Github staff Jake Boxer disables #GamerGate operation disrespectful nod repository
Little background information,
Last night (October 3) Github developer Jake Boxer disabled the GamerGate github repository containing documents for "Operation Disrespectful Nod". Which contained documents for a letter writing campaign to advertisers for the publishers of the game media articles declaring gamers dead just over a month ago. Here's a link to an image of the removal request for if/when the original tweet is eventually removed.
Jake previously voiced his disapproval for intel pulling ads from Gamasutra claiming: "While we wait for @Intel to correct this, here's @leighalexander's fantastic piece that they pulled ads because of ..." original tweet along with "@leighalexander so fucking angry that this happened. thank you so much for the writing and work that you do." original tweet, Backup Image for both.
Note @leighalexander is Leigh Alexander Editor At Large for Gamasutra, author of 'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over.
Reddit is also up in arms over a "rogue" employee being allowed to delete repositories that, to my knowledge, don't violate Githubs terms of service.
So what's the Pipedot's take on this? Is it ok seeing as Github is a private entity, maybe they don't have to host anything they don't want. Maybe it's time to start migrating my personal repos to other services in case electrical diagramming or web development offends someone.
I could be wrong, but isn't Pipdot's code hosted in Github?
Cross posting to SoylentNews
Last night (October 3) Github developer Jake Boxer disabled the GamerGate github repository containing documents for "Operation Disrespectful Nod". Which contained documents for a letter writing campaign to advertisers for the publishers of the game media articles declaring gamers dead just over a month ago. Here's a link to an image of the removal request for if/when the original tweet is eventually removed.
Jake previously voiced his disapproval for intel pulling ads from Gamasutra claiming: "While we wait for @Intel to correct this, here's @leighalexander's fantastic piece that they pulled ads because of ..." original tweet along with "@leighalexander so fucking angry that this happened. thank you so much for the writing and work that you do." original tweet, Backup Image for both.
Note @leighalexander is Leigh Alexander Editor At Large for Gamasutra, author of 'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over.
Reddit is also up in arms over a "rogue" employee being allowed to delete repositories that, to my knowledge, don't violate Githubs terms of service.
So what's the Pipedot's take on this? Is it ok seeing as Github is a private entity, maybe they don't have to host anything they don't want. Maybe it's time to start migrating my personal repos to other services in case electrical diagramming or web development offends someone.
I could be wrong, but isn't Pipdot's code hosted in Github?
Cross posting to SoylentNews
For uses like that you don't need "a legal leg to stand on". And: "don't rely on the thing". If you mean with "rely" something like a guaranteed availability, you are right. But I doubt anyone does this. Even GamerGate apparently was able to move their project in a very short time to Gitorious. Does not sound like they put all their eggs in one basket and everything was lost when GitHub closed their gates for them.
So, for the users of the free service, stunts like that are only inconvenient. They may lose a backup. They might to have to change their websites. READMEs in downloaded code might suddenly point to dead repositories. There will be support requests of users, who are not experienced enough to switch from one git repo to another. Nothing of this is really a disaster. It is mostly annoying.
The question is, what is it for GitHub? Why do you think they offer the free service? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Hardly. So, how do they make money with it? Could it be that they speculate that groups, which are used to use free GitHub hosting, might change someday to a paid plan? That maybe someone who had a good experience with free GitHub might propose to use GitHub when his company evaluates possible hosting solutions?
This certainly will not happen when someone got burned by purely political decisions like in this GamerGate case. Maybe they have shot themselves in the foot with it. And to be honest... I really hope so.