Safety procedures in place to secure Bitcoin when github takedown?

[greenslope]

In light of the recent takedown of the youtube-dl project by Github, can you please give us a quick rundown of the safety procedures that are currently in place to secure the Bitcoin project metadata (issues / PRs / gists / pages) in the event of a Github disaster or takedown:
- are backups performed periodically? what / when / by whom
- are these backups held publicly (where) or only privately (by whom)
- what is the emergency assembly point (is btctalk/chan/bitmessage appropriate)
- who is in charge with leading the recovery effort? who is second-in-charge?
- has a secondary site been selected? pre-configured? is it compatible with existing backups? p2p options?
- is there a recovery plan, and has it been tested?

It's OK to not have answers to all these questions now, and even more OK to try and find the answers that are missing.

Because you don't need to be a weather man to see how the wind is blowing.

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[pooya87]

In light of the recent takedown of the youtube-dl project by Github,
Because you don't need to be a weather man to see how the wind is blowing.

that is an irrelevant case. a project that is breaking the law (youtube-dl project) will obviously be removed from anywhere on the internet. but this has nothing to do with bitcoin.

to answer your question, bitcoin is not hosted on github to need backing up. bitcoin is a protocol for a decentralized network.
each project implementing this protocol usually has multiple developers and many users. almost all developers have local backups and some of the users also create backups of their favorite projects. in case of any unexpected incident it wouldn't be hard to recover those projects.
but as far as i'm aware since there is no real "danger" there is no serious efforts.

[greenslope]

that is an irrelevant case. a project that is breaking the law (youtube-dl project) will obviously be removed from anywhere on the internet. but this has nothing to do with bitcoin.

LoL, who decides what is "breaking the law" ? You don't understand this? Furthermore, you don't understand :

Some facts and figures of the youtube-dl project, to put the severity of this crime in perspective.

At 18 October 2020:
- issues: 3283 open, 18402 closed
- pull requests: 750 open, 3293 closed
- 17771 commits, 1077 releases, 765 contributors

765 contributors just got their hard work pissed on by a bunch of parasites.

There will be consequences.

to answer your question, bitcoin is not hosted on github to need backing up. bitcoin is a protocol for a decentralized network.
each project implementing this protocol usually has multiple developers and many users. almost all developers have local backups and some of the users also create backups of their favorite projects. in case of any unexpected incident it wouldn't be hard to recover those projects.
but as far as i'm aware since there is no real "danger" there is no serious efforts.

I know that, thanks for the care, but how many commits, gits, comments, and co on github about Bitcoin core and all the related projects ?

THIS IS A MAJOR EVENT IN THE CRYPTO / OPEN SOFT WORLD...

and if you don't see it, nor can understand it, it means that you aren't forthcoming... may I ask you why?

imagine, all of this gone : https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin gone...

[greenslope]

There's similar topic at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5169284.0 which should answer some of your question (even though it should be "Bitcoin source code" rather than "Bitcoin").

- are backups performed periodically? what / when / by whom
- are these backups held publicly (where) or only privately (by whom)

At very least, all bitcoin contributor/developer automatically make private backup when they run command such as git clone or git pull

- what is the emergency assembly point (is btctalk/chan/bitmessage appropriate)

Probably IRC or public mailing which often used by Bitcoin Core developer/contributor

Thanks for sharing this interesting link... I skimmed it, and sadly seems that nothing really substantial was done to alleviate this impending threat... funny how some proposed to use vpn to bypass this previous censorship... but totally useless.

Fundamentally it's not the code source which is at risk, it's way too decentralized. It's more what's all around it with github... that's what needs to decentralized ASAP ! that should be a crypto wide effort, to have at least 2-3 "decentralized github".

[ABCbits]

In light of the recent takedown of the youtube-dl project by Github,
Because you don't need to be a weather man to see how the wind is blowing.

that is an irrelevant case. a project that is breaking the law (youtube-dl project) will obviously be removed from anywhere on the internet. but this has nothing to do with bitcoin.

While it's not related with Bitcoin, it shows that the law could be misused since main reason youtube-dl is removed because it's breaking youtube DRM while there are many ways to break youtube DRM such as using OBS (software) or HDMI recorder (hardware).

