineers don't need it. Yes?
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:40:26 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I think we're talking across two different
and loosely interconnected discussion forks here. I don't think ActivityPub is useful for git over something like GH/GL/etc simply because the complexity-add does not justify the value-add if the platform you use has suitable data export tools or puts its data in git objects. -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:41:47 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz "projects of scale" is big projects, yes? Like GNOME? or VideoLAN? Both now on GL
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Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:41:48 UTC Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ @strypey @Michcioperz @Wolf480pl @sir
Microsoft havn't really got going yet.
Gitlab.com will go the same way, except maybe with Google as the buyer. -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:42:31 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz both of those projects are in the target audience, but it's not like I expect to secure literally all projects in my target audience. They're also projects with real needs today and sr.ht is a project that solves problems tomorrow
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:44:52 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz fair enough ;)
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:45:55 UTC Strypey @bob probably worth reading the whole thread before you weight in on this one, or at least read:
https://sr.ht/SrVd.txt -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:47:38 UTC Strypey @bob
> Gitlab.com will go the same way, except maybe with Google as the buyer.1) I'm not sure what based that on, but I'm intrigued to know more
2) If that happened, everyone running #GitLab instances could club together to fork the software and carry on, or even reimplement the same UI on something that isn't Ruby-on-Snails ;)
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:52:10 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz ok, so how would you propose federating multiple instance of GL etc to create a federated replacement for GH? If your answer is that a federated GH isn't needed, that's just like saying the replacement for #Slack is IRC. In both cases, I disagree, and it's something we're unlikely to change each other's minds about.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 14:52:48 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz why does GL need to be federated? Let's step back and examine the value-add before we argue this any further
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Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:04:26 UTC Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ @strypey Gitlab is in a better situation for the reason you cite.
Gitlab.com is also backed by venture capital. There was a tweet from the guy running it saying that he also wants to exit soon. -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:10:31 UTC Strypey @bob I'm pretty keen to encourage projects to self-host GL, or move to a community-hosted instance, before Microsoft finds some way to lock them into GH even more. For all its flaws, at least everything on GL is a Git repo (AFAIK) and easy to export / import into something else in future. Also its workflow is similar enough to GH to reduce transition pain
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:13:27 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz why do people use GH at all? I have an account on GH, despite constantly railing against its proprietary JS, because of it's network effect. There are many projects there, and with one account, I can make drive-by contributions to any of them, fork any of them, etc. Imagine #Mastodon instances couldn't federate. They'd still be useful, but *much* less useful. Same is true for GL instances at present.
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Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:17:49 UTC Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ @strypey @Michcioperz @Wolf480pl @sir
Those drive-by contributions are going to be harder in future, and I'm sure that would have been part of Microsoft's thinking.
But really Microsoft has done us all a favor, because we need better collaboration tools for making software which don't just depend on something hosted by one company. -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:18:32 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I don't think full blown federation is necessary to solve this problem. OAuth is probably better. GitLab already lets you sign up with accounts on other services, they should just let you sign up with an account on another GitLab instance.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:21:08 UTC Strypey @bob @Michcioperz @Wolf480pl sure, I agree, as you probably expect ;) The discussion @sir and I are having is about precisely what style(s) of software we need to replace GH across a range of user cases (including non-software uses of GH)
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:22:49 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz OK. What about forking a project on one instance, to another instance, and pulling down and merging changes made upstream, and pushing patches upstream?
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:23:16 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I don't think that's useful enough to justify the complexity overhead.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:23:47 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz and sr.ht solves that problem better by relying on the already-federated email system (and this kind of federation between sr.ht instances will be possible, with email as the transport)
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Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:24:01 UTC Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ @strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz
The main things which GH provides are:
* Searchability across a giant number of repos
* Customised searches for particular languages
* Ability to make drive-by contributions. Fork -> edit -> PR.
What's needed is something like that, but federated or p2p. Maybe each repo could be stored in a dat. -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:24:02 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz
Right, so ...
https://pinafore.social/statuses/100328323843786095 -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:24:58 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz this page breaks when I visit, send content as plaintext please
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:26:07 UTC Drew DeVault @bob @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz
>Searchability across a giant number of repos
>Customised searches for particular languageshttps://searchcode.com/ does it better
>Ability to make drive-by contributions. Fork -> edit -> PR.
You mean "register for account -> fork -> edit -> PR". Email does it better
Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ likes this. -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:27:47 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz this is one of the killer features of GH for many developers. I can fork a dependency, maintain my own version for my own needs, while still keeping up-to-date with upstream improvements, and contribute my bug fixes so the original creator isn't left patching a widely used library by themselves and feeling unloved.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:28:52 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz what? How is this a GitHub feature? This is just a git feature
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:30:22 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz Ideally, in a federated system, I'd be able to mirror their issue tracker on my fork, rather than having two, or having to go back to their instance every time I want to post or comment on issues. Yes, I can do that by email, but it's less hassle in a unified UI, and how do people who find my fork but don't know about the original find and contribute to the issue tracking?
