[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Pat Tressel]

> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free for
> open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps a lot in
> getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But ... in two years,
> they may start shipping sponsors links at the end of the Readme files, and
> in a moments notice you have to watch 20 seconds ads before cloning. At
> this point, you will want to bail out, only to find out that in fact you
> can not, because you can not delete the project anymore, or the issue
> tracker database can not be exported ...
>

Apologies for disagreeing, but...  This is a misunderstanding of the
economics of online businesses.  I'm worried that the statements of
approval of this claim may skew future choices, and cause more work and
hassle and expense.

The companies that make money by showing advertising are *content
providers* such as newspapers, TV networks, Q&A sites,...  They have *no
other source of revenue*.

Hosting sites like GitHub make their money from *paid accounts*.  They do
not need advertising revenue.  Just because the "public" face of GitHub is
their free accounts does not mean that is the bulk of their activity.  It
is very common, and popular, for cloud sites to have a free tier.  Even
production hosting sites do this.

It is good marketing and helps train folks to use their tools, so that when
the time comes to recommend a hosting site or platform for a commercial
project, they will naturally gravitate to the site they're already using
and like.

The idea that GitHub, or Heroku, or OpenShift, or Gitorious, or Bitbucket,
or Pythonanywhere, or ShinyApps, or... would at some point go "Hah!  You're
trapped!" and start demanding payment for free accounts, inserting
compulsory advertising, or otherwise attacking their clients is so odd that
I have never before heard it expressed as a serious concern in any
open-source organization.  Given that GitHub is Linus Torvald's project,
there may be poison pills in their charter to prevent this even in a
hostile takeover.  Imagine the reaction if one of these companies did what
is being suggested. Their clients would vanish.  It's not hard to move from
site to site, especially if one is using a DVCS like git.  The folks
running these companies are not stupid, and most of the companies are
associated with open source in some way.

-- Pat
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