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GitHub Thumbs Nose At Sony's Controversial End to Physical Media With Its Introduction of Repo CDs (tomshardware.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the git-burned dept.
GitHub is offering a limited run of 1,000 CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a pro-physical-media jab at Sony's plan to stop producing PlayStation game discs in 2028. Tom's Hardware reports: The coding and collaboration platform, owned by Microsoft, states that "In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public repo on CD-ROM." Moreover, it appeals to the human side of computing, adding the emotive line "Keep it. Lend it to friends. Pass it on to your children." It isn't April 1st, so thankfully this is no joke. However, if you check out the above-linked GitHub Your Code, On a CD offer page, it quickly becomes clear this is a very limited in time/scope stunt.

"Order a burned CD of your own public GitHub repo. Yes, a real physical disc you can hold in your hands, no download required," begins the spiel. But this is a very limited run of 1,000 discs, with applications required between July 2 and July 6 (inclusive). Limit one per person, with availability varying between country/region.

"Your code is physically yours, forever. Until you lose it, let's be real," says GitHub. At best, these CDs will be framed and put on a wall, some becoming collector's items or eBay money spinners (discs like 0001 or 0888 would be good ones, if they are numbered). Also, many will be lost or eventually/accidentally discarded, as GitHub seems to know. So this 'protest' is arguably 1,000 doses of expensively shipped e-waste.

GitHub Thumbs Nose At Sony's Controversial End to Physical Media With Its Introduction of Repo CDs More | Reply

GitHub Thumbs Nose At Sony's Controversial End to Physical Media With Its Introduction of Repo CDs

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  • "GitHub is offering a limited run of 1,000 CD-ROM copies of public repositories "

    Cool, we're ready for post EMP gaming

  • This could be more than a publicity stunt. This could be part of a backup strategy, if properly scaled up. Github and those other cloud services are trying to get small and middle software businesses to ditch their own infrastracture in favour of their cloud services. At a slightly higher price, but for more flexibility.

    But what about backup?

    That sounds like a solution! for another 10 bucks per month, have them burn two CDs of your repo. label them and put it an a labeled envelope, and have them mailed to y

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      But what about backup?

      (1) Clone a repo.
      (2) Backup to external USB, flash drive, SD card, DVD-R, etc.

      ;-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Exactly, I can put my repo on a CD all my myself if I want too.

        • But are you DOING it?

          Things that aren't automated won't happen.

          Plus, drives are expensive. You can't buy a new one every week and send just them to your friend for storage. A new one. Each week.

          • Burned CDs aren't really reliable. USB flash drives were really a step up.

            • They say that, but I've never had one fail on me after a successful write. USB flash drives on the other hand don't have a spotless record.

              • *shrug* It was bad enough that the top CD burning software for Linux was called cdparanoia.

                • No, cdparanoia is about reading scratched-up disks. It has nothing to do with writing. Most of the problems reading optical disks are due to some combination of physical damage and drive wear.

                  • I will say, in the 90s, disc writers were terrible. It was not easy getting a reliable burn.

                    By 2005, they were getting pretty good. Usually I didn't have problems anymore.
                    • Yeah, I remember those bad-old-days. You might throw away 3 out of 4 discs due to write errors. Or, just failing to write some nonstandard sector. You had to fiddle with the write speeds and whatnot because they weren't reliable.

                      When I worked at Staples, some employees would use floor model desktops to copy software (whose boxes would then be re-shrinkwrapped). Only certain machines though, especially HPs since they used rebranded Sony hardware that could more reliably clone copy-protected discs. Wh

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by kackle ( 910159 )
                      I didn't have such problems in the late 1990s, I don't think even once; but I admit I often wrote at the lowest speed regardless of what the CD-R was rated for.
                    • Which took forever! Well, an hour or so.

                      And you're lucky, since many still had to throw out bad burns even at 1x.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by HiThere ( 15173 )

                    Actually there was a period when most of the CDs I wrote failed. Switching CD writers fixed that problem. (I suspect timing was involved.) But I haven't had that problem in the past several years. (Not that I burn that many CDs, but it's several/year.)

          • God no. I remember this Simpsons episode where Springfield needs to be moved after Homer causes the entire town to become a dump. The dump was full of AOL CDs.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        physical or digital is a red herring that idiots like to get worked up about. But it's drm and online checks that are the problem.
        Of course you'd be too stupid to understand.

      • I used to send got bundle straight to DDS/DAT tape. I still have a box of tapes kicking around.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          I used to send got bundle straight to DDS/DAT tape. I still have a box of tapes kicking around.

          I recently transferred my QIC-80 tape backups from the 1990s to DVD-R, as the last computer I have with a floppy disk connector gets ready for the county e-waste collection site. My QIC-80 drive was an internal that used that connector. :-)

          • QIC-80 was such a good deal for what you got back in the day. I went the DAT/DDS route when I had a little money and found a used SCSI DDS-1 drive for a reasonable price. My most recent is a SATA Quantum DAT 72, but it only works in my old tower, my new PC's BIOS freaks out and refuses to boot.

            It's really obsolete though, I'm running two BD-R M-DISC drives (one internal and one USB). I can make archival media that is far easier to pack away than tape, and even in 40 years it's going to be pretty easy to fin

  • Microsoft owns GitHub which is the only way this makes