this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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But 99% of people won't. Choosing that platform massively shrinks your community.
I'm not saying don't do it and try to grow that ecosystem if you want to. I'm all for federated becoming the standard going forward. But don't judge people not wanting to massively compromise their project with a platform that actually is massively worse because it doesn't have people there.
I would hope that programmers and people inclined to do so much as submit bug reports can sign up for an account.
User count doesn't really matter for code hosting platforms. It's not a social network.
User count absolutely matters for code hosting platforms, and it absolutely is a social network. Network effect is critical and the entire premise of this article.
The network effect in this article is seen as important for the adoption of free forges when projects choose them. But I don't see anything about the importance of how many people use them for contributors to, well, contribute. I might have missed it though.
They're the exact same thing. There is no distinction that can theoretically be made.
The reason projects are choosing GitHub over alternatives is because they know, with certainty, that they will get far less interaction with their project anywhere else.
If typing in your email to sign up is too much effort, then free software is truly doomed
Maintaining another account is maintaining another account.
It absolutely is meaningful friction, and it absolutely is a perfectly valid reason not to engage.
That's not the point. The biggest project that currently is on codeberg is forgejo with about 1000 stars. The biggest project that currently is on github is freeCodeCamp with 383000 stars.
You see the difference? If a dev only pushes to codeberg, they have basically no way of being discovered, because there is no one to discover them.
I think I should add that I am a supporting member of Codeberg e.V.
I dont think that the stars comparison is very fair. One is a complex version control and product infrastructure system that intermediate users or experts in the domain get familiar with. The other is a coding tutorial series that literally everyone and their dog forks or saves when they start out on learning programming - every college student, every high schooler that has a CS 100, etc. etc.
Also, is there any point to being discovered by the legion of new users and learners on github? What about discovery by people that actually have the inclination and expertise, and have shown the willingness to commit to a smaller user-base because it's FOSS?
Not trying to disprove or devalue your perspective, just trying to point out that the masses might be wrong to choose the popular option to help get "discovered".