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.
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.
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.
Gitpay are not required to address the PR, as in reviewing the code and merging. It's code being introduced into their product and they must take their time into it. So no issue there.
There's no reason for an urgent response.
However, the matter here is:
1) They should not have been doing this in the first place
2) Initial contact, as stated in the pull request, was Dec. 21st, so Gitpay had plenty of time before the holidays to address the concern of the information being available. It's not difficult to remove information from a database.
Also, submitting the PR was a gesture of "good-will" in the sense that "Hey you guys should have this feature, so here you go" but the owners of the repo met this request with a bit of hostility which was unwarranted.
Yeah, contact details as far as I know aren't copyrightable nor under public domain. Things like your personal contact details though are subject to privacy violation laws if they are used without your consent, I believe. So nothing stopping from one publishing them, but if one asks to have personal detail taken down, they should be honoured without hesitation.
I've brought the issue to Github as well for them to judge whether there is any breach. They are best to decide I guess.
Thanks franciscop and thank you for your advice! It's definitely an interesting topic as it touches upon a few ethics.
I'm considered #1 but the thing is it might take time. The person stated that the PR will be reviewed in the New Year, so by the time I involve lawyers the matter might have already been resolved.
So, at the moment I've taken the matter to social media to bring up the matter of ethics in this case.
Thanks Macha, good point. Yeah whether gitpay is in breach of github's terms is a bit unclear. On one hand, you allow your content/information to be viewed but not necessarily copied.
So, information is not really in the public domain it's just publicly available. In this case, gitpay should allow anyone who does not wish to have their information available on their website should have a delete feature, and should not hesitate on takedown requests.
Odd that they launched without such a feature.
Upon inspection of their code, at least what is public, they don't have any function for deleting information.
"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."