Github has made it impossible to create an account when using a VPN and a privacy browser with fully spoofed hardware identifiers. (Use Firefox or Firefox-based Privacy Browser, VPN, install Canvasblocker to test this.) I create an account with Google or Apple (both requiring hardware identifiers and numbers and birthdates) or I can use an email. When I use an email, it comes back with this horrible test, and even if I do it completely correctly, it tells me after I didn’t do the test right, gaslighting me with a picture of what I chose (which I didn’t choose) and showing me the correct picture (which I did choose and it claims I didn’t select).
It’s fucking bullshit and it’s more corporate control of open source software. For people who have their discussion or issue tracker, I can’t even participate without hardware identifiers likely linked to me some other way and phone numbers. It’s fucking bullshit. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, FUCK YOU!!!
I am so tired of this bullshit. I just want to post an issue about a piece of software. You don’t need my fingerprint, hardware or personal, or biometric shit. This is a slippery slope. Fuck them.
I really hope more developers just get the fuck off Github. Honestly, if you are developing privacy-oriented software and using github, there’s a mistmatch and it’s bullshit, and I know it’s time consuming and annoying to move, but please do. This is fucking bullshit and it’s not like it’s going to become LESS annoying over time. FUCK THIS.
OC by @someone@lemmy.today
Open source exists just fine without anonymous contributors, and the value difference between closed source is not that contributors can be pseudonymous or anonymous, it’s that anyone can be a contributor.
I am an open source maintainer. I do not want unfettered anonymous access to submit things to my repositories. I welcome feedback, criticisms, bug reports, feature requests, pull requests, and support requests, but I do not want any of that from anonymous users. If someone abuses me or other members of my open source communities, I want there to be potential recourse.
Anyone on earth is welcome to download my code and do whatever they want with it (as long as they follow the license terms) completely anonymously, but I do not welcome communications from them anonymously. I don’t feel like that’s unreasonable, and I’m happy that GitHub is a place where I can have those kind of restrictions.
If you want a more “Wild West” approach to social coding where anonymous users can submit things to your repos, you’re free to host your projects elsewhere.
You can obviously want whatever you want. But this was not a part of the implied social contract in GH. And people are objecting to it becoming one, hence this thread.
GH always had “moderation tools”, so you can ban people or restrict access. They could have added a restriction level for “verified users”. But they are choosing not to.
And yes, people will be hosting/moving projects elsewhere. Many already did.
Many already did, and many more will, but I doubt it was for this reason. I’m not a huge fan of GitHub, but it’s not because they require you to be verified in order to submit stuff.