Radicle: A peer-to-peer alternative to GitHub

I&#x27;m impressed and I see potential on this one. I tried different ones over time but most fail at on-boarding. This was seamless and really easy. In about 2 minutes I successfully shared my project and followed known projects. This means this mvp <i>works</i> and it let me craving for more, I want to use this! I want issues and PR support to prove this can effectively work as a github replacement to me.<p>Now, the downside of this mvp is that there is no project discovery in the client itself. We need to go search for projects in a browser, in this page <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seedling.radicle.xyz&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seedling.radicle.xyz&#x2F;</a> which is a bit confusing. Considering the client itself is electron, it could at least, open this page for us somewhere. Or, we could at least have a less &quot;noisy&quot; seedling page focused on search and I would not even know it wasn&#x27;t part of the client itself.<p>Overall, awesome project. I really hope it will grow and add the missing essential features. If I could vote, with priority these would be:<p>- project discovery integrated in the client - issues support - pr support - multiple identities<p>Anyway, great job!

What a nice funky design. That front page has a soul, unlike almost everything else I see nowadays.

We kind of need this yesterday... what&#x27;s the point of having a decentralized git if the issues are centralized at Github? (which, not to make too fine a point of it, is owned by Microsoft). Even if you host your own Gitlab, there is always that day when the hard drive of the server fails and the ops have to spend a weekend restoring backups while changing hosting company because who crashes the hard-drive of an expensive VPS anyway...<p>I hope Radicle gets a lot of funding and tons of adoption.

We are building <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitopia.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitopia.org</a><p>- Permanent Data Storage provided by Arweave<p>- Works from within git with the help of git-remote-helper `npm install -g git-remote-gitopia` so no need to learn new tooling<p>- Built-in incentivization to token holders who also take part in the governance of Gitopia<p>- Token holders share revenue made by the platform<p>- You can mirror your GitHub repositories now using the Github Mirror Action. Follow step by step from here -<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetechtrap.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;push-your-code-to-gitopia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetechtrap.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;push-your-code-to-gitopia&#x2F;</a><p>- We are now working on the governance and collaboration workflows that will enable transparency in open source development and provide the stakeholders to have a say in the direction of the project.<p>You can reach out to us on<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;gitopiaOrg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;gitopiaOrg</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discord.gg&#x2F;mVpQVW3vKE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discord.gg&#x2F;mVpQVW3vKE</a>

How and why is literally everything peer to peer in the tech community also somehow connected to ethereum?

Not to be confused with Radicale; an Open-Source CalDAV and CardDAV Server<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;radicale.org&#x2F;3.0.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;radicale.org&#x2F;3.0.html</a>

This is an interesting idea. I found the &quot;How it Works&quot; page a little confusing and have tried to explain the core ideas in a different way here:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.vmsplice.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;understanding-peer-to-peer-git-forges.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.vmsplice.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;understanding-peer-to-peer-...</a><p>This doesn&#x27;t cover how Radicle works but instead explains the general ideas of peer-to-peer git forges.

I&#x27;ve installed the &quot;upstream&quot; client but I must say that I&#x27;m a bit confused. I imported a couple of git repositories that ended up on <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seedling.radicle.xyz&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seedling.radicle.xyz&#x2F;</a>, so I thought I did it right, but then if I try to add projects from that very page it keeps searching and never finds anything (they&#x27;re stuck in &quot;keep looking&quot; mode).<p>Also I don&#x27;t see how you can create issues. Is it not implemented yet?<p>It&#x27;s an interesting project but it feels like very early alpha-grade to me. The client gives very little feedback on what&#x27;s happening and what you can do.

Awesome project, though the perpetuation of open source software needing to be free is regrettable.<p>&gt; Software as it should be.<p>&gt; Free forever<p>Mostly all popular projects need some form of funding, and setting the expectaction of a free lunch forever for new users is not healthy. Btw, do you remember who used the tagline &quot;It&#x27;s free and always will be&quot;? It was Facebook.

It&#x27;s weird to think P2P is becoming all the craze for &quot;privacy&quot; while it&#x27;s the backbone of the internet: it is p2p. It&#x27;s just nowadays its more of P2(big cloud servers)2p; which could be a good thing depending on who you ask and your usecases.

This looks fun, will give it a go. The inbuilt funding sounds interesting, is that like bounties on issues? Or more like Patreon sponsorships?

I don&#x27;t understand how using Radicle will free my code as they say in the site.<p>So,how is using Radicle better than:<p>1. main repo on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com</a><p>2. mirror repo on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;repo.or.cz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;repo.or.cz</a><p>3. mirror repo on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org</a><p>4. local backup on my device and hard-disk.<p>peer-to-peer is beautiful concept but note that git is already distributed VCS. you can have many remotes and mirrors. Just that p2p is not necessary here in git and using Radicle doesn&#x27;t free my Code.

Looks cool, but the p2p protocol seems over engineered. The problem is not so much how to share the code, you can still use email or some other centralized federated service to communicate with peers. Hell, you can even use S3 to store your backups and EC2 to run CI. The main issue is owning the platform that hosts your code, issues, and other artifacts. A hybrid system that allows you to host code with peers while integrating with existing infrastructure services would be more robust and an easier sell.

Is there a CLI? I can&#x27;t download yet another Electron app and waste 90MB on another Chromium instance.

i think this is technically interesting, but i&#x27;m curious in practice what it gives project maintainers over hosting their own gitlab instance or similar...

Tried out radicle a while back with a recent project - it&#x27;s really cool!

