05.15.20
Gemini version available ♊︎Stallman Was Right About GitHub a Long Time Ago
Summary: What Dr. Richard Stallman wrote about GNU projects hosting on (outsourcing to) GitHub way back in 2015
THERE are two types of attitudes towards Microsoft which help the GitHub ‘monopoly’; one sort of insinuates that Microsoft poses no real threat to Free software and the other says that despite this threat there’s “no choice” but to embrace GitHub because “everyone is on there” (network effect).
Here’s what head of the GNU Project said a year after Microsoft had made plans to take over GitHub while ambushing it (perhaps waiting for it to swallow many projects and developers):
From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Please, no GitHub
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2015 16:21:09 -0500GitHub does things that are quite bad for free software and is not interested in changing them. If you want to move off Savannah, please pick some other place.
The reason that attending to user requests for Savannah is slow is that there are not enough volunteers doing it. Would someone like to volunteer to help run Savannah? Can you find someone else who would like to do this?
–
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
In retrospect, as usual, “Stallman Was Right…” █