Establish walkout date for leaving Github #237
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I agree that a date should ultimately be set, but I'm waiting to see what happens with the petition from the Microsoft staffers to their CEO before calling it. |
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Please correct me if I am wrong, but to my understanding Satya Nadella has already responded to the petition by Microsoft staffers which you are referring to. Satya is categorically denying Microsoft from any wrongdoing. Is there another petition you are referring to? I've copy and pasted his response below for context.
This quote was taken from a Business Insider article found here |
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FYI, I think July 4th would be a good date to set the deadline considering it's America's Independence Day. 🇺🇸 |
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After Satya's letter, hundreds more Microsoft employees signed the petition. I don't think it's over yet. |
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I think your suggestion of July 4 is a good one. The question now is how do I tell everyone who's signed? |
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I can think of a few ways to achieve this either using the Github API or by doing by it manually. The easiest course of action might be opening a new issue and then using the |
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that's a good idea. |
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The addition of a deadline changes the nature of the document, so I think you'll need to create an explicit opt-in strategy. A couple of ideas, for brainstorming purposes:
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Comrades, is there any status on this? I'm starting to doubt the resolve of the people who are supporting this action against Microsoft. It's time that the people on the list start showing Microsoft this is serious by migrating their projects and deleting their Github accounts. I'm certain if users who signed like @sindresorhus, @jamiebuilds, and @seldo are the first to move than others surely will follow by example. |
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@Marak TL;DR - We should set a leaving date before asking prominent contributors and devs to permanently delete their accounts. Let's not jump the gun. I am very serious, as I'm sure most of us are, about leaving GitHub. I have already migrated my projects over to GitLab in the event that Microsoft does not drop the contract, however, asking prominent contributors and developers like @sindresorhus @jamiebuilds and @seldo to permanently delete their accounts before a resolution has been met is, in my opinion, slightly presumptuous. I agree that a leaving date should be set but as is stands the petition by Microsoft's own employees is not yet over which makes it hard to choose an appropriate date. I would personally focus on setting a deadline after there is an outcome from the Microsoft petition, and then ask people to delete their accounts should a resolution not be reached. |
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@rbstrachan The walkout date would definitely need to be communicated to the people who have signed, but I don't think that we should wait for the internal petition in Microsoft to show results. I'm doubtful that we'll see a public resolution anytime soon. Microsoft has only shown signs that they intend to downplay the ICE contract. I think their plan is to just try to sweep it under the rug until they can secure much larger government contracts. Here are a few reasons I think Microsoft will continue to just try to downplay this:
I think a walkout date will be the most effective if it is supplemented by clear demands. Maybe we could update the README to include the list of demands Microsoft employees included in their open letter:
I like the idea @therobinkim had about adding a section to the README to make the walk-out date opt-in. I think we can make the walkout even more effective if we show solidarity with the internal Microsoft petition by adding their demands to add to the pressure and support the employees fighting against it before there is any public resolution to the internal petition. |
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@edbedbe Well put. From what you say, a walk out date is in order sooner than I thought. I do have one question, though. If Microsoft's own employees' petition is doing little to change the situation, what more could ours do? What quality do we have that Microsoft's own employees don't? Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping this works and I intend to honour my promise. What I'm asking is; what makes our situation so unique? |
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I think the Microsoft employees would probably have more leverage on the company's decision, which is why I think it would be good if we could lend our energy to support their efforts. I thought the list of demands in their open letter was very clear, and it might help them if we used the same language. |
we're not getting payed by microsoft. it's way more easy to walk out if your not depending on a paycheck |
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@rbstrachan It's not about being unique, and in fact the diversity of different petitions is more of an advantage anyway because it shows that more people are concerned about human rights and in different ways (and any observer can discern that the petitions aren't mere copies of one another, but rather that they came to be independently). |
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@edbedbe We should definitely reference their petitions to show support. We should continue with our current linguistic style, and resist changing it because everyone who's signed it already has signed what was written at present. Changing the wording after they've signed it would, technically, require that they sign it again to signify agreement with what would amount to a very different petition if we were to make such a major change. |
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So, do we mark the date yet or meh? |
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FYI— I have gone forward with moving all of my repos to BitBucket. I highly encourage others to begin the process. |
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It appears that there is a link at the top of the BitBucket web site's home page to a guide to importing projects from GitHub (and GitLab) repositories: https://www.bitbucket.org/ |
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Github was founded on 4/10 (10th of April) according to Wikipedia. How about due date being 10/4 (4th October). 🔌 It is enough time to inform all signees about this date. |
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Ping! we need this. if we want to make noice, we need this. |
Informing the signeesAre their any objections against me informing all the signees this weekend that due date is 10/4? CLI for exporting your dataI'm also working on a cli tool for exporting your data as json from Github (plan for release is this weekend 🤞; stay tuned). According to GDPR a company is actually obligated to provide a way for you to export your data that the company has stored about you. But Github seems to not really give respect to their users that much in this regard (whether it can hold up to GDPR is at least questionable). They are calling it "Data Portability Tools" in their privacy policy. But it is a real cheek considering the usability (you must |
