is it just me or GitHub is turning into some sort of LinkedIn

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sizeoftheuniverse@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨programming@programming.dev⁩

Initially LinkedIn was just another site where you could find jobs. It was simple to use, simple to connect with others, it even had some nice groups with meaningful discussions.

And then it gain monopoly as the “sole” professional network where you could actually land a job. If you are not on LinkedIn now, you are quite invisible on the job market. Recruiters are concentrated there, even if they have to pay extremely high prices for a premium accounts. The site is horrible now: a social network in disguise, toxic and boring influencers, and a lot of noise and bloated interface to explore.

When Google decided to close their code.google.com, GitHub filled a void. It was a simple site, it was powered by git (not by svn or cvs), and most of the major open source projects migrated there. The interface was simple, and everything was perfect. And then something changed.

GitHub UI started to bloat, all kinds of “features” nobody asked for were implemented, and then the site became a SaaS. Now Microsoft hosts the bulk of open source projects the world has to offer. GitHub become a monopoly. If you dont keep your code there, chances are people wont notice your side projects. It this bothers me.

Rant over. I hate internet monopolies.

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Comments

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herescunty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“Show us your GitHub”

Sure, here it is

“Looks empty”

Ya, I code for work, it’s all in private repos.

“So you don’t contribute to open source in your free time?”

No, I spend free time with my family. Again, I code for work, why on earth would I also use my free time for extra coding

“Thanks for your time but…”

Nah thanks for yours, I don’t wanna work for a company that expects me to code for them for for 8 hours and then go and code for someone else for free for more hours. That’s not a healthy work life balance, dickhead.

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- quantum_mechanic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’d love to see recruiters who recruit in their free time, or surgeons who perform surgery in their free time.
  
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  - sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    …or surgeons who perform surgery in their free time.
    
    I suspect surgeons doing surgery in their off hours wouldn’t be just weird, but also very creepy.
    
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  - custom_situation@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    there are tons of developers and technical folks that still find it fun and enjoyable to work on personal projects.
    
    i mean, how else do you build new skills or gain familiarity without stuff you don’t use at work?
    
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- Aziz-Rahmad645@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well, some people regard coding as a hobby...
  
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  - REdOG@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sysadmining is a lifestyle
    
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  - philm@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah absolutely I quickly get bored playing a computer game or something, but I just love coding (in Rust obviously ^^), creating new things etc.
    
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  - aaulia@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    But not expected, and they may have selfhosted repo at home.
    
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- sip@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I get where you come from. I don’t code after work much, but if nobody did, there wouldn’t be much OSS. As for that interviewer, he’s a dickhead.
  
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- ndotb@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fintech is easy to deal with in this regard.
  
  “do you have code samples you can share?”
  
  “would you be happy if an employee interviewed elsewhere and used your codebase for work samples?”
  
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- TheLight@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What they’re asking for is a public portfolio.
  
  Obviously, you can’t give them code that legally belongs to a past employer and they’re not allowed to look to avoid accusations of copyright infringement.
  
  Especially if they do any reverse-engineering for interoperability, there must be zero suspicion that they were inspired by code they’re not allowed to use.
  
  This is where open source contributions under permissive licenses come in.
  
  Something shown to work in a real project is also viewed better than out of context code snippets.
  
  When you’re essentially saying you have nothing to show them, you’re indistinguishable from someone who actually has nothing and is lying about their skills, so the onus is on the interviewers to vet you, which for various reasons may not be possible, so they’d rather just move on to someone with a clearly proven track record.
  
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  - hellishharlot@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ok but the original point still stands. Coding outside of work and at work is poor work life balance. Even my own projects I do are to learn not solve an actual problem in the world with code.
    
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- custom_situation@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  you can show activity without showing the details of the activity. which is at least demonstrating you’re active.
  
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  - autokludge@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Like this? github.com/taichi/gontributions
    
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sirdorius@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I see two points in your argument:

Everything becoming a social network

People working at tech companies have to justify their salary somehow and this is low hanging fruit for adding ‘features’ as all people feel some need for connection. Feeling that a place is alive with other people will motivate your more to engage with it, rather than say, your own Git hosted server. I don’t mind the social features added to GitHub as long as they don’t take the main stage, like it did in the LinkedIn transformation.

GitHub monopoly of open source

GitHub has for most of the time been the main place for open source. I don’t see a monopoly as necessarily bad as long as it remains focused on some values other than profit. I would rather have one big Wikipedia than a shitload of small fractured Wikipedias. Can it become a problem going forward, like it did with Reddit? Definitely, but I am cautiously optimistic. And in the worst case, git is heavily decentralized by design so you’re one git remote add && git push away from moving. Migrating issues would be a bit more of a hassle, but surely there are solutions. And CI is not easily portable, but not a huge amount of work to convert to other formats.

