Hmm based on this, the .org tld and the server providers can have control over the project too. Right? If so, we should use an open source distributed protocol.
For what it's worth, the conditions for termination from the Public Interest Registry (.org's registry) are slightly better than Github. PIR has a five-items list of possible reasons: https://pir.org/policies/org-idn-policies/takedown-policy/ while "GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time."
> Hmm based on this, the .org tld and the server providers can have control over the project too. Right?
No, pretty obviously not. For the domain, this has already been answered. For the servers, it's trivial to move your setup to a different hoster with no visible effects to the outside.
> If so, we should use an open source distributed protocol.
Also, with git you have a repository as soon as you start using it. If you mean something like a centralized repository server: No, you don't actually need that. You can serve a git repository from your workstation just fine for others to pull from. Or you can just move changes around via email.
Also, there are way more ways to use email than for mailing lists. You could also use it as a transport for machine-readable messages between git frontends or whatever.
In and case, I don't get what point you are trying to make.
It sounded like you were saying "instead of using GitHub (with git obviously), you can use just git and email". My comment was basically trying to say "without a repository how will people find you, how will they catch up on recent dev, how will they view past emails, etc., unless you have a central repository of some sort".
I'm not sure how "just give people direct access to my local git" fills that massive hole, so I assumed your mention of email included implicitly something like a listserve. Otherwise your suggestion seems entirely unworkable to me?
So one of us is missing something. Are you really proposing p2p git + email alone with no other infrastructure? Do you think that's at all optimal?
I'm not saying there is anything necessarily wrong with a centralized repository server or a mailing list, but I just wasn't talking about software, but about protocols, which can be used in that way or other ways.
Though it is maybe useful to distinguish "central repository that publishes the authoritative version" and "central repository that contributors push to", two functions that GitHub kindof purposefully confuses.
The former is what is useful for discovery and catching up, but doesn't need accounts/authentication (for the "public side" of things), it just needs a stable public identity and availability. The latter is technically completely unnecessary with git: There is absolutely no problem with merging a branch from a repository hosted on a completely different server than the authoritative repository. It's just a business decision of GitHub to build a closed system that requires you to enter into a contract with them in order to submit a merge request that is limited to branches hosted on their platform, to create an artificial network effect for their platform.
After all, the primary problem is not that people choose to host a project on GitHub. It's that they demand (or allow GitHub to make that demand with them as voluntary hostages) that you also host your branches on GitHub, or else you can't contribute. If I am a happy Bitbucket customer, or I happen to run my own git server, there is no way for me to submit a merge request to GitHub specifying a branch hosted whereever I happen to be hosting my git repositories.
But no, I was not suggesting any particular implementation, I was just pointing out that those two protocols do exist and can be used, in many ways, as a basis for decentralized Free Software development. And while p2p git certainly is not the solution to all problems, it can be a perfectly useful tool--and with some more tooling around it possibly moreso than what is practical today.
