Rss-bridge: Potential problem with repository hosting

[mitsukarenai]

I've just identified a potential issue for the good development of the project and the general privacy/safety of it's contributors:

While it seems outside our power to block events from unfolding, it is not too late to exchange on the subject and determine _if_ action is required, or _if_ the project is not in jeopardy / would profit from this event.

Thank you for non-trolly inputs :wink:

[LogMANOriginal]

I suppose most discussions on GitHub right now evolve around this subject for obvious reasons. At some point (assuming MS successfully acquires GitHub), they will link GitHub to MS features in order to acquire more information on their users. This is obviously a privacy issue for anyone who'd like to stay anonymous and will drive away some users and projects to alternative platforms.

I'm not sure if it is an matter of safety though, maybe you can explain what you mean by that?

In my opinion there is no issue unless it's illegal. In those cases they'll make sure to take down a project as soon as possible, just like GitHub has done in the past (see DMCA takedown policy which is primarily copyright related).

I wouldn't call RSS-Bridge illegal in any form or shape, especially because it is implemented in a way that it "just" re-formats the data in a very specific way to make it readable by RSS readers.

That being said, there are a few things RSS-Bridge hasn't covered yet, like adhering to the robots.txt policies (which I'm not sure if it even applies) and possibly some user agreements. This is something we can and definitely should improve upon, even if that means implementing some "crippled API" or removing bridges that break the user agreement.

Back to your points:

if action is required

One of the possible actions is to ditch GitHub and go for one of the alternatives. It'll take a while to adapt to a new platform, but it would immediately fix the imminent problem, which is the new owner to-be. However, the other problems remain the same as they have been in the past.

Also, a new host is no guarantee of privacy as they might or might not sell your data. There is no way to 100% ensure privacy on the internet, especially since data is stored permanently and can be correlated over time.

if the project is not in jeopardy

I think it is too early to determine if that is the case or not. As mentioned before we can improve RSS-Bridge to follow the rules more closely as we have ignored them in the past. Naturally this adds some hurdles and will lead to loss of flexibility and possibly usability. In any case I'd rather work proudly on a project that is accepted by all parties than work in the shadows in an futile attempt to break laws.

if the project would profit from this event

Having a big company running GitHub has a few advantages which could prove useful in the future, especially when connecting to other services of the same origin. However, in exchange for these features we have to accept the fact that MS will collect (personal) information to utilize to their benefit.

For those crying about MS in particular: The same has been true for GitHub all along, just on a smaller scale. If we don't want our information being used by third parties we either pay for the service or host our own (basically the same but more expensive).

The MS company is not stupid and they can do things that the GitHub company couldn't: For example they can provide the name of one of the biggest SW company there is on this planet to advertise one of the biggest hosting services on the planet.

Having a project hosted on the largest platform surely is something to strive for. That being said, I really don't care where RSS-Bridge is hosted. It is a side-project which all of us can decide to drop at any time.

To summarize: I wouldn't worry too much about who the owner of GitHub is right now, but rather focus on how we can make sure that RSS-Bridge can stay active without breaking any laws, and continuously improving the experience. With the user base growing it is important to also grow trust from all parties to prevent a one-sided battle against bigger opponents who'll crush you in a blink of an eye.

Sorry for such a long message 😊

[mitsukarenai]

Agreed, we have yet to see for what reasons Microsoft was willing to lay 7.5 G$ in stocks to get Github, seems involved parties bet on a hefty return-on-investment. I think it's related to their educational stuff. Getting people in schools and universities on board of computer programming by "recommending" Github ? They know once people step into a tool, they are unwilling to learn to use another one.

Anyway. I've made a GitLab account at Framagit, which is handled by a French NGO and hosted at Hetzner in Germany 😉

And GitLab includes a function to push commits to an external repository, in case we'd need to migrate the project but still wanted to keep a Github up for legacy updates.

[mro]

I encourage all contributors to https://indieweb.org/POSSE and let know. (I do at https://gogs.mro.name/mro/rss-bridge) Self-host your contributions and use github as an meeting/integration point – but not as your personal main repo location.

[captn3m0]

I don't see a reason why we should jump ship _now_. GitLab makes it easy enough to syndicate, and in the case we do need to migrate - that shouldn't be hard either.

In the month since the announcement, I've seen no warning signs so far. The only advantage I see (as of now) with GitHub is the lower barrier to entry, because of network effects (more people on GH, easier for others to fork and file PR) which is why I'd suggest sticking to GitHub _for now_

Maybe some day https://github.com/git-federation/gitpub becomes a reality and will let us contribute to rss-bridge from any git hosting service.

@mro Thanks for the POSSE link :100: