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Comment by jraph | Hacker News Reader

Why would you think this?

It is the self hosted part that bothers you?

I self host my code. If you can't bother creating an account or sending an email to share your contribution, I guess I'm quite fine not to have it. I'm sure ffmpeg don't need your contribution as well.

I don't get this stance. Sending an email or creating an account is so low effort compared to any meaningful contribution.

The friction is not intentional but I guess it's a feature, it probably filters out some low quality interactions.

Note that ffmpeg has been using mailing lists, they are not migrating away from github. I'll just assume you wrote your comment without going further than your initial gut reaction to the title, which kinda proves my point.

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I have contributed to a lot of open source projects for many years. They sure don't need my contribution, but if it were more accessible, I might actually contribute one day.

Given that ffmpeg was apparently using mailing lists before (which I didn't know at the time of writing), this is obviously an improvement. But it's still a lot of friction, and it seems that it's friction for no particular reason.

Hosting your code on something as obscure as Forgejo actively makes it hard for people to contribute. Most developers use GitHub, and only have experience with GitHub.

If I have an issue with something, I'll make a PR and move on with my day. But if making that PR involves creating an account on some obscure website and learning a new user interface just to contribute code to a single project, I'll simply pass. It's not worth the hassle.

GitHub is the most popular service by far for a good reason. People build their whole professional portfolio on GitHub, and it's well-known and globally recognized.

If you're afraid GitHub is gonna go down one day or kick you out, just mirror your repo to your own git instance. It's been done for decades, and it works very well, without introducing friction.

Since we are talking Git hosting infrastructure here and comparing it to GitHub, can you explain to me what do you mean with "git instance" in "just mirror your repo to your own git instance"?

> Most developers use GitHub, and only have experience with GitHub.

> GitHub is the most popular service by far for a good reason. People build their whole professional portfolio on GitHub, and it's well-known and globally recognized.

I see those things as a big issue. I hate it that github is a monopoly, that open source software projects rely on proprietary software for their infra and that we all depend on Microsoft of all companies for our open source activity.

I personally don't want to participate in helping MS maintain this monopoly.

Hopefully with these developments around forge federation, the "having to create an account is too big of a friction" thing will be less of an issue.

In the meantime, Forgejo already allows login in with open id providers, in many case you are already able to login with your github account.

Interesting how clueless but determined you were in your first comment. Maybe you should pause a bit and reconsider your whole outlook so you can advance with better success.

Humility is good tool more people should use it.

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