This seems really cool!<p>I am wondering if it can host private repository as well, or is it just meant to host public repositories?

If it&#x27;s free forever I&#x27;ll give four years and check it.up again

&gt; How will issues and PRs work?<p>&gt; Social collaboration features (i.e. bug reports, patches, discussions etc...) are all on the Radicle roadmap. They will work very similarly to the experiences we have now, but will be local-first and cryptographically signed. This means issues, PRs, and discussions will be more secure, available offline, and stored on your machine as git objects — not on a central server!<p>Consider using an existing solution like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dspinellis&#x2F;git-issue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dspinellis&#x2F;git-issue</a> or <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;neithernut&#x2F;git-dit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;neithernut&#x2F;git-dit</a> or <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MichaelMure&#x2F;git-bug" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MichaelMure&#x2F;git-bug</a>

Here are similar P2P git-like projects:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;welldan97&#x2F;WeGit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;welldan97&#x2F;WeGit</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cjb&#x2F;GitTorrent" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cjb&#x2F;GitTorrent</a> - based on BitTorrent<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dhappy&#x2F;git-remote-ipfs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dhappy&#x2F;git-remote-ipfs</a> - based on IPFS<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;noffle&#x2F;hypergit&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;noffle&#x2F;hypergit&#x2F;</a> - based on Dat

I spent a lot of time watching the GIFs on repeat rather than reading the text on the web page. It is quirky, I like the style, but it is a distraction from the message.

Look into how the Linux Kernel and other projects do development. I think a larger issue is why do we need a platform like GitHub when SCM can be done through email?

Or just use Fossil. It&#x27;s already a distributed alternative to github. Every fossil install includes a built in web server with bug tracking and a wiki.

This seems so unnecessary, replace the blockchain stuff with email and you have git as it was originally intended. no custom software needed.

I would like to see a comparison with Sourcehut.

At first glance the desktop client GUI looks really nice and easy to use, which I think is pretty important to get right.<p>Unfortunately it loses a lot of convenience by not having some kind of web interface, even if it&#x27;s only for discovery. One way for something like this to spread is by sharing project URLs that anyone can open in a web browser.

I don&#x27;t understand peer to peer. Is every fork on everyone&#x27;s computer? Who holds the latest source of truth? How does a client know if they are up to date if everyone else around the client is behind?<p>Is there a good resource for learning p2p and how the protocol works around establishing who owns the most up to date data?

I&#x27;d love to see just one (1) sentence on their home page that describes what Radicle is and does. I searched for the simple description by scrolling across the entire web page, from top to bottom, and did not see anything like it. There were all sorts of hints that it could be interesting, but c&#x27;mon.

it would be super interesting to know how private would work

I haven&#x27;t tried it yet, but I really like the concept and what I&#x27;ve seen so far.

For any given P2P system which can be used to share a large amount of files, we can prove the system cannot exist with this question: Is there a way to prevent classified documents of the US stolen by China, or child pornography from being shared using the system?<p>If the answer is yes: I&#x27;m afraid to tell you that the system is not peer-to-peer in the sense that there is a central authority to censor what content is to be shared. Therefore projects like youtube-dl can be easily erased.<p>If the answer is no: Such a system with no possibility of censorship is too dangerous. What if there is literally no way to prevent information that threatens the security of the US from being shared? Fortunately as of now, no such a system exists on the planet. Maybe you now have a vague idea why such a system does not exist.

Is it possible to self host this and isolate it on your own p2p network? Would be really cool to handle the decentralized part on my own computers without needing to hook into the global p2p.<p>Gonna keep an eye on it.

Would you consider linking a white paper off the homepage? (If there is one, I&#x27;m not finding it). I like the sound of this project but I really would like to understand it more fully.

Why do I have to give them my email to even download the client? Is this a product or not?<p>Sure sounds nice though, hope it turns out. Hope they are considering a web frontend for the network as well.

at the end of the LPC2019 talk &quot;Reflections on kernel development process, quality and testing&quot; by Dmitry Vyukov there&#x27;s a slide with some Radicle examples. The following slide he links to a post by Konstantin Ryabitsev &quot;Patches carved into developer sigchains&quot; that shows Securescuttlebut on IPFS as an alternative to Email as decentralized system (search for git-ssb).

Looks cool. Has anyone actually used it?

&quot;Work securely offline&quot;<p>Is... is that a problem with GitHub that stops you from doing that?

Why Ethereum? Why not Bitcoin?

This is incredible. When will a Windows client be a available?

That design is amazing.

This doesn&#x27;t look like &quot;alternative to GitHub&quot; to me; you don&#x27;t need to download any client to use GitHub and having a nice web interface is one of the most defining feature of GitHub.

like other folks who have said this before, the question is who is this for and what is it that github doesnt provide but radicle does?<p>I can have git installed on my device, work locally and instead of pointing to github, have a scuttlebutt like updates for PRs<p>Question is who wants this? and what does this do to open source code?

Very cool!

Is this based on Matrix?

I was interested until I saw the etherium opt-in<p>Keep your cryptocurrency out of my SCM

Gooyz, Windows?

cool! I really love the design!

Isn&#x27;t git peer-to-peer already? Why would anyone need this?

Interesting idea, but &#x27;peer-to-peer&#x27;? Is water wet?

I wonder if they started on an Ethereum 2.0 L2 implementation. Maybe it can actually be almost the same thing?

Trying to read the website drove me away.<p>There&#x27;s a time and a place for this sort of web design. I feel strongly that presenting some software to technical minded people is not.