Most FOSS projects are jailed in Microsoft Github’s access restricted walled garden. The 4 freedoms are very basic. Sure I can grab the code and do what I want with it, but then what? Rage fork because devs only pay attention to a bug tracker hosted by a corporate oppressor?

Of course devs rightfully get to choose the venue for their work. It’s astonishing how many are okay with licking MS’s boots.

The free world can do better. The current hack: if an app has official Debian support, we can report upstream bugs to the Debian bug tracker (or Launchpad for Ubuntu). Any others?

For non-Debian, it really gets shitty. You can stash a bug report here, where it gets seen by sideline hecklers, not devs or users, and only gets retained as long as sopuli.xyz has resources. If they one day need to free up disk space, they will erase old posts.

Select apps that exist in Debian when possible

Debian has a higher quality standard than most distros and it’s also mainstream. When an app becomes officially maintained in Debian, a right of passage of sorts has been demonstrated. It’s not a high bar but it’s relatively the best measure of quality and maturity there is. Many FOSS projects cannot manage to satisfy Debian’s standards.

So if you have a choice of apps, it’s a good idea to short-list those that appear in https://packages.debian.org even if you run a different distro than Debian. You can participate in bug discussion at https://bugs.debian.org without registration. And if you verify a bug exists in Debian you have a decent place to report it (yes, even if the bug originates upstream).

  • nonserfOPEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Using an LLM to slop out your post in a FOSS community is a bold choice.

    Are you using an LLM to translate my English into your mother tongue?

    Can you quote an example of what you’re struggling with?

    I’m only aware of chatGPT, and boycott Microsoft and Google and the like so I’ve never tried it. I will only use Argos Translate, which is useless for generative AI. I wrote that post in my mother tongue.

    Beyond that, there are plenty of ways to engage with github while protecting your personal privacy.

    Bullshit.

    And why are you talking about privacy? I said nothing about privacy. I suggest trying a different machine translator than whatever you used.

    If you engage with MS Github, you are supporting Microsoft.

    You can use a throwaway email address to make an issue on github asking them to migrate to a better alternative.

    Did that for years on dozens of projects. It gets old. These people are not interested. But feel free to knock yourself out trying your own futile advice if that’s your thing. If you find a disposable address that MS accepts, you will quickly find out that these devs have priorities that they have placed above anything you can think of.

    WTF are you thinking – that you can say “hey MS is not good for privacy…” and they will move their project for you? Did a chatbot tell you this would work?

    My own attempts were symbolic, experimental, and more than anything a mere survey to find out what malfunction brings them there; whether it was a brain malfunction or technical.

    You could email them directly by grabbing their email from the merge logs (if I recall right, I haven’t worked with github in a while).

    Sure, then after doing a possibly large fetch (a deep github clone of all historic objects) you have a huge pile of commits to pick through & try to work out which is most relevant, and where you then find countless addresses that go to MS or Google anyway. If that suits you, knock yourself out. Not worth my time.

    You could contact them on other socials they list. Usually those also aren’t privacy respecting or FOSS, but it’s something.

    Same problem. You cannot reach people on those shitty platforms without being there yourself. And if you are there, you’re part of the problem.

    The best any of us can do is to not use github ourselves for our own projects.

    That is not the “best” you can do. It’s the least you can do.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      You’ve critically misunderstood my post, and a few seconds looking over my previous posts and comments would make it abundantly clear that I speak/write English. To make things crystal: It’s my first language. No machine translation has been used.

      Almost all of your posts, especially the titles and the display name of the community you made, use emojis in ways very similar to output from LLMs. In ways that I honestly have never seen an actual human do, unless they were doing something fucky like trying to game youtube video titles for higher views.

      • They are very long winded while not saying a ton, and have some questionable turns of phrase. “Mother tongue” is an immediately present one I can point to. It’s not wrong, but quite less commonly used than “first language”.

      • They match up with a pattern seen in other posters that used to spam up other free software communities on the fediverse using LLMs and machine translation.

      • You have a ton of posts with very few comments, which also matches with spammers.

      • I’d suggest that the large amount of downvotes this post received, as well as the upvotes my comment received, indicate that I’m not the only one who had this assumption about your post.

      I spoke of privacy because I assumed you had privacy concerns. This community is on the infosec.pub instance, and cybersecurity and digital privacy tend to be a focus of posters here.

      Also, I didn’t think that someone would refuse to use a bug tracker entirely as a boycott of the company hosting it. That’s extreme. At that level of “acting purely on the principal of things” than you really should make peace with not being able to use or interact with projects hosted on github, instead of looking for some way to make an end-run around the dev’s preferred bug tracking chanmel.

      Regarding my suggestions of workaraounds?

      Those were for your benefit. I’m not the one who clearly refuses to use github and has strong opinions about it.

      I’m not surprised by the fact that devs have different priorities. And they’re allowed to.

      whether it was a brain malfunction or technical.

      That sort of attitude, as well as the one demonstrated up and down your comment, are a big part of why people find people who treat FOSS as a religion objectionable.

      That is not the “best” you can do. It’s the least you can do.

      My point was that, as you seem to be aware through experience, you can’t make other devs abide by your own principles.

      Go do it the right way yourself, demonstrate it works better. Keep doing that. The more projects doing things the right way, the more momentum will shift away from github being seen as the easy standard.

      Anyway, especially with this response, it seems clear that you weren’t posting looking for any options, you were posting to complain about other people “doing it wrong”. You already know there’s no way to force devs off Github, by your own admission.