Fundamentally it's not the code source which is at risk, it's way too decentralized. It's more what's all around it with github... that's what needs to decentralized ASAP ! that should be a crypto wide effort, to have at least 2-3 "decentralized github".

That makes sense, but majority will keep using GitHub because it's easier/more convenient to use. IMO it's more likely Bitcoin development have it's own centralized website/service (just like Linux kernel at https://www.kernel.org/) where it's hosted on country where Bitcoin development isn't illegal.

[pooya87]

LoL, who decides what is "breaking the law" ? You don't understand this? Furthermore, you don't understand :

the lawmaker!
whether the law is correct or has flaws in it is an entirely different discussion. even bitcoin is criminalized in a handful of countries and if someone owns any amounts of it they could be imprisoned. it is obviously a bullshit law but that doesn't change the fact that doing otherwise is "breaking the law" and is a criminal act.

back to topic

and if you don't see it, nor can understand it, it means that you aren't forthcoming... may I ask you why?

i get what you are trying to say, but the issue is not as big as you think.
bitcoin, the development, source code, all the commits (git), etc are already decentralized. the hosting alone is centralized and there is no better solution to that. whether we replace GitHub with another site (even if it is a bitcoin specific hosting like what Linux does) it is still replacing the centralized problem with another one instead of solving it.
decentralized hosting solutions will also add a lot more issues that are more serious than what you are pointing out here.

[greenslope]

While it's not related with Bitcoin, it shows that the law could be misused since main reason youtube-dl is removed because it's breaking youtube DRM while there are many ways to break youtube DRM such as using OBS (software) or HDMI recorder (hardware).

When the laws isn't abused? If

Another : screencapture software like Kazam...

majority will keep using GitHub because it's easier/more convenient to use.

That's the idea behind the corral system...

Is this what you're looking for https://github.com/cjb/gittorrent? Someone mentioned it when i was searching more information about youtube-dl takedown.
Take note it's only proof of concept which described on detail at https://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittorrent-a-decentralized-github/

exactly something along the line (didn't check but just the name means they got the concept, just a decentralized p2p clone of github, with zeronet key system for authentication.

the lawmaker!
whether the law is correct or has flaws in it is an entirely different discussion. even bitcoin is criminalized in a handful of countries and if someone owns any amounts of it they could be imprisoned. it is obviously a bullshit law but that doesn't change the fact that doing otherwise is "breaking the law" and is a criminal act.

back to topic

OT : what if you follow an unjust law, what does it makes off you? (hint : Nuremberg trial).

“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

i get what you are trying to say, but the issue is not as big as you think.
bitcoin, the development, source code, all the commits (git), etc are already decentralized. the hosting alone is centralized and there is no better solution to that. whether we replace GitHub with another site (even if it is a bitcoin specific hosting like what Linux does) it is still replacing the centralized problem with another one instead of solving it.
decentralized hosting solutions will also add a lot more issues that are more serious than what you are pointing out here.

yeah, sorry, I may have been a little tense on this remark. But certainly some propagandists of this corporation serving the agenda of the corral"ler" will come here to try to spin us, divide us, to foster the totalitarian objectives of this deviant corporation.

you are however 100% on target with replacing a censor-able system with another one. It's a systemic issue with all centralized services, be it from the "laws" or "private" take over.

the solution proposed by ETF seems nice : https://github.com/cjb/gittorrent

the only small hurdle is the authentication system to the repository maintainers...  easy with cryptos...

we have to defeat them, fully and wholly so that they can't technically corral us into their slave/extermination system... it's a really serious matter to keep a digital space free from tyrannical maniacs...

Thanks all for your contributions...

we are gonna win ! p2p "github clone" here we come...

(should be operation by monday).

[NotATether]

In light of the recent takedown of the youtube-dl project by Github,
Because you don't need to be a weather man to see how the wind is blowing.

that is an irrelevant case. a project that is breaking the law (youtube-dl project) will obviously be removed from anywhere on the internet. but this has nothing to do with bitcoin.

Off-topic, and unpopular opinion, but worth mentioning: Youtube-dl is not an illegal project, because it’s intended to be used for downloading the m3u8 video files that make up the video stream, and virtually all video-hosting sites break up videos into small chunks that are easily downloadable on slow connections. Then these are put together to make the whole video. Browsers, and youtube-dl, both do this and there is nothing illegal about splitting and putting back together videos.