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:32:56 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I don't know much about how OAuth works. If I run an instance, do I need to maintain a list of sites that are allowed to authenticate on my site using OAuth? Or can GL just roll out OAuth on a new release of their CE, and once I update to it, anyone with an account on an instance running that version or newer can login to my instance?
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:33:15 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz also, isn't OAuth one of the protocols used in AP?
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:34:29 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz the details are nebulous but I am suggesting building out a system where the latter works.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:34:35 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I don't think so, no
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:34:46 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz you sound like a really annoying fork to work with
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:35:27 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz perhaps Not sure how to answer this. Perhaps Git can do this and I don't know how. I've only learned the basic Git functions in the #LearnEnough tutorial. Perhaps you don't understand what I mean because you don't use GH?
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:35:58 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz pushing the "fork" button on GitHub is no different from just pushing the code to a new repo on any repository hosting provider.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:36:09 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz and I use GH a lot
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:37:15 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz you should read this article
https://dpc.pw/blog/2017/08/youre-using-git-wrong/
Git is *distributed*
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LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:38:34 UTC LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @bob Or in a #SQLite db? It isn't #git, #GitHub, or #GitLab, but #Fossil is worth a look for most projects. -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:39:08 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz OK, then let me try this as a helpdesk request. how do I pull a repo from one instance of GL to another instance of GL, and push changes back to the GL where the original lives in case the maintainer wants to merge them? Using the web interface, because I'm just learning, and I haven't got my head around all the SSH, key exchange, setting head etc etc you need to grok to do it on the command line
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:40:29 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz the problem is that git doesn't inherently have a concept of the "original" repo. If you clone a repo, run `git remote add foobar git@foobar.com/foobar`, then `git push foobar master`, it will push the master branch to a new location and now it'll exist in two places. The maintainer of the "original" doesn't have to be involved in this transaction. A "fork" is a social concept more so than an engineering one
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:40:52 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I don't know how you'd do that with GL. I would do that on sr.ht by sending my changes via email to the other sr.ht instance's mailing list.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:41:25 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz at this point "your" sr.ht instance is barely involved, I'll provide tools for you to send it through "your" instance's web UI, but you can do the same thing with a single `git send-email` command from your local repository
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:42:02 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz also, note that the git repo you see on the web is only trivially different from the one you have local (the key difference being git init --bare, it doesn't have a working copy of the tree). You can run a web interface for your local git repo, too.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:44:47 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I know that. I'm not sure how else to explain this, so please don't take it personally, but I think the problem here is we're thinking in totally different conceptual primitives. Yours is GH as a web icing on a Git cake, which is a totally natural way for an engineer to think. Mine is Git as a database for a web UI for collaborative editing, which is a natural way for a #UX designer to think. Consequently we are talking past each other a lot ;)
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:45:42 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz that seems like a fair characterization of the difference between our viewpoints
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:46:02 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz however
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:46:40 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz if we're talking about using ActivityPub for git we're clearly getting down to the nuts and bolts of engineering choices. Email is a superior tool for federating git than ActivityPub
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:47:46 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz it doesn't matter how federated email is at the protocol or CLI level, if all the available GUIs only allow email between users on the same server. It doesn't matte how federated AP is at the protocol or CLI leve in all the avaiable GUIs only allow following, @mentioning etc between users on the same server. That's the situation we are in with GH and GL. That's why GH continues to be popular with open source folks, despite being proprietary. Does this make sense?
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:48:14 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz if the communication stays in one server it is, by definition, not federated.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:49:48 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz like I said, if you can propose a way to use only Git+email (maybe + OAuth) to implement a fully-featured federated replacement for GH, compatible with existing Git-based code forges like GL, you have invented a better mouse trap, and I will give you a big hug if I ever meet you (unless you don't want me to ;)
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:50:27 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz it's called sr.ht...
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:50:36 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz precisely!
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:51:31 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz sorry for all the typos, you can tell I'm getting over-excited ;)
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:55:03 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz *sigh* as we've already discussed, sr.ht, cools as it, does not provide all the features, nor cover all the use cases, implied in the list of requirements to which you're replying. The most obvious one being
> compatible with existing Git-based code forges like GL -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:55:31 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz the problem is that existing Git-based code forges like GL are incompatible with git.
