hnysacct

Well the PR got merged, and finally he responded to my original request via email:

"Im sorry I did not get back sooner as I and another family member have been unwell in bed most of the last week.

I'd like to you for spoiling my Christmas

Now, someone hacked the server and deleted the whole gitpay database.

This was just volunteer work, so that open source developers like myself who get no pay might be able to a tiny amount of donations.

I have now lost a huge amount of work.

I hope you feel quite satisfied."

Curious about that too now.

It's too easy to misuse PHP that way. Though I think enabling E_STRICT would produce a warning.

Exactly. You don't have control over other services spawning up accounts for you. Which is just an annoyance if they have a way for you to take the information down (most do) but when they don't... that's a problem.

A bunch of freelancer and recruiting type sites do that as well. However they make it easy for you to have your information removed.

> Is it like a Silicon-Valley-esque VC numbers pumping game or what?

That is my initial thought too. If you create a website and create shadow accounts or "LinkedData" then you're creating the illusion that you have a larger following than you really do.

Whether that was gitpay's intention, probably not.

> So he's using the word correctly, no need to "accuse" you of anything. If anything, his phrasing of "May I request that you please do not initiate. unsolicited mails to members of the github team" is very polite, correct, and quite reasonable.

I guess I didn't see it that way, as yes English is not my native language. So I initially took the response as negative and as an accusation, I tend to take accusations quite seriously.

> The way you're going about this entire conversation is simply too much. It sounds like you've reached out to multiple personal emails, created multiple issues, responded to those issues asking for updates, and brought the issue to social media in less than a day. During the holidays. That's overwhelming and doesn't put the devs on your side.

Not at all. All that I've done is sent an email.. waited to hear back. Haven't heard back, thought it'd be a good idea to submit a pull request, and then took the conversation to github.

I have not been badgering the dev on multiple emails or social accounts at all.

wrong domain: Gitpay is gitpay.org.

> it sounds you're trying to make a huge issue out of this now, in the hopes it'll get things done quicker.

Not at all. I actually didn't even expect anyone to really respond to this.

I agree with you not the timing. Not the best.

However, the name of the post is "Is personal GitHub information public domain?"

Which prompted a discussion of the topic. This is simply what it is. I appreciate the opinions of others on this matter.

When I say hostile, the dev accused of sending unsolicited emails.

This matter has begun far before today, the initial request to remove the information came in Dec 21st.

It's not like this is the first day that this matter has been an issue.

Good clarification! However, no legal threats have been made as of yet. Simply pointing out TOS clauses, and discussing the matter with the community.

By the time lawyers get involved, which would be after the New Year, then the author might have already merged the PR and problem solved.

At the moment, it's simply a matter of discussion.

No urgency to push the developers to take action either.

It _is_ the holidays and the right course of action really is to simply take a breath and chill out. I'd agree with you.

This post isn't really for the purpose of shaming though. It's to bring up the issue of such sites doing this kind of thing.

This topic could have been easily brought up after the holidays... but why wait? It's a topic to be discussed.

jc4p, you're totally on topic. The issue here is very similar to recruiter sites. Gitpay is doing essentially the same thing where they are scraping data and creating in-active accounts.

This is sometimes annoying, in the case of recruiters. However sometimes it can be useful if the product has potential.

Gitpay possibly originated from a good idea.

Regardless however, they should launched with an opt-out feature. Many such website that scrape content and create accounts _for_ people have an automatic opt-out feature.

You do open a really good question though if this should be allowed in the first place.

Say if I deleted my github account.. by deleting my account, it doesn't get deleted off of this website.

The devs are somewhat hostile in this case. It's a matter of introducing the feature to help out mitigate other requests to take down information. They have the entire user base of github as "inactive users" so they might get more requests.

But, the fact that the first comment from the dev came out sort of hostile is the major concern.

That's why the attention is brought to the community to decide which argument is right.

It's not pushing for action... it's deciding if/who is at fault and whether gitpay should have been doing this sort of thing in the first place.

It's a question of ethics in the bigger picture.