What is illegal is decrypting the DRM and then downloading a DRM-protected video or music file. Spotify, Netflix and Hulu all protect their media with DRM; YouTube, however, does not. The music videos available can be geoblocked but there is no DRM protection implemented. And because youtube-dl doesn’t support these sites, and doesn’t implement any DRM, it isn’t breaking any law from the legal point of view. Even Google doesn’t have a legal issue with youtube-dl, they just change their protocols which breaks youtube-dl frequently and obviously Google does not support youtube-dl so this is expected from them. There is no clause in Youtube ToS that says “you are prohibited from downloading videos for offline consumption from our servers”.

I agree that people shouldn’t be downloading copyrighted videos. But the number of copyrighted music videos on YouTube is extremely tiny compared to the rest of the videos there, less than 0.01% (estimate). RIAA thinks youtube-dl is only used for piracy which is completely false, that’s equivalent of saying someone put copyrighted content on the blockchain and then because it’s downloaded by everyone, then RIAA thinks bitcoin is being used for piracy (also an absurd claim).

With that logic, why doesn’t RIAA issue DMCAs to browsers that internally download videos from Youtube? Because that’s crazy, and would create a huge backlash. And now everyone who uses youtube-dl legally are probably up in arms about this.

RIAA has a long history of DMCA’ing anything that remotely looks like piracy. Streamers regularly get DMCAs for playing music on their devices in the background while they record themselves, even if it’s only a few seconds (a bot listens to the video and makes the DMCA). As if anybody can recreate the original copyrighted song or if people are interested in listening to that. Don’t you think, that overzealous legal efforts like this current one are harmful?

(Yes, I am a youtube-dl user, but I never downloaded copyrighted stuff with it. That’s what makes me particularly upset about this DMCA.)


On topic, OP can make a private Git server and keep that in sync with Bitcoin’s Github repo, if OP is up to it.

[PrimeNumber7]

to answer your question, bitcoin is not hosted on github to need backing up. bitcoin is a protocol for a decentralized network.

The OP is not referring to the bitcoin code, he is referring to "issues / PRs / gists / pages" on the bitcoin repo on github.

If someone identifies a problem with the bitcoin code, they will open an issue, and if someone upgrades (or changes) the code in some way, they will open a pull request to be reviewed (and if approved) and merged by the maintainers of the bitcoin repo.

Major vulnerabilities should be reported privately, and collaboration on major upgrades are done are likely done outside of github among the maintainers.

I do think the OP has somewhat of a point. If the /bitcoin repo is not backed up regularly, any bug reports and bug fixes not yet fixed/implemented respectively will need to be resent to the maintainers via an alternative means (assuming there is no backup mechanism of the /bitcoin repo)

[gmaxwell]

There is continual realtime mirroring of all that stuff.

Maybe a couple of the most recent updates might get lost if github shuts it down, but otherwise it shouldn't be a big deal.

At different points parties connected to wright and ver indicated that they were going to do this, though they haven't yet.  You should just assume it'll happen eventually and when it does it'll be a little disruptive but otherwise not be a big deal.

FWIW, the story would be pretty much the same on any other hosting service.

[NotATether]

The OP is not referring to the bitcoin code, he is referring to "issues / PRs / gists / pages" on the bitcoin repo on github.

Yep, the problem with Github is that issues/PRs/the wiki are not stored in version control like the code is, as there is no standard for storing this kind of metadata. So even if you make a mirror of a Git repo, it will not include the issues and PRs as those are Github-specific metadata.

There exists no viable solution to this problem because no tool exists yet that can identify the Git hosting provider used, and export it’s metadata to a machine-readable file for importing to another provider, partly because providers offer no viable way to import this metadata.

What will probably end up happening is somebody's going to develop a set of Git plugins that do this and they will be bundled with the main Git program. Every person and business using Github already has Git so making a Git extension that’s included by default is much easier to adopt than the various stand-alone command line Github exporters (to human readable files).

[j2002ba2]

For quite some time there is already a bitcoin git mirror on laanwj (Wladimir) server:
http://nxshomzlgqmwfwhcnyvbznyrybh3gotlfgis7wkv7iur2yj2rarlhiad.onion/
https://laanwj.github.io/2018/06/08/tor-repository.html

This includes also the issues (bitcoin-gh-meta), and three major lightning implementations.