GitHub's ³pull request² is proprietary lock-in

[Ben Finney]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 7:45 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > Anyone can take email data from the email server, migrate it to a
> > different implementation of the same email system, keep it running
> > with the same data and allow the same people to continue interacting
> > with it as before.
> >
> > Those are traits I think a community should require of any system
> > that controls vital discussions like pull requests.
>
> They are. Ultimately, a GitHub pull request is backed by a git pull
> request. Here's an example:
>
> https://github.com/MikeiLL/appension/pull/187

Yes, of course the VCS data is in Git and therefore can be accessed with
Git. Please stop raising that when *I'm not talking about* the VCS data
alone, I'm talking also about the data of the pull request feature.


The discussion data, code review data, etc. is all part of “GitHub pull
request”. How do we export, along with the VCS data, the data and system
that control the code review discussino and other useful features
entailed by “GitHub pull request”?

How do we get that data and confidently and quickly set up a system
hosted on a different provider that allows everyone involved to continue
the same code reviews and discussions etc. without GitHub?

To my knowledge we can't, short of re-implementing an expressly
proprietary non-standard system against the wishes of the vendor.

That's valuable community data being locked into a single-vendor system,
who explicitly rejects community access to the system and the data
needed to continue on a different provider.

It boggles my mind that so many people – even when the conversation has
directly raised the notion of different layers of technology that
control different layers of valuable data – blithely ignore the fact
that *the discussion itself* is dependent on a software system and data.

Control over that software system and data is important to control over
the valuable discussions, just as control over the VCS system and data
is important to control over the valuable source code.


Conversely, as Ned Batchelder points out, without all the proprietary
vendor lock-in centralised features, GitHub is a fairly unimpressive Git
hosting provider. The “but Git is free software, no one is locked in!”
is trivially true, and has an obvious response in “then there's no good
reason to move anything there”.

Please, those who are going to advocate for GitHub especially over other
Git hosting providers because it has specially valuable features, be
honest that you're advocating moving control of valuable information
away from the community that values them.

-- 
 \       “First things first, but not necessarily in that order.” —The |
  `\                                              Doctor, _Doctor Who_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney