this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Radicle: Open-Source, Peer-to-Peer, GitHub Alternative
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Serious question: What is the point?

Just push into half a dozen mirrors and you are pretty censorship resident without the crypto voodoo put on top of git.

Github has one huge value: Discoverability of a project. This is even worse than hiding your project in one of the smaller forges... nobody can remember the mess of letters you need for this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Do you think it's good that the majority of code is hosted on a proprietary service? Do you think it's good that that service is centralised? Do you think it's good that if you want to provide an alternative to that service, you create another island with a different ecosystem that cannot communicate with the other island?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Git is a DISTRIBUTED version control repo. You can fork to different services from Github. https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-forks-and-upstreams

And Github has a REALLY extensive API to interact with from other servers too (even issues and such).

Peer to Peer stuff sounds awesome, except it's only as reliable as the nodes. And, Github is hosted on many servers, with a huge amount of redundancy. It's basically a privatised P2P system where each server is reliable, instead of a bunch of unreliable public hosts which might not have backing from a large corporation.

And whilst we're talking about reliability, even centralised stuff like Sourceforge is hosting code from 20 years ago. Whereas, it is difficult to load a torrent from 2 years ago lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

OK, track your issues in git with access from others on a web interface. Let somebody make a merge request to your project on github from gitlab, gitea, or straight up from your local git repo without a github account.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

No, I would prefer a world where not everything is concentrated on github, but that is the world we have to work with:-)

But how does this address any of the problems you brought up?

Do you think a project will be more discoverable when you say: "Clone foo/bar from github" or when you say "install this strange crypto-BS, then clone rad:xyhdhsjsjshhhfuejthhh just like you normally would"?

Apart from discoverability you get a known workflow for contributors, a CI and a bug tracker. Coincidently those make it hard for projects to switch away from github... how does this address any of that? "Use this workflow, which is even wierder than any of the other github alternatives!" and "just set up a server yourself"?

Sorry, this is just yet another crypto-bro solution in search of a problem. Technically interesting, I'm give you that, but useless.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No, I would prefer a world where not everything is concentrated on github, but that is the world we have to work with:-)

Then how do you not see the point of a distributed sourceforge?

But how does this address any of the problems you brought up?

Have you read the webpage? radicle is opensource, it's distributed and thus many interconnected islands, just like the fediverse. Why are you on the fediverse and not on reddit?

Do you think a project will be more discoverable when you say: “Clone foo/bar from github” or when you say “install this strange crypto-BS, then clone rad:xyhdhsjsjshhhfuejthhh just like you normally would”?

Again, have you even opened the webpage?

Sorry, this is just yet another crypto-bro solution in search of a problem.

So github is not a problem? And regarding crypto, show me where in the code it forces you to use crypto. Show me the rad command that inhibits you from doing a normal git operation by bringing up crypto.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Then how do you not see the point of a distributed sourceforge?

But this is no forge, it is just a git repo.

Again, have you even opened the webpage?

Yeap, I even put a repo into it. That's why I am so certain that it is useless.

Hosting a git repo is not a problem. Having an discoverable forge is. And this does not help with that in any way.

So github is not a problem?

Something can not be a solution independent of whether or not something else is another problem or not.

And regarding crypto, show me where in the code it forces you to use crypto. Show me the rad command that inhibits you from doing a normal git operation by bringing up crypto.

There is lots of needless crypto(graphy) going on all over the place. It is entirely useless for code hosting in a git repo.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

@onlinepersona @hunger have you tried hosting your own git repo? I never thought I'd live to see git, of all things, being considered "proprietary service". Also Hunger suggested using more than one server, which means it's not completely centralized.
There's really no meed for p2p crypto magic here, git just works

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

git is open source. Github as in the repository hosting service is owned by Microsoft, a company for whom the phrase "for profit" isn't severe enough a description.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

But it couldn't be easier to just set up a second remote, that isn't GitHub with just vanilla Git, if you don't trust Microsoft (Or even fully switching to a different remote). Why is there a need for something else in addition?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if you're making a bad faith argument or genuinely didn't understand I was referencing github.

Also, where is the crypto magic? The website doesn't mention crypto at all...

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also, where is the crypto magic?

The sixth point in the original comment links to the cryptocurrency association.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

So there's nothing in the code about crypto then?

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