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Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:55:47 UTC Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ @sir @Michcioperz @Wolf480pl @strypey
Having to register on many separate servers is tedious, so something like federation or Zot would make more sense. Or something like OpenID or whatever Solid uses might be another way to do it. -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:56:14 UTC Drew DeVault @bob @Michcioperz @Wolf480pl @strypey I was pointing at an OpenID solution being much simpler than federation in this case
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:56:25 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz
You are proposing a web app as a substitute for a protocol (well.. a standardized set of them). It don't work. It's like proposing Thunderbird as an alternative for AP. Yes, it does some of things AP does ... kinda ... but ... -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 15:59:03 UTC Strypey @sir @bob @Michcioperz @Wolf480pl simpler yes. Covers all the user requirements? No. "IRC can replace Slack!" No. It really can't. Entirely new IRC clients that don't yet exist, all running *all* the IRC protocol extensions (plus some new ones) yeah maybe. Maybe we could re-implement the #fediverse on top of email too. But why? There are modern solutions that do the job better
https://mobisocial.stanford.edu/papers/mrprivacy.pdf -
Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:03:00 UTC Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅ @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz @sir
It's a bit like the xmpp situation. IRC is still a real alternative, but only if the server is set up *just right* so that it supports all the features you'd expect. I bet that IRC will still work with ultra slow internet connections too. -
Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:09:23 UTC Strypey @bob @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz @sir
> I bet that IRC will still work with ultra slow internet connections too.That is a valid #UX concern, and if #IRC does work better with dial-up or patchy mobile than #XMPP or #Matrix in the same UI, that's a good argument for using IRC. What it's not is a convincing argument to use a 1990s IRC UI as a replacement for #Slack, instead of one of the many free code apps with a more #Slack-a-like UX
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/slacking-off -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:10:09 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @bob @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz have you seen e.g. https://thelounge.chat/
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:15:13 UTC Strypey @sir @bob @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz that looks useful, I'll check out the demo. But be aware that "install from npm" is a huge barrier. I'm a confident #GNU + #Linux user with very basic coding and Git skills and I have no idea how to do that. That's a packaging issue, not a comment on the feature-set or quality of the UI (which I haven't seen yet), but it's worth being aware of it when you're proposing tools for mainstream use
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:18:15 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @bob @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz it can be hosted, similar to how most people use mastodon
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:21:01 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz one more thing, I would be very interested to see you expand on this in long form, in fact on anything we've discussed today, so I can share a link with the #GitPub folks
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:25:58 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I doubt they want to hear what I have to say. The entire project is dead-set on using ActivityPub I'm sure, it's even in the name.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:28:12 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I also love that GitPub is on GitHub, classic
sr.ht has never not been hosted on sr.ht
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:29:54 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz well, there may still be value in talking about GitPub in long form, I'll probably write a blog post at some point.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:43:01 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz
This is precisely because of the problem #GitPub is trying to solve. Where should it be hosted? On GitLab.com? On a GL instance? Which one? Once GitPub (or something like it) exists, it won't matter, because anyone will be able to interact with it as if its on their own home instance (self-hosted, community-hosted, whatever). -
Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:44:27 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I'm not a fan of design-by-committe. Someone should take the reins, bang out a proof-of-concept, and then build a community.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:47:29 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz GitPub is a working title coz everything has to be called something. AP seemed like the obvious thing to use because of network effect. If there are good arguments for other protocol choices that achieve the same #UX more efficiently (not just the same *output*, the same effortless click-and-go workflow), why not make them? Even if the GitPub drafters ignore you (and that's far from certain), others may find it useful.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:48:03 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz aight, I'll make a pitch. Fair enough.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:48:27 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz I see. Now I understand why you are not involved in standards development.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:49:05 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz standards document existing software so new software can interop with it, it has _never_ worked the other way around
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:49:59 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz a standard without an implementation is useless because a standard's effectiveness and approach has to be proven by its implementation
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:53:29 UTC Strypey @sir @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz network standards, unlike bridges, are usually developed by a representative sample of the people whose software will implement the standard. Otherwise you get #XKCD #927. This is a critical difference between developing back-ends, and designing user-facing stuff, and it's a difference I find back-end engineers are seldom able to grasp no matter how much effort anyone puts into trying to explain it.
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Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 16:55:50 UTC Drew DeVault @strypey @Wolf480pl @Michcioperz what do frontend engineers know about network protocols, then, eh?
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 17:25:27 UTC Strypey @bob the repo format is not the problem. Normal Git commands could be used by the back-end. What's needed is a simple way of handshaking between the two instances; authenticating, and all the other setting up required for Git commands to work across webservers, so it all happens in the background, and all the user has to do is the same thing they'd do if only one instance was involved.
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 06-Jul-2018 17:26:34 UTC Strypey @bob Drew is so focused on Git+email solutions he can't see the forest for the trees. It's like we're trying to describe a CMS to him, and he keeps saying "but why don't you just use a text editor and an FTP client?"
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