There is no official XScreenSaver GitHub repository

(github.com)

28 points by st_goliath2 hours ago

8 comments

bcvvvy17 minutes ago
GitHub is not authoritative and never should be considered as authoritative. Anyone can publish your stuff on there as your name.It’s a huge problem. Glad to see he’s at least put a placeholder on there.
amiga38619 minutes ago
Jeff Merkey is the person claiming the "xscreensaver" organisation on GitHub, despite it not being, and never has been, his project.He has promised to drop that and move the repo to /hisname/xscreensaver, but only if JWZ flatters his ego first. Sounds like he knows he's squatting on someone else's good name, but thinks he's so clever and well versed in trademark law that he'd be deliberately antagonistic all the way to the end of a huge legal bill. Just to force him to do the right thing.He knows what the right thing is and could do it at any time, but just look at his priors and tell me he'll do that:<a href="https://www.dmlp.org/threats/merkey-v-does" rel="nofollow">https://www.dmlp.org/threats/merkey-v-does</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Jeffrey_Vernon_Merkey" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitra...</a>
altairprime1 hour ago
The only thing missing is to mark it as Archived so that all of the GitHub features are turned off.
throwaway203717 minutes ago
[flagged]
createful1 hour ago
So what's the point of making a GitHub if you're not going to publish source code? Is this an inside joke?
- nevon57 minutes ago
  To prevent impersonation and having people download potential malware from repositories posing as the official xscreensaver distribution channel.
cookiengineer1 hour ago
Instead of providing a mirrored repository, they decided to intentionally not fixing the correctly identified problem while simultaneously still living 30 years in the past.Setting up a git mirror that auto syncs takes less than 2mins of effort. And way less time than writing up this README that's just there to lecture people. If it's about disagreement with github, there's also better alternatives.You can still setup the mirror and be done with it, and put the original repo links at the top in the README.
- st_goliath44 minutes ago
 The upstream has no public repository, neither on GitHub nor anywhere else.JWZ might not even use git in the first place, the source might be in a local SVN repo, or just a series of tarballs and patches, assuming it is version controlled at all.
- pil0u1 hour ago
 It's obvious that the author wants to make a statement, and has their own reason to not expose their work on GitHub. Setting up a mirror would probably contradict these reasons.
- mykhamill39 minutes ago
 Right now, I would love to live 30 years in the past.
- cxr39 minutes ago
 > You can still setup the mirror and be done with it, and put the original repo links at the top in the READMEThere is no original repo to link to. That's why the README says that there isn't one.> Setting up a git mirror that auto syncs takes less than 2minsProve it.
- antiloper42 minutes ago
 > they decided to intentionally not fixing the correctly identified problemWhich problem?
- messe1 hour ago
 > Maybe someone should fork xscreensaver as xscreensaver-ng as a community project?Feel free.
- sick_of_slop21 minutes ago
 Or they could not. It’s their project they can do what they want you are not entitled to their labour.