Re: New candidate JEP: 357: Migrate from Mercurial to Git – GitHub issues and the Network effect

[František Kučera]

Dne 26. 07. 19 v 12:22 Emmanuel Bourg napsal(a):
> Assuming the OpenJDK Git repository is first self hosted, a later move
> to GitHub

However there are many developers with GitHub account for whom it might 
be comfortable to clone the repository on GitHub and then use the „pull 
request“ feature there – using such a proprietary service like GitHub 
might be also a barrier for contributors. The Network effect 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect> endangers the healthy 
competitive environment where particular providers offer their service, 
and leads to monopoly and eventually harms the users/customers.

Having a project exclusively on GitHub and accept contribution as pull 
requests there, is not a good way to do free software or open-source, 
because it forces contributors to sign a contract (agree with Terms and 
conditions) with a third party (GitHub).

For many people it might be a commonplace to have signed such contract 
(resp. they usually have not read it) and have such account and they 
have not thought about that decision – they just „registered themselves 
on a webpage“ because they needed that for something at the moment. But 
sum of such unintentional decisions across the individual members of the 
society leads to significant changes on the market and it subsequently 
affects the society and all its members.

Franta