GitHub, Firewalls, and Freedom

Dafydd Harries pointed me to this announcement of a "Firewall Install" version of GitHub. Basically, it's a locally installed version of GitHub designed to serve those that, “wish to enjoy the benefits of GitHub, but are unable to do so because of corporate restrictions or laws that prevent you from hosting your code with a third-party service.”

Daf and I put a little time in writing up a short reflection which I've posed over on autonomo.us. Our key points are that this represents an important compromise in the rough direction of autonomy by an important cloud player and that, unexpectedly perhaps, it has been motivated by organizations under strong institutional pressures — groups like large firms and governments. Although it certainly makes sense that these players would be reluctant to “outsource” to centralized systems, we argue that these groups might provide an unlikely ally in at least part of the fight for autonomy.

Syndicated 2009-06-09 11:35:38 from Benjamin Mako Hill