How Github has changed the open source world (opens in new tab)

Y'know, there are some projects that haven't had commits for a while because they do exactly what they're supposed to do, and don't need a bunch of commits. I consider it a good thing when a project gets to the point where nobody can find any bugs and they stop adding features because it has enough of them already. I sure as hell don't want my quick, clean, elegant, productivity enhancing window manager to turn into a featuritis infected monstrosity like OpenOffice.org, after all.

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edit: Actually, my window manager of choice has basically been abandoned by its developer several years ago, and it's still bug-free, stable, and lacking basically nothing. I finally came up with a feature enhancement I'd like it to have today, after using it for five years with no complaints or wants -- and that enhancement is really just an improvement of an existing feature.

More to the point, it's an enhancement that no window manager has, so I'm likely to need to write the code for this feature enhancement myself if I want it badly enough. I may pick up maintainership for the project to do just that.

Think about that a moment: one feature enhancement requested in have a decade, merely an extension of an already existing feature, and it's something entirely new to window managers as far as I'm aware. This thing has had no need for additional code in all that time, and it has been better as a result of all that.

i do the same. generally if the project is even on GitHub, that's a great sign it's got life.

In this respect, I think github's killer feature over sourceforge is its focus on people instead of projects. Perhaps we could call it an increased democratization of open source.

Sourceforge is centered around projects. You have to register and get approval for each project separately (at least you did a few years ago, it has been a long time since I last went through the exercise). This left a significant percentage of projects with descriptions of the author's intent, but no actual code. It also meant that any third party contributions had to go back through the author (who might have lost interest).

I have never seen a project on github with no code. There is no approval process. You simply push and you are up and running. Forking allows others to start contributing right away without any action from the original author (and github really encourages you to fork projects). Then the tools that github provides makes collaboration way easier than it was in the past (pull requests vs emailing patches).

I agree with all of the things the author notes, but I really think this is github's killer feature. (Hope I didn't come off as too much of a github fanboy).

GitHub has managed to take advantage of the Git hype and make code social in a way that SF or Google Code never could. Today's SF, although powering lots of high profile floss projects, feels increasingly dated with its traditional developer-user model. Google Code is arguably even less social and definitely lacking in features. GitHub, finally, looks great, is easy to use and has a lot of small yet very neat features that making coding easier.

BitBucket actually does everything GitHub does on that list of ways that GitHub supposedly changed the world. In fact, I find the BitBucket interface generally easier to use and easier on the eyes -- and, my God, the colors on the GitHub issue tracker pages are fucking awful.

. . . but somehow GitHub gets so much attention that many people think it's the only code hosting site in the world, just like so many idiots think that Ubuntu is the only open source operating system in the world.

It may be true that github focuses on the author (after all, projects are github.com/AUTHOR/project), but I'd say that focus is secondary to the code. Compare a project page on sourceforge (e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus/) with one on github (like https://github.com/jquery/jquery). A sourceforge project page is just a vague arrangement of links, while github shows you the source and README right away. The author is given about the same amount of space on the page in both cases.

The same is true of BitBucket, and kinda Google Code as well, you know.

This is definitely true. I'll often check to see if a candidate has a github account when making a hiring decision. Having some interesting/good code up there can definitely move the needle a bit on a hire/no hire decision.

Absolutely. A record of solid past work can help overshadow a poor interview (nervousness, etc.) in my eyes.

If I can see the sorts of things a candidate has worked on in the past, I can more tailor the interview and ask more engaging questions. I want to know what they're passionate enough about that they will give up free time to pursue it.

None of this is specific to Github.

* When I first started going I found that git was rather hard to for me to wrap my brain around, especially since it so radically changed the way certain commands worked.*

I've found Git really easy to use coming from SVN. My main problem has just been the Windows tools haven't been as intuitive as Tortoise. What issues did you first have with Git?

Check out the hg-git plugin. I use it all the time to clone projects from github using hg.

The complete lack of licensing information on many projects is something that Google Code tends to "fix" much better than GitHub, though -- even if Google Code is a little inferior in some other ways. It would be nice if sites like BitBucket and GitHub would do something to encourage people more strongly to actually tell us about the licenses used in their projects.