> where there is a proper, centralized, version online
Linux has a proper, centralized, version online. Still their collaboration workflow (they use the email workflow) is decentralised.
I think everybody uses GitHub now because they don't know the email workflow, and it's more convenient to have one account on GitHub than having one account on every instance of GitLab you contribute to. And I guess most people only know the GitHub web interface and don't really feel like using something else.
My point being that there are many reasons why everybody is using GitHub, but it does not mean that the PR workflow is better. What do you think?
All my current customers are using Bitbucket, but it's the same.
They may look like centralized repositories but they are not. We have our own local repositories, sometimes even more than one for the same project, and we use the GitHub or Bitbucket one only to sync some branches between developers.
It's not what used to be with centralized systems. The only copy of the repository was on the server. Locally developers only had files sometimes with a global lock such that nobody could work on the same file at the same time.
That's the real advantage of having a system like git in combination with a server like GitHub.
The PRs are nice but not everybody use them. Sometimes it's only merge and push.
One other distinction I would make between this and the email centric workflow that (almost) every mailing list that I know of these days has is the inclusion of a publicly accessible URL with an index of messages.
The LKML [mirror][] has a page with links to the various lists, but if you dig around in those links, there doesn’t appear to be a way to post new items or reply to existing messages in a browser. It’s just text - The mechanism of action is still sending emails to various handles to perform these activities.
Yeah to me it's a feature. I don't need everything in a browser. In fact I am happier with dedicated programs (an email client, an FTP server, an IRC client, etc).
It means that I can choose a client that works for me. Whereas I cannot choose the UI I want for GitHub.
Linux has a proper, centralized, version online. Still their collaboration workflow (they use the email workflow) is decentralised.
I think everybody uses GitHub now because they don't know the email workflow, and it's more convenient to have one account on GitHub than having one account on every instance of GitLab you contribute to. And I guess most people only know the GitHub web interface and don't really feel like using something else.
My point being that there are many reasons why everybody is using GitHub, but it does not mean that the PR workflow is better. What do you think?