As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.
For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don’t we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.
Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.
So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?
A lot of people use Github because it’s easy to use and popular. Not everyone wants to self host, although it would be nice if the larger projects did. What I really hate is when open source projects use something like disord for support.
Whenever I see a project which the support relies on Discord, I ignore it, or I treat it as if it doesn’t have support at all.
I refuse to participate in a community which makes Meta looking like a privacy focused company.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
makes Meta looking like a privacy focused company
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I run a fairly popular open source project called Svelte Material UI, and I can tell you why I use Discord for support. My users want me to use it. GitHub too.
People want to use what they already have, and most people, even developers, don’t care that much about privacy. I would gladly self host a support forum, but tons of people would rather use a different library than sign up for my personal support forum. And the people who really care about privacy wouldn’t trust my self hosted solution either, so there isn’t really a better option than Discord, as much as that sucks.
When support is hidden away in discord, web searches can’t find it. Nobody can even look through it without having an account.
I agree that it sucks. I would much rather use a more open platform. But my users don’t want that. Discord is convenient, people want convenience, and I want to give my users convenience (even if it means I have to answer the same questions once in a while).
Only convenient for those who are on discord. Everyone else is excluded.
Sure, but I’ve actually had people ask me to set up a Discord, and no one has ever asked me to set up anything else.
Yeah, I gave up long ago to suggest ppl some alternatives. The problem PPL Here have is the discord only thing. With tools like matter bridge you could combine several tools seemlessly, but that is of course way to much trouble for smaller projects.
I wonder if they just pass on the project since the documention is hidden away. I know I’ve done it a bunch of times
I can’t even use discord at all because it forces me to verify with a phone number as soon as I sign up, every single time, no matter what ISP/browser/etc. I use.
Whose voices can you listen to when all of your communication options are closed? Of course the ones already on the proprietary plaforms are more okay with it. If you are worried about folks not trusting your host or sign ups, choose a decntralized service so no one has to trust it or sign up.
Unrelated question but why did you not upvote your own comment?
on lemmy.world it automatically does that for you.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
I posted like I normally do from the Voyager app, and it shows me that I’ve upvoted it, so I don’t know.
weird
Edit: It most like was a federation problem on my end.
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
I disagree with the fact because they want to self host. Codeberg exists and is pretty easy to use. Been thinking of migrating there.
I hope this changes (even if a little bit) once Forgejo (FLOSS Gitea fork) adds forge federation.
Federation doesn’t really solve the issue that self-hosting takes effort away from working on the actual project.
No but it does solve people not wanting to bother making an account for your effectively single-user self-hosted instance just to open a PR. I could be up and running in like 10 minutes to install Forgejo or Gitea, but who wants to make an account on my server. But GitHub, practically everyone has an account.
This is the main reason why we haven’t moved lemmy’s repo there (yet). Most of the devs are on board with leaving github tho at some point.
Radicle already supports this and it is in use right now.
I don’t mind if they have a support discord, as long as they have a better alternative available