Do You Use Github

I live under a rock. Have been like that for a while now. One day, I got asked by a non-techie friend, ‘Do you use GitHub?’

I did not understand why that was even a question. I said, ‘Sure, almost every day.’

After a few volleys of ‘Seriously?’ and ‘Yeah, why?’, I felt something was wrong. I googled. I came across a piece of cringe-worthy news and a couple of videos explaining what GitHub is.

I had to talk about this.

Let my start by saying that apps like Bulli Bai are abominable. GitHub was one place I thought was untouched by such hate, but now … well.

But what exactly is GitHub?

One video I watched was by Shekhar Gupta (or Gupta Uncle, as he is known in my family). Given his non-tech background and the limited time he had for context, he did a pretty good job of telling the uninitiated what GitHub is.

But, I am going to try to do better, because this is my home turf. Of course, I cannot be as concise as he was. At the same time, I will keep this non-tech.

The world of computers is full of metaphors like a mouse, monitor, keyboard, etc. Git … is unknown. Git, in its literal sense, means “stupid”. But Git is much more than that.

To get some real-world analogy, let us take a product. Say, Coke (the soft drink, not the powder). We know it to be a guarded secret; has been one for over a century. What goes into it or how it is made is unknown to the masses. If you stand outside one of their factories, you will see truckloads of raw materials arrive, and truckloads of bottles or cans of Coke leaving the premises. What happens within the factory is a secret.

In the software world, this is like proprietary software. Those that work for the company that makes the software know how it’s made. Some examples for this are Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Google Search, etc.

Now, imagine a factory making this other great soft drink. This factory has cameras everywhere, and a portal that lets you access these cameras. You choose a camera, it shows you a part of the factory. You can click on the machine and the web page will give you details about what the machine does and how it works. If you want to visit the factory, you can. If you go into the factory, spot an inefficient machine and tell them you can help them make it better, they point you to the machine’s owner who listens to you about your suggestion for a modification and allows you to do that. Why, she gets a couple of people to assist you as well.

This is what open source software development works like. Everyone knows what goes into making that software, and a lot of people keep an eye on its quality, making it become better all that time.

Some examples of this are Mozilla Firefox, Signal (the messenger), Chromium (on which Chrome and Edge browsers are based), and LInux, the operating system that powers most of the web.

Gupta Uncle mentions Linux Torvalds in his video. Linus is the man behind Linux. He is also the one that created Git, which is the basis of GitHub.

Now to what is Git.

Every piece of software is code that gets compiled. Code is a set of instructions given to the computer. The instructions get fed into a compiler. Think of the code as the raw materials, and the compiler as the machine into which the raw materials go. What comes out is the compiled piece of software, also called a “package” or an “app”.

People keep adding lines of code, other people compile them and churn out these packages (these days, automated processes do the latter work). Sometimes it so happens that the code someone wrote breaks code that already existed. Imagine you went to modify a machine, and while in the process, you ended up taking out a conveyor belt to make space for a new component that you wanted to add.

To reduce rework, it is important for us to “go back in time”, so to speak. This is where “source control” like Git comes into the picture. With Git, you cna go like, ‘Okay, the code worked at 8 AM today. Let us go back four hours to that point.’ Git helps our code time-travel.

GitHub is a social network for software people. Going back to our factory analogy, think of GitHub as an industrial estate, where a lot of engineers, software companies, college students, interns, auditors and all get together to solve problems. Every day, millions of lines of code get committed into repositories on GitHub.

GitHub runs on Git. It supercharges Git’s collaboration.

Now, what is the deal with Bulli Bai? How come it was “made by GitHub”?

GitHub, like I said, is an industrial estate. It doesn’t make any apps, apart from tools that help make software. These are not meant for “end users”. GitHub did not make Bulli Bai; I cannot stress this enough.

What GitHub probably did was end up hosting Bulli Bai, but it is not what it sounds like.

After Coke gets manufactured, it gets bottled or canned. These then go to the warehouses, after which, they reach your nearby stores through what is called the “retail channel”.

The case is similar in case of apps; the apps get made and reach your Android, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon app stores. These stores are like malls, where you go to get your software (or books or music subscriptions).

But have you heard of “factory outlets”? These are little stores that are right outside the factories, selling those products that the factory makes. Now, imagine these factories themselves were in an industrial estate and the industrial estate said, ‘Every factory you rent out comes with an attached store where you can sell your products if you want to.’

GitHub does this using what is called “Releases” and “GitHub Pages”. Like any factory can set up its store within this industrial estate, anyone can release their app packages on GitHub. GitHub does not own these apps; it only owns the space. GitHub Pages is a place where you can host your site (say, an online store) and link to your product releases.

For Android, this release is in the form of an APK package. This way, you don’t need to go into the Google Playstore mall, but instead, get the package from the factory outlet and install it on your phone.

This is what happened with Bulli Bai.

Now, am I saying GitHub deserves no criticism? No. But was GitHub responsible for spreading this hate? Yes, but not in the way that people are making it out to be. The problem here is not GitHub. GitHub cannot possibly keep an eye on the “tonnes” of software packages that are there on the platform. What it can do is take action on packages that get reported. Much like the real world. In case of a crime, you call the police; the police do not detect the crime by themselves. Yes, there is patrol, but that is extremely limited; GitHub is no different. GitHub, much like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., is a platform where millions of people do millions of things. When someone reports something going wrong is when the platform can take action.

Which is what happened in case of Bulli Bai as well.

Now, I do not know enough about the legal processes involved in this, or on what terms the US and India work in this context, so, I will not comment on that. The goal of this post was to give the non-techies in you an introduction to what GitHub is all about, so that you don’t call your techie children or siblings or friends or special-someone and go all judgemental.

Peace.

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