←back to thread

Are we decentralized yet?

(arewedecentralizedyet.online)
487 points Bogdanp | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 19:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
Show context
bjourne ◴[30 Aug 25 22:59 UTC] No.45078743[source]▶
So we are not decentralized. Git was a good attempt, but it kind of got centralized around GitHub, GitLab, and other variants. BitTorrent was decentralized, except tracker sites were the natural centralization points. Bitcoin was also decentralized, but still had Coinbase and other sites. Even SMTP is de facto centralized due to the spam problem.
replies(7): >>45078818 #>>45078925 #>>45078972 #>>45079016 #>>45079291 #>>45080072 #>>45085474 #
1. freeopinion ◴[31 Aug 25 03:18 UTC] No.45080072[source]▶
Git is decentralized in exactly the way it was intended to be. I do all my development on my own host. I collaborate with a lot of different remotes. Even when a project insists on using Github, I contribute by forking to my own host, push patches to the forge of my choice, and invite the maintainer to pull from there if they like. A lot of maintainers just mirror to Github and/or Gitlab.

Sure, a lot of people pick one center and stare at it. But there are plenty of centers and that situation is getting better recently. Some even integrate git with ATProto or ActivityPub.