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GitHub alternatives for Bitcoin Core

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MarcoFalke edited this page Feb 9, 2021 · 20 revisions

Motivation

Basic Usability Issues

Overall Unreliability

GitHub makes comments in long threads inaccessible via it's site. https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/1354744697093283847

The comments need to be recovered manually from past emails or metadata dumps.

It was also observed that complete issues or pull requests simply disappeared without notice.

Spam/Lack of Moderator Queue

The repo has thousands of subscribers, so any spam contribution or otherwise inappropriate comment will reach all those inboxes before being deleted by a maintainer.

GitHub fails to provide simple and effective tools (such as rate limits for non-members or a moderator queue) to fight low-quality content.

https://twitter.com/MarcoFalke/status/1355097159113322497

Others

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/15847 | Feedback for GitHub CEO · Issue #15847 · bitcoin/bitcoin · GitHub
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/20227 | Dependency on GitHub · Issue #20227 · bitcoin/bitcoin · GitHub

Centralization/Single Point of Failure

The repo is primarily accessed through GitHub, which might (even against their will) shut down hosting at any point in time.

Instead of hopping to another centralized provider or self-hosted single point of failure, a goal should be to evaluate decentralized or federated hosters. See also:

Alternatives

Evaluation Scheme

  • How does it integrate with CI?
  • Does it have feature-parity with GitHub reviews (e.g. resolving inline review comments)?
  • How is the "sign-up" handled?
  • How is spam dealt with?
  • How well-maintained are they?

Possible alternatives:

"Decentralized"

Self-hosted

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