this post was submitted on 16 May 2024

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Why FOSS projects are using proprietary, privacy invasive infrastructure? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

126 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.

For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don't we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.

Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.

So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Because most of us want projects with users, and there's a lot more users on GitHub and Discord than Gitea and Matrix

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (3 children)

@OsrsNeedsF2P But that's the problem we need to fix, not the reason to give up. There will be more people on Gitea and Matrix if you try. There is also more people on Reddit and Twitter, yet here we are.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (3 children)

If you try. Have you ever maintained any sort of large FOSS project? Have you ever run infra for FOSS? Even if you control your own DNS, you somehow became your own Domain Name Registrar, you bought the fiber all the way to your internet backbone provider, you are still compromising somewhere. For those of us that actually maintain and run foss projects it’s a massive pain in the ass. There’s nothing to “give up”. It’s all about using your personal resources wisely. I can’t spend time trying to get gitea up and running when I can quite easily use GitHub and lose absolutely zero functionality. And it’s not like any project I put on GitHub is somehow worse off than on gitea, they’ll function exactly the same since I only use MIT licensing.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wish I could upvote you more than once.

It all really comes down to making choices that make the most use of the extremely limited resources (time, money, spoons) you have as a maintainer.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@foosel If that is the case, then how did the choice of using an open-source license even get through? It sounds like you are confusing commercial thinking (we have to get more users, we have to be where the users are, we have to support them, we have to meet the KPIs...) with the open-source. You don't have to do any of those.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You misunderstood me. My reason isn't "get more users". My reason is "my day only has 24h and maintenance itself is a full time job, without adding on hosting, administration, etc for code repository or communication infrastructure".

I have to choose my fights if I don't want to burn out. I've been a full time maintainer for 10 years now, 8 of those self employed.

That being said, I do in fact self host a web forum for my project (which I can only do because I have a volunteer admin taking care of the day to day and a whole ton of mods helping with moderation), and I do have a nightly mirror of everything on the project's GitHub org to my private NAS just in case.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@foosel But why do you feel like you "have to" do those things? Are you paid for it? Are you trying to sell the project? Are you looking for VC funding? Is someone threatening you if you stop fighting those fights? Those are all things from the commercial mindset, or things exploited by Jia Tan. Of course everybody likes when a project is maintained, good quality, free, but that should come from the cooperation and from the freedoms in the license and platform, not from your personal sacrifice

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Welcome to the real world, where open source maintenance should be a lot of things but instead boils down to a whole lot of personal sacrifices by maintainers. I don't like this either, and do what I can to improve it, but that's a slow process. Idealism is nice, but it doesn't help here.

And why do I do this to myself? Because I believe in open source and because I want people to have free access to good tooling. Currently I can afford to do this thanks to crowd funding of my work. I would never accept VC funding.

Kindly stop insinuating that I'm a turbo capitalist corporate drone, it's insulting and absolutely ridiculous.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@foosel So you want to continue sacrificing yourself? Your choice 🤷‍♂️

Now you are back to believing in open-source, so let's stop sending users to walled gardens, shall we?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I don't see this discussion going anywhere given that you are doing your best to misunderstand me, turn my words around on me and just can't move even one step away from your idealism and instead demand that maintainers cater to that as well on top of everything else.

Have a nice day, I'm out, I have a project to maintain and a community to manage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think he's coming from here:

As an developer you create a solution to a problem from yours. You release it under a FOSS license.

Your job is done - You shared your work. The community may find your project useful and builds upon it. Their interest is to get their changes upstream. You have no obligation to help with onboarding and implementing features for others.

So if they are requesting a merge you may reject it since it does not meet your standards. Maybe you have to make your stance clear and create a CONTRIBUTION alongside your code.

With this mindset you wouldn't hang out on a non-indexable platform.

Your project mostlikely is requesting explicit participation. Maybe this is the point in between you guys.

Now go on with the discussion :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Finally a comment with some sense. 100% agree

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago

@foosel Saying that I demand maintainers to cater to my requests can be easily disproven by just looking at my words above where I say the exact opposite. Then who is doing their best to misunderstand and turn words around?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@tyler Also note how you went from "we want projects with users" to "oh it's so hard to provide services to so many users".. at least stick to your argument. One thing is for sure - actively keeping users away from open platforms is not going to increase the users on these open platforms. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Do what you want, I'm just pointing out that you seem to be working against yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

@tyler Also note how you went from “we want projects with users” to “oh it’s so hard to provide services to so many users”… at least stick to your argument. One thing is for sure - actively keeping users away from open platforms is not going to increase the users on these open platforms. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Do what you want, I’m just pointing out that you seem to be working against yourself.

I literally didn't make any of these arguments. You're just setting up several strawmen to attack. And no, I'm not working against myself. Using non-OSS software has nothing to do with 'working against' FOSS software. I can all but guarantee you use non-OSS software every single day which was the actual point I was making and you so conveniently ignored. Whether it's the software that runs the car you drive, or the software for the train you take to work, or the software in your cell phone, there is lots of necessary non-FOSS software out there and you're completely ignoring that any given person's time and energy can only be spent on so much.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@tyler So why are you doing open source anyway, if not for the philosophy? You are completely undermining that by forcing your contributors to stick to proprietary walled gardens. Last time I checked there were hosting providers for both gitea and matrix.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@tyler So why are you doing open source anyway, if not for the philosophy? You are completely undermining that by forcing your contributors to stick to proprietary walled gardens. Last time I checked there were hosting providers for both gitea and matrix.

none of my users have to use any walled gardens. My final artifacts are pushed up to the respective artifactory like npm, maven central, rubygems, pypi, etc. all of which are artifact repositories set up by non-profit foundations that anyone can use. You are talking about being open to contributors, which is an entirely separate thing from users. I'm not forcing anyone to contribute, and no one is forced to use my projects. I can pretty much guarantee I've contributed to more OSS in the past year than you have in a lifetime, and it's going to continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. So you can fuck right off

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

@tyler Did you just break some code of conduct by telling me to F off? For what exactly? Arguing for open source software here on the open source community? Interesting...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Reddit and Twitter aren’t comparable here. I’m not bound to the fediverse just because I post here. I can still use Reddit if I want. I don’t care much if my posts aren’t seen by anybody here either.

Code hosting is a different story. It’s not ideal to host on both Github and Gitea at the same time. It’s a mess to keep track of multiple issue trackers at the same time. If you chose one you’re kind of bound to it, so you better choose the alternative that increases the chances of future success of the project.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You could host on Gitea and mirror to GitHub. Obviously, users may be less inclined to sign up to your Gitea instance, but I hope people being unwilling to register becomes less of an issue once Forgejo (Gitea fork) implements forge federation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Even the issue tracker?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Especially the issue tracker as thats where folks’ thoughts are being recorded. Many issue will come from non-developers—which if you are going to make them create an account somewhere, would you sleep better at night know you aren’t subjecting those wishing to pitch in to the ToS & data collection machine of Microsoft? Microsoft GitHub doesn’t even let you see collapsed comments unless you are autheticated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

You are right but also assume people care about that. Lots of time open sourcing your project is a way to collaborate with others, build a portfolio or just for fun. It's not a statement.