FaceDeer

Actually, you can do exactly that. Fork them.

You can’t force the people who are using Github to follow you, of course. But that’s every individual’s choice.

You think Microsoft is the only “evil corporation” among these? That’s very naive. Any hosting service will deplatform users when they can see a profit to be made from doing so.

“We” as in the conversation as a whole. You joined an ongoing thread.

So we’ve moved from “GitHub is not open source” to “GitHub has some support software for peripheral features that is not open-source?” I’m definitely failing to see the rant-worthiness of it at this point. It’s certainly not monopolistic, platforms like GitLab and Bitbucket also provide these features. And I’d bet that some of them have their own proprietary software to support these things too.

There’s quite a series of leaps of logic here.

Because Google (not Microsoft) released a project under the BSD license (an open source license) but “everyone on Lemmy” doesn’t think it’s open source, therefore a hosting site owned by Microsoft (not Google) is not “open source.”

I’m not even sure what is meant by GitHub being “open source.” It’s a hosting provider, not an actual piece of software. The site itself doesn’t have a source license. The individual repositories can have licenses, which can be whatever the user who created the repository sets it to be - including open source licenses. Do you mean GitHub Desktop? Microsoft released that under the MIT license. And you don’t need GitHub Desktop to use GitHub anyway.

Oh, that’s what you meant. How do you contribute to a project on any git host if that git host won’t let you? In what way is GitHub any different from that?

You’re not “pretty fucked”. Just use one of the many other git hosts out there. OP himself lists some of them in his rant.

Microsoft has developed many open-source projects. The view of Microsoft as some kind of anti-open-source crusader is 20 years out of date.

All of those issues would arise if you wanted to migrate an established project to Github as well.

This isn’t even a problem with historical awareness, OP knows that Github isn’t a monopoly. They listed off a bunch of alternatives in their rant. I’m really not sure what they were even complaining about.

Content warning: this is a rant from a teenager who has strong opinions.

Okay…

However, it holds a monopoly on software.

You don’t know what a “monopoly” is.

they could just go “Boop! You’re gone!” and there’s nothing I could do about it other than move forges.

Yeah, nothing you could do about it, other than moving to one of the many other git hosts. Monopoly!

And then after listing off a whole bunch of alternative git hosts…

Centralization is not bad by itself but it’s bad when there’s no other option. There just needs to be ways to contribute to code without having to use Github.

You have plenty of ways to do that, and you know that because you just listed them. Github is not a monopoly.

Also, I don’t see the concept of open source mentioned at any point in this rant.

The movie “Bender’s Big Score” recontextualized Jurassic Bark and made it much nicer.

No, I said things about AI and open source. I raised open source as part of my counter to your argument that this is “concentrating wealth.”

Here, I’ll explain in detail what’s going on.

In response to an article about Reddit licensing your content to AI trainers, capt_wolf said “it’s time to purge your account.” Presumably as a way to stop that from happening. I asked why that was a bad thing, specifically how it harmed us in any meaningful way. You came in at that point and suggested:

• It’s a scheme to further concentrate wealth
• It harms everyone but the 0.1%.

I raised open source as a counter to the “wealth concentration” point, because open source does the opposite - it spreads the wealth to any who want it. It puts these resources into the commons.

I also pointed out that I personally benefit from AI tools, so it does the opposite of harming me. As I am not part of the 0.1%, that’s a counter to your second point.

I was directly addressing all of the points you raised.

You said it concentrates wealth, but open source does the opposite of that - it allows small companies and individuals to earn money using the technology without having to pay for its use.

You said it “harms everyone but the 0.1%.” I am benefited by it, not harmed, and I am very much not part of the 0.1%.

My original question remains unanswered. “It may help someone I don’t like because they are richer than me” is a pretty weak concept of “harm.”

I draw plenty of benefit from AI tools. There are open source models that anyone can run.

Why? How does it harm you in any meaningful way?

If you’re talking about Glaze or Nightshade, those techniques are not proven to be particularly effective. Lots of people want them to work but that doesn’t make it so.

I’m sure there’ll be some little forked version of Firefox without the features you can’t abide simply turning off in the settings.

Are you sure it’s not just Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Once you’re primed to notice a particular thing you’ll notice it more often, even if it was around equally much beforehand.