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Hey guys, @selfagency |
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Do we have any status on the top five signers of this petition leaving Github? I'm starting to suspect putting these popular user names at the top of the list was more of a publicity stunt and not a serious intention to leave Github. I'd appreciate it if these top users would make their intentions clear or be removed from the list:
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as of today microsoft has completed their acquisition of github. it is time to walk if you haven't already. |
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@selfagency Is anything going to come out of all of this? The people that have signed haven't said a word. I'm starting to question if this is even a good idea. |
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@def14nt there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and you gotta pick your battles. imho, i'd rather not give my business to a company that helps facilitate ethnic cleansing. if microsoft isn't going to stop providing backoffice support to ICE, i'm not going to give microsoft my business. will this make one iota of a difference to microsoft? probably not. will it make me feel better about where i host my software and who i pay to do so? yes. |
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@selfagency You're kind of wrong there. If big projects like Ruby on Rails, Flow, Babel, and Yarn move away, it'll look pretty bad for Github. |
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I also use Windows 10, but give Microsoft no telemetry by disabling the network. Hope it puts a smile on your face 😄 |
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@def14nt I agree, it would have an impact if big projects were to move off of Github, however I can also see why this would be particularly challenging. In the case of big projects with multiple collaborators, they would need to reach a consensus to move development to a different platform. Transferring the code and issues to Gitlab is fairly trivial, but getting people to organize around a different infrastructure is challenging. Nobody wants to lose their Github stars, and nobody wants to create friction for developers. Ultimately, everyone is going to have to follow their own conscience. This is true for individual contributors as well as project organizers. But at least this project asks the question of whether centralizing OSS development around a closed platform, now owned by Microsoft, with all they are doing to support ICE, is a good thing for the OSS community. |
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@jbeard4 Totally agree!
That is why we need a Github clone on the SAFE network. The SAFE network is nothing less than a new internet, fully decentralized and distributed. It has even the possibility to build a complete new economy on the internet - gone are the days of privacy exploitation (some call it advertising)! |
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@janriemer I'll look into this, thanks. For now, I think running a Gitlab instance on Digital Ocean, or using their hosted service at gitlab.com, is a good first step.
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I'm waiting for Microsoft to make their first move to change Github. They're laying low right now, because it seems that acting would be bad for business, because so many are wary of Microsoft as a company, and a large amount of the ones that aren't have a relationship with Microsoft (a job). I can see Microsoft's involvement with Github as a very incremental one, where they tap the prices up more and more, until people retaliate. When that happens, we should advertise this repository and other projects related to leaving the Github platform, as that would give other small projects like GitLab and Gitea a helping hand, and it would be a great means to retaliate, as mentioned above, and it would empower the smaller open source alternatives, so that's two birds with one stone. Additionally, can we actually arrange this leaving date? Is everyone that put their name down actually on board? I understand that migration is difficult, but if it is not available, then send in a pull request with your name revoked from the list. An idea for another online Git service: one where everyone helps, like torrenting or tox. Wonder how you could pull that off... |
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@def14nt You might want to look at git on IPFS. https://medium.com/@alexberegszaszi/mango-git-completely-decentralised-7aef8bcbcfe6 |
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OMG! Is it really down again?! |
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@def14nt I don't think that forcing people to move is going to be helpful in garnering support. After all, a lot of people involved in open source projects do so on a volunteer basis, and may not have time available to make the change happen (at least not immediately). I think it's better to keep promoting this project without a definite commitment expectation (positive encouragement is certainly okay though) because that makes it easier for people, and it also helps to promote awareness in an ongoing fashion. With regard to Microsoft making changes to GitHub, I'm concerned about this too, especially in light of their terrible track record when it comes to quality and security, and their long and not-so-friendly history of resisting closed source software (which, in my mind, makes their motives suspect). One of the important ideas that I think this project also promotes is that Microsoft is a very profitable company that puts money before people, and it highlights ICE as a particularly dreadful real-world example of this. This project puts a certain pressure on Microsoft as well as other organizations to not support separating innocent children from their families, and so ongoing long-term support of this resistance needs to be open and continuous because those children need to be reunited with their families immediately instead of being left in jail cells and treated like criminals that they most obviously are not. This project is not just about moving away from GitHub to send a message to Microsoft, it's also about a much more important issue of the human rights of thousands of innocent children who have unfairly, unjustly, and forcibly been removed from their families. |
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Really think this should be dropped. It hasn't had a scrap of activity for a while. @selfagency People have lost interest, and it's time to be honest. |
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It hasn't had a scrap of activity because a) I rarely come to GitHub anymore because I made good on my commitment to leave; b) I was banned from Twitter for standing up to white supremacists so I can no longer organize around the petition within my network; c) no one else has taken it upon themselves to reach out to and organize others. The only thing there is to be honest about is the fact that GitHub has become as ubiquitous as Google and Facebook and so much of the development world has come to depend on it, that leaving can be detrimental to one's advancement as a developer. This is a very bad thing and demonstrates the dangers of centralization and walled gardens which is now doubly the case for GitHub with its acquisition by Microsoft. Why you think you have any place to tell me to "drop" a principled stance against Microsoft for its participation in our racist immigration regime is beyond me but hey, go off. I also pulled everything I had off of Amazon Web Services. That I have greater conviction and am more willing to suffer the risks and consequences of leaving GitHub and others aren't is on them, not me nor this petition. 🤷🏼♂️ |
