> Before 2007, the way to participate in Open Source was fragmented. Each project had their own workflow, patches circulated in emails, issues were reported in a myriad ways, and if anyone wanted to contribute they had to figure out every project's rules.
And it was much better IMO. Now we have a centralized website, in the hands of a single corporation, which requires nonfree JavaScript for much of the basic functionality[1]. Git was designed to work well with email and has commands built-in to format, send and apply patches. I think anyone who used email for patches seriously will agree that they are largely superior to GitHub's pull requests.
The free software movement being fragmented is a good thing. GitHub is the land of trends: web developers using Mac OS X who make apps with the latest trendy frameworks like React and Angular (if you think that's a misportrayal, look at the first three pages of the most starred repositories on GitHub[2]). These people don't care about the free software movement, they're just following the current trends, one of which is "Open Source". But if they really cared about free software, they would not be using Mac OS X or GitHub, which requires you to run nonfree JavaScript code in your browser to report issues, open pull requests, etc.
The serious projects that do care about free software don't use GitHub.
As someone who sometimes feels like the only one who remembers both the world before GitHub-style pull requests and the benefits that patches have over them, I can appreciate your ode to patches and the way that Git was designed to handle them. Not really excited about your no-true-Scotsman-ing, though.
And it was much better IMO. Now we have a centralized website, in the hands of a single corporation, which requires nonfree JavaScript for much of the basic functionality[1]. Git was designed to work well with email and has commands built-in to format, send and apply patches. I think anyone who used email for patches seriously will agree that they are largely superior to GitHub's pull requests.
The free software movement being fragmented is a good thing. GitHub is the land of trends: web developers using Mac OS X who make apps with the latest trendy frameworks like React and Angular (if you think that's a misportrayal, look at the first three pages of the most starred repositories on GitHub[2]). These people don't care about the free software movement, they're just following the current trends, one of which is "Open Source". But if they really cared about free software, they would not be using Mac OS X or GitHub, which requires you to run nonfree JavaScript code in your browser to report issues, open pull requests, etc.
The serious projects that do care about free software don't use GitHub.
[1]: See Mike Gerwitz's GitHub Does Not Value Software Freedom: https://mikegerwitz.com/about/githubbub
[2]: https://github.com/search?q=stars:%3E1&s=stars&type=Reposito...