It is getting tight
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holy crap ā¦ they really try to take the fun out of everything ā¦
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I like their tag line too. āSimple, distributed, fast. Pick any threeā
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This is an opportunity = yet another push in favour of SAFE and similar efforts. See:
In the short term Iām working on a virtual drive for SAFE which would give a crude alternative: mount your SAFE storage locally and use that as a shared repo. I understand that this approach is supported by git for collaborative working, because it is designed to work via a shared network drive (although Iāve never tried it myself).
Iām not sure how well that would work for serious stuff, but for individuals and small groups it may be OK.
Alternatively we could implement the git http protocol. I did look at that but it seems more complex than FUSE (at least to research) and think a virtual drive is more useful all round. Still, git http is relatively easy compared to a github replacement.
What we really want is github/gitlab or similar on SAFE, but thatās a significant project and beyond me.
P. S. If anyone wants to collaborate on the virtual drive please get in touch. I donāt have much time but have the basics in place all the same, so can easily push the framework and point out tasks. Essentially writing FUSE operators in JavaScript that talk to SAFE NFS using the SAFE Nodejs library, or getting the mount framework working and packaged as an executable for Linux, Win and Mac (this is started so, fairly easy to pick up and continue).
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There is no need to make it a component of the SAFE protocol (network). It is an APP level concept and anyone who creates the APP will have the Killer App for programmers.
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We should at least open source in a few places like say bitbucket too, shouldnāt be too difficult to auto-port the repository
SAFE micropayments for code contributions. OSS development on steroids.
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I misinterpreted this then. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
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Indeed. Now, that being said, the main issue right now is that MS is buying github.
I will move the few code that I am culpript of, not sure where yet, and will close my GH account. First because I do not trust a single word from MS, and second to add my tiny drop to the contestation stream, for what it is worth. I will certainly not accept my tiny drop to be used to āopensourcewashā the company that deployed windows worldwide.
Now what really matters, is what will be Maidsafeās position on this ? MS acquisition means they will host the SAFE code, with all future possible implications if they wish to change how they run Github.
Countless libraries and frameworks will now be under MS hands, including Electron and a huge amount of Rust crates and Node modules.
I suppose it is a bit early, and that it has to be a PR nightmare, but I would very much like to know what the plans are @maidsafe.
Also, what is your position if you are a non Maidsafe employee, Safe apps/ libraries developer ?
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I support your decision but while Iām also unhappy with this, it doesnāt change much for me personally as I was already unhappy using github for precisely this reason.
So until there is an alternative that lets me contribute to SAFE Network at least as well, Iāll probably focus my efforts on advocating that alternative and helping SAFE Network become that alternative. That said, things are in flux right now, so my view may change.
For those reasons I hope @MaidSafe remain focused on getting SAFE done first, and then looking at this rather than letting it distract them. It poses no imminent threat - the deal will probably not be done until the end of the year (according to Microsoft) so little can change until then at least.
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Yes, I also think this is the best thing to do. Migrating to another platform would take time and ressources and could delay launch.
On the other hand, maybe it would be a good time for projects like Maidsafe to prepare an emergency exit by cloning their code on another platform, or their own, so that if things really become bad at some point, they are not taken in panic at last moment.
Hopefully it will not be necessary and the code self hosts on the Safe network 
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Read this. Already done
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thank you, I had missed this one.
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Lets be realistic here guys, its not the end of the world that MS will own Github in the near future. You will probably see some annoying ads or Clippy asking you about your git push request
But I do like the idea this thread has sparked as I had not thought of that. A decentralized Github implementation on SAFE as well as a decentralized SVN implementation on SAFE would be very valuable. Personally I would like to see MaidSafe attempt at tackling some of the first to market bigger apps on their network mainly because I want them to have a few 4-5 very big coin income pipelines so they can continue to attract/hire developers to work on the network/projects.
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I also donāt see anything to fear in the short term. The move by Microsoft is almost certainly designed to take the fight to AWS which has generally been more attractive to developers than Azure, to boost Visual Studio and to polish their open source credentials. Developers have a lot of power these days and Microsoft know that.
Long term itās probably worth looking for alternatives though as they will doubtless try to monetise their expensive purchase in all the usual ways and itās always good to avoid being locked in.
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git-ssb looks nice (git on secure scuttlebutt):
I like this approach for two reasons:
- serverless/decentralised, secure, works now
- the scuttlebutt ālogā based approach could be easily adapted for SAFE Network
Nice article:
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