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Oh, and there's going to be a feature story on this petition in the California Sunday Magazine next month. Because people have lost interest. 🙄 |
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@selfagency I didn't tell you to drop it. I suggested, which are two very different things. If people haven't lost interest, where's the other issues? I'm getting sick of people like you trying to twist what I'm saying, when you miss the point completely. If you really want to keep your finger on the pulse, so to speak, on the people that have left since signing, why haven't you opened an issue with a title like |
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@selfagency I say this because this really does seem to be dying. The people that have the most active repositories to manage (e.g Babel) just don't think it's worth it to convert their repo to a different platform, and I can understand that. You lose stars, watchers, and you have to learn a whole new system when you choose to leave Github. That's not even mentioning people that would have to change I understand why you've opened this, and I, and many others, applaud you, but do you really think people are just going to convert at the flick of a switch? That would break workflows, CIs, issue management, pull requests, history and a lot more, for a service that isn't backed by one of the "big companies". Maybe, instead of just a petition, we could come up with a program that would ease this process slightly? And this is exactly why we should be using an extension of git for issues/PRs, and not proprietary systems that can't be converted. |
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If you think it's shitty that people who committed to leaving have not, take it up with them. Hold their feet to the fire instead of giving me grief for that fact that they haven't made good on their word. |
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@selfagency Could we ask them all for an update, maybe? We need to get shit moving faster than this if we ever want to get this done. |
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@def14nt I don't think it's reasonable to expect a petition organizer to also write software to ease the transition to a particular alternative. This petition, in my view, has not lost relevance. Although I haven't completely stopped contributing to GitHub-hosted projects, I have reduced my activity in large part because of what this petition highlights (I don't like using certain vendor's products, but there are some instances where this isn't always a realistic option for me). You mentioned that there are systems that depend on GitHub, and that's certainly a reasonable concern. It's also indicative of a policy decision by some organizations to be reliant on GitHub -- what happens in the event that GitHub, for whatever reason, ceases to operate? Do those organizations have a back-up plan that they can switch to in a timely manner? If GitHub was fully open-source and free for download (it wasn't, the last time I looked into this), I'm confident that many groups and organizations would set up their own private instances of GitHub just for their own closed-source projects. Some folks may argue that this would be disadvantageous for GitHub, while others may argue the opposite, and many of said groups and organizations would likely want to keep their private GitHub systems up-to-date with the new releases which would certainly speak to maintaining GitHub's relevance. I see no problem with keeping this petition project open, and keeping it open ensures that more people who share these important concerns can sign it when they happen to encounter it. |
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@selfagency p.s Maybe you could be a bit less abrasive to newcomers, too? I understand this is important to you, but you constantly throw around the word "trolling" when it's not always applicable. |
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This petition has been repeatedly targeted by campaigns on 4chan, Reddit, and elsewhere for defacement and trolling. You'll forgive me if I don't give people who come here to raise objections the benefit of the doubt. |
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I'm starting to see that this petition is losing attention because of these people that have signed up without any intent to leave this platform at all. I really hope this petition doesn't stall, as it was started with a good heart. One would say it would be wise to contact some of the news sites to give this a bit of a leg up, because it looks (to me) that this petition desperately needs it. A rolling stone gathers no moss. |
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@def0x099 The fact that people are still signing this petition is, in my opinion, a good thing. For those who can leave this platform, I applaud. For those who can't (e.g., their employer standardized on it and is not interested in finding an alternative), signing the petition is still an important thing to do because it shows that ongoing support persists. I think that encouraging people to sign the petition is important, as is supporting those who decide to take their business elsewhere. Overall, more support in any degree is always good, be it signatures, people taking their business elsewhere, and media attention. |
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Recent and related news - now Github has signed a $200k contract with ICE: https://mobile.twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1181745056698572802 It seems like now would be a good time to reach out again to those who have signed the petition. |
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Some of the top signers receive a part of their income from GitHub, through 100ds of repos they maintain... and I hardly see them leaving, which seems quite hypocritical. If one wanted to walk out of here, they'd just do it. |
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I signed it, and will move personal stuff to GitLab, but I need this account for other things. |
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Not sure if I'm ready to sign and leave, but one thing that might be more convincing to me is if there was a trigger upon reaching some threshold of signatures that was large enough that I would be convinced that it might have an effect rather than solely imposing a personal cost. This would also add pressure as the activation threshold nears. It also makes signing feel cheaper and easier as you only have to do something if everyone does it. The trick is setting a threshold large enough to have an effect (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? Some estimate of active users is required.) while setting it low enough that it is achievable within X number of months or years and also finding ways to help people comply once it's reached. |
Hello everyone.
I think it's great you've established this ultimatum, but I haven't found any indication for how long you've given Microsoft to make a decision.
It's important you establish a date in which you will all be leaving Github and transferring your projects. Without an organized deadline your threat of leaving just doesn't seem that serious.
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