This week I came across an old article about the 18 projects that were removed from GitHub at the request of the RIAA. The main target of the locks was the youtube-dl project, a Python library that was used in many tools and services for copying YouTube videos.
Moreover, no specific claims were made. The blocking occurred on the basis of a simple appeal of this type: youtube-d was allegedly created with the sole purpose of stealing music and videos from services such as YouTube. Naturally, this is all not true. But now in the post-truth world, such stories surprise no one.
In June 2018, when Microsoft bought GitHub for $ 7.5 billion, the community actively discussed the topic of dependence of 90% of free software, which located its repositories on GitHub from the global software giant. GitHub is the largest repository of software code and the largest community of programmers on the planet. Many have spoken out in favor of creating an independent platform for open source software repositories. But over the past 2 years, almost nothing has been done.
Unless, of course, we do not count the Chinese analogue of Gitee, which now already contains more than 10 million repositories and is used by more than 5 million programmers. But you need to understand that China is not an ideal place to create a truly independent platform. By the way, GitHub itself in China is blocked by a Chinese firewall.
But the most interesting thing is that the only place where the bitcoin code lies and is regularly updated is precisely GitHub, which belongs to the same corporation of goodness and justice - Microsoft, which always cares about us.
And where is the guarantee that one day some other private company that cares about the happy future of all mankind, will not write such a letter saying that bitcoin was created for drug trafficking and terrorist financing and therefore GitHub should delete the bitcoin repository?
There are no guarantees. Moreover, it will be surprising and suspicious if this does not happen. For example after the launch of the digital dollar.
Naturally, the community can create a mirror of the bitcoin repository on the bitcoin.org website, as they actually did in the youtube-dl project, but it looks very crooked and there is no programmer cooperation functionality, version history and much more.
Probably, the bitcoin community should think about this in the near future. Otherwise, the kind uncle Billy, who claims to be no less than the savior of the world, can bring down the market with one call. (after opening a short position.))
Two years ago, Bill Gates made a splash with his claim that cryptocurrency is a rare technology that literally leads to death.
And fighting deadly dangers and viruses is Bill Gates' main hobby.