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- jlh@lemmy.jlh.name ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Codeberg can automatically migrate code and issues from using a personal access token iirc.
  
  Github packages and especially CI/CD are the real vendor locking antifeatures.
  
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  - gamma@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Fwiw, gitea has compatible actions. Not sure how compatible, though.
    
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  - salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Doesn’t Codeberg say it’s mostly for FOSS? They say private repos are only allowed for really small things like note keeping, so it wouldn’t be right to just move everything there from GitHub.
    
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  - eluvatar@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I can run GitHub workflows directly on my machine with ACT, I’m sure you could run that on your own private CI if you needed too. It’s not perfect, but if a lot of people started wanting to migrate I’m sure it could get better.
    
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- Reva@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  SourceForge went to shit when it was the de-facto location for free and open source software, now GitHub is where Sourceforge used to be. When will people learn?
  
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StudioLE@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Has GitHub actually done anything negative? Your comments really just sound like fear mongering, I can’t see any actual issues.

What is the bloat you’re referring to? The UI is clean and simple. Navigating and searching code is intuitive. The issue tracker is basic but reliable. Releases are clear. GitHub Actions are complex but featureful and incredibly useful. GitHub Packages are basic but useful. GitHub Copilot is damn impressive.

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- rist097@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes they did:
  
  GitHub suspends accounts of Russian developers linked to sanctioned firms
  
  GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea
  
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  - Kissaki@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They complied to the law they had to? Is this any different from other hosters?
    
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- vvvvv@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  cs.github.com is the best code search ever offered, especially at GitHub scale.
  
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firelizzard@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.

GitHub is not a monopoly: it has competition. If you’re upset about it’s market share, switch to GitLab, Bitbucket, or host your own instance. If you’re upset about people not being aware of the other options, be an advocate and spread awareness of the alternatives.

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- zlatko@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s not a monopoly, but it’s still an oversized influence on the market. I think the poster is arguing that: when have you heard a recruiter ask you for your bitbucket account? But they will look at github.
  
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  - hellishharlot@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If they ask for a GitHub but you have a bitbucket send them the repo link to your bitbucket…
    
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  - josh_dix@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve put my gitlab link in my resume and it has never had anyone spark a question. Usually the recruiter isn’t concerned with it saying “github” so much as you try to answer it with something instead of a blank stare / left on read.
    
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heartlessevil@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Bro that occurred years ago. Github and linkedin are both owned by Microsoft. It is a funnel from LinkedIn recruitment requiring Github requirements from the recruiters. Unfortunately nobody who is under 30 years old saw these dumb tools getting ripped off.

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- heartlessevil@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Honestly if you are under 30 you should just refrain from posting or making any life decisions because they are guaranteed to suck.
  
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  - TheFriendlyDickhead@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t think that’s how “gaining experience” works
    
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  - FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Okay boomer. That has to be one of the most boomer things ever said.
    
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  - radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
    
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  - Johannes@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Who tf think’s that
    
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philm@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m very split between Github (currently) providing a really nice interface/collection/way to access all kinds of open source projects and the obvious ‘out-of-control centralisation’ by the mega corp Microsoft.

It definitely got a little bit bloated the last years, but I still think it has a generally nice interface (browse code/review stuff, simple issue/PR system, simple way for CI via actions etc.).

But I really hope something like forgefed.org takes off someday, I feel like if the barriers are much lower to get onto a different network with the same user (without registering etc.) decentralisation can lead to more innovation in this space (management of all the stuff that Git doesn’t manage itself, like issues, PRs etc.).

The beauty of Git though is that it’s decentralized, so you can just mirror it on Github while mainly using a different platform. If you want a bigger userbase interacting/contributing with your project you’ll allow PRs and issues there and if not just add a link to the README that points to the platform you’re using…

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spartanatreyu@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Github has always had being a job site be it’s secondary feature.

Except that it has a slightly higher bar of entry to recruiters and recruitment bots spreading toxic positivity, and anyone asking for a job is able to prove (at least some of) their value by showing off their code and how they participate publically in other repos (if at all).

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thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Image

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JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No, I don’t see how GitHub it turning into LinkedIn. Everything you said are definitely new things GitHub is doing but none of them are things LinkedIn does. LinkedIn is pretty much just Facebook with career applications built-in.

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- sizeoftheuniverse@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I am not saying they are competing on the same niche. I am saying both sites started well, and they transformed into something worse, profiting by their monopoly on their specific markets.
  
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  - StudioLE@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It sounds like your issue is with capitalism rather than GitHub. The same logic is true of many corporations.
    
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nyander@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I just host my own instance of Gitea.

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- neo@lemmy.hacktheplanet.be ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is the way.
  
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  - Kissaki@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’d rather not have to register on every individuals instance for every project, for big reporting, discussion, or simple changes.
    
    On github it’s easy for me to contribute and communicate. On other platforms, not.
    
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Blackthorn@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I wouldn’t say it’s a new LinkedIn, but it’s definitely a defacto monopolio. It pains be that Cargo (the official rust packaging system) is so integrated with it. My own personal hobby projects are self-hosted on a gittea instance right now, but I still have a github account to contribute to a friend of mine’s project which is, sadly, hosted there.

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- 33KK@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Its not anymore, the new sparse index protocol is not using github.
  
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Auzy@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Honestly, as others have mentioned, I don’t agree its bloated. If anything, its actually missing a few features (like the ability to bulk change many repos with the same issue tags). Also, I like some of the new updates that are being released.

It doesn’t run slowly in ANY way.

Furthermore, Sourceforge used to be the monopoly, and honestly, that was FAR more bloated. Projects will be found on any site, if its interesting. I don’t remember ever searching for projects explicitly using Github search (I only use Google). A good project will show up anywhere.

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- philm@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well I feel like all the “modern” SPA stuff that got recently added, certainly adds “some” kind of bloat on top, it’s not as snappy anymore as it once was, but I think most of the stuff is improving QoL, so I think it’s reasonable…
  
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digdilem@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Same has happened in recent versions of Gitlab. Lots of feature creep and UI changes that seem non-intuitive (at least for me)

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toasteranimation@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Avoid all ms products. Problem solved

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- radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yep, moved off GitHub the moment they announced it cuz I thought they were gonna pull the old Microsoft embrace extend extinguish
  
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  - toasteranimation@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    as I moved off LinkedIn the moment they announced that
    
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  - josh_dix@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    GitHub is not likely to follow that trend just because it has more value for them if it sticks around. They bought github, I think, for the branding as they’ve struggled immensely to get people to trust team foundation server and later azure devops brands because they sucked so bad early on. Using GitHub to put an entry-point for azure focused products in front of a huge audience is sly as well. Microsoft only needs to extinguish things if it is a threat (usually when they don’t own them). They’re happy to buy successful brands and roll them into integrations with their other products, making partnerships with growing orgs hard for said org to avoid. That’s what they want possibly more than anything as big enterprises take ages to begin working with entirely net new partners so they look at who they already have agreements with.
    
    I don’t think anyone needs to be on github that’s just there for OSS projects. Internet search and content aggregating platforms are good enough at getting me to where I need to go. GitHub’s search has never really been useful for me on that front.
    
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Hypx@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
We're going to need a replacement for github pretty soon.

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- unicorn@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There are many good replacements, you just need to stop using Github :)
  
  Some examples: Gitea (self-host or hosted eg. codeberg.de), Gitlab (self-host or hosted), Sourcehut (self-host or hosted eg. sr.ht)
  
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- Kissaki@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What makes you think we need a replacement soon?
  
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  - Hypx@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    @Kissaki @sizeoftheuniverse
    
    GitHub is owned by Microsoft and it seems to be getting worse. It is also nearly a monopoly and that’s bad in general.
    
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kromem@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fun fact…

A few years ago Microsoft was granted a patent on using social media data left behind to resurrect dead people as chatbots.

The more GitHub is considered to be a social network, the more extending the content there (such as the maintenance of a popular sole-contributor project) fits into a patent protected usecase.

And now you know 🌈

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AnonymousLlama@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Haven't looked at LinkedIn in years, it's just full of low quality recruiters who "have the perfect full stack position for you" that's clearly a front-end or backend position using obscure languages you've got no interest in.

Glad I don't have to use these vultures

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theherk@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
As an aside, anybody looking at alternatives or just similar tools should check out pijul which is another vcs that implements a very interesting algorithm for patches. They also host a very simple interface at nest.pijul.com.

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CondeMg@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hi! I am new to the programming world, and everything involved. What do you think about gitlab? Many people are using it instead Github. Also I heard about Codeberg, but I dont know anything about it :)

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- jmacc93@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Every time I have to try to find things on gitlab I have a generally harder time doing so than on github. Maybe I’m just used to github’s layout, but gitlab’s just seems awkward to me. Also, I think non-tech-savy people will inevitably be confused by having to click “deployments” to get to releases; and on release pages, below where you actually download files, it always says “evidence collection”, which sounds really ominous (for end users)
  
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  - mark@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I was thinking about switching to GitLab. But after reading your comment… not so much.
    
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- Kissaki@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  We use gitlab at work.
  
  If you’re going for hosted, I’d always use github (userbase, UI, free features set). If you’re self hosting, gitlab is a good alternative. Their heavy promotion of and focus on full chain into managed cloud can be irritating and annoying though.
  
  Gitlab has a free tier too. If you’re curious, try it out.
  
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root@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I mean, both of them have common ownership. Maybe just correlation and not causation, but I’ve definitely noticed these types of changes post acquisition.

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