      Don’t bother responding further on my account. I have no interest in arguing about this sort of shit and I’ll be blocking you.

      I’ll say it again: You’d get more engagement if you laid off your odd usage of emoji. It screams LLM output.

      • nonserfOPEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        You’ve critically misunderstood my post, and a few seconds looking over my previous posts and comments would make it abundantly clear that I speak/write English.

        This is non-sequitur logic, thus baseless. My understanding your post is orthoganol to whether you can handle English.

        Almost all of your posts, especially the titles and the display name of the community you made, use emojis in ways very similar to output from LLMs. In ways that I honestly have never seen an actual human do, unless they were doing something fucky like trying to game youtube video titles for higher views.

        This explains your faulty conclusion. But it remains faulty nonetheless. Emoji is useful for searching and also for ESL readers. Speed-reading Debian fans would also likely miss thread without the Debian-like emoji.

        • They are very long winded

        Bullshit.

        “Mother tongue” is an immediately present one I can point to. It’s not wrong, but quite less commonly used than “first language”.

        The inverse is true outside the US. Try learning a 2nd language or stepping outside the US sometime.

        • They match up with a pattern seen in other posters that used to spam up other free software communities on the fediverse using LLMs and machine translation.

        This is a confirmation bias. You think you know what an LLM pattern is as it differs from your own, thus conclude other writing styles must be that of an LLM.

        • You have a ton of posts with very few comments, which also matches with spammers.

        I’ve seen more spam as a comment than as a post. Perhaps you are confused with Mastodon. In any case, I’m offline and only pop into a cafe to post what I wrote offline. I don’t have time to sit in the cafe and read a lot of other posts. If an app were good enough to harvest posts for offline reading, it would be different. But no such app exists.

        • I’d suggest that the large amount of downvotes this post received, as well as the upvotes my comment received, indicate that I’m not the only one who had this assumption about your post.

        That’s an absurd conclusion. I expected a lot of down votes. It supports my thesis that a majority FOSS devs are MS boot lickers. Of course that same majority is susceptible to being triggered by criticism leveled at them.

        BTW, I only saw 7 upvotes because I am on a downvote-disabled instance. I have to visit another node to see downvotes.

        I spoke of privacy because I assumed you had privacy concerns. This community is on the infosec.pub instance, and cybersecurity and digital privacy tend to be a focus of posters here.

        The failure of your assumption is that I /only/ have privacy concerns. There are so many ethical problems with Microsoft it’s bizarre that you would only think of personal privacy.

        Also, I didn’t think that someone would refuse to use a bug tracker entirely as a boycott of the company hosting it. That’s extreme. At that level of “acting purely on the principal of things” than you really should make peace with not being able to use or interact with projects hosted on github, instead of looking for some way to make an end-run around the dev’s preferred bug tracking chanmel.

        There are practical problems with MS Github; not just ethical. They not only demand a non-disposable email address but they also use it for 2FA for Tor users, making logins painfully inconvenient.

        It’s not just an evil host, but an evil host that makes you dance for them. You’d be a pushover to an absurdity to be willing to bend over backwards to lick MS boots and ultimately support MS by feeding it data and engagement.

        Those were for your benefit. I’m not the one who clearly refuses to use github and has strong opinions about it.

        Workarounds to ultimately feed Microsoft misses the point. Why dance for Microsoft when Debian is both easier and non-evil?

        I’m not surprised by the fact that devs have different priorities. And they’re allowed to.

        You missed “Of course devs rightfully get to choose the venue for their work.” The idea is for testers to find refuge away from devs shitty choices moreso than twisting dev’s arms.

        whether it was a brain malfunction or technical.

        That sort of attitude, as well as the one demonstrated up and down your comment, are a big part of why people find people who treat FOSS as a religion objectionable.

        It’s not an “attitude”. It’s science. Knowing what motivates people who make detrimental decisions is paramount to addressing the problem. My research yielded some of both reasons:

        • Brain malfunction: some devs admit to choosing Github “because that’s where the people are”, as they make themselves part of the network effect problem (the social problem).
        • Technical: some devs choose Github for specific features that free world tools do not offer. These cases are more easily corrected. Writing code is easier than improving personalities.

        That is not the “best” you can do. It’s the least you can do.

        My point was that, as you seem to be aware through experience, you can’t make other devs abide by your own principles.

        That doesn’t follow. You are not /only/ in control of where you host a project. You are also in control of where you participate on projects controlled by others. You can post your bug reports to a distro bug tracker instead of pawning yourself to MS.

        Go do it the right way yourself, demonstrate it works better. Keep doing that. The more projects doing things the right way, the more momentum will shift away from github being seen as the easy standard.

        Testers write bug reports. They do not create projects of their own and write software, unless they also serve as a dev. But that’s in the developer capacity and limited to those who also write code. Telling testers to become devs and found projects is a futile plan for turning things around.

        Anyway, especially with this response, it seems clear that you weren’t posting looking for any options,

        I was not looking for other ways to lick Microsoft’s boots. The 3rd question was not rhetorical. And you neglected to answer it.

        you were posting to complain about other people “doing it wrong”. You already know there’s no way to force devs off Github, by your own admission.

        That’s not exactly true. I’m done trying to inspire devs to move their project off MS Github. But that doesn’t mean GH devs would not step outside of GH to view bug reports elsewhere such as the corresponding Debian bug DB.