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Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects (drewdevault.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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[–] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (14 children)

from the article:

In short, using Discord for your free software/open source (FOSS) software project is a very bad idea. Free software matters — that’s why you’re writing it, after all. Using Discord partitions your community on either side of a walled garden, with one side that’s willing to use the proprietary Discord client, and one side that isn’t. It sets up users who are passionate about free software — i.e. your most passionate contributors or potential contributors — as second-class citizens.

Interesting to do a “s/Discord/Github/” replace on the above. Same situation yet hardly anyone gives a shit.

So yes, Drew DeVault is right. But he overestimates people’s commitment to free world digital rights principles and consistency thereof.

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  • [+] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    There is of course a walled garden for participation and it is an issue

    And if you insist on using Microsoft GitHub, this contribution concern can be mitigated by offering an alternative mirror or a mailing list/email address to send patches. One way to help prevent lock-in would be to use MS GitHub’s repository settings & straight-up disable non-portable features like “Discussions”, “Sponsors” & maybe even the “Issues” tracker favoring a third-party option or the issue tracker of the mirror along with disabling “Actions” choosing a third-party CI option or the CI that comes with the mirror (or require checks ran locally before pushing).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Git itself is not proprietary so all the projects can survive without GitHub if the need arises. Ad

    You’re neglecting the exclusion that’s inherent in Github when the need to bounce does NOT arise.

    Also worth adding that during the war in Gaza some of us boycott Israel. Which implies boycotting Microsoft.

    Additionally, you don’t need an account to view the repository or its discussions.

    Advocating read-only access is comparable to endorsing only freedom 1 and 2, not freedom 0 or 4. Which is precisely what I’m talking about: FOSS projects that discard digital rights and partake in digital exclusion for some convenience frills.

    There is of course a walled garden for participation and it is an issue, however it doesn’t compare to discord, which is much, much worse.

    Bug trackers have more of a monopoly on bug reports than discord has on discussions. There are countless decentralized discussions about free software all over the place -- threadiverse, probably facebook, ad hoc phpbb forums, IRC, usenet, mastodon, mailing lists, conferences like FOSDEM … and rightfully so. Discussions don’t need the centralization that bug trackers do. General discussions also do not have the degree of importance to QA that bug tracking does.

    Case in point, when bugs are reported outside of Github, they don’t get noticed by developers and triaged.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    There's not really much point in using a self hosted gitea or codeberg or sourcehut if you want the barrier of entry to be as low as possible for potential contributors. Maybe if some larger projects made the move. But GitHub has more features (like discussions), provides better hosting and ease of use. The focus of any open source project should be on development of the software, not the software which supports its development.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There’s not really much point in using a self hosted gitea or codeberg or sourcehut if you want the barrier of entry to be as low as possible for potential contributors.

    Of course there is.

    But GitHub has more features (like discussions), provides better hosting and ease of use.

    Bingo. Prioritizing convenience features above digital rights principles is exactly why Github’s walled garden dominates over forges that have a lower barrier of entry.

    The focus of any open source project should be on development of the software, not the software which supports its development.

    Again, people to setting aside their principles is exactly what I’m talking about.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    It's not so much a case of people setting aside their principles, it's more like people considering stability, potential contributions and convenience alongside their principles.

    Give Codeberg a few more years of stability and people might re-evaluate choosing GitHub. The controversy around Gitea forming a company and the fragmentation of development unsettles that trust.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Same situation yet hardly anyone gives a shit.

    I give a shit. Open source contributions shouldn’t require proprietary services if open alternatives (even if it requires more than a single service) suffice. In the case of Git forges, the alternatives are great--& the more you buy into the Microsoft GitHub-specific features the harder it will be to migrate which will lead to lock-in.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I give a shit.

    There are not enough of you. Evidenced by ~95%+ of noteworthy FOSS projects being jailed in Github’s walled garden.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    And certain projects I don’t deem it worth my time to contribute due to this fact. The unfortunate issue with that is usually there isn’t a good way to communicate that to the maintainers when they lock all coms to Microsoft GitHub & Slack/Discord. There are certain projects I have skipped on trying based on this too as to me it becomes an indicator of poor decision-making trying to capture hype/marketing rather than fostering goodwill of the free/ethical software movements. At least on Lemmy you get an upvote instead of harassed by asking for an open communication and/or contribution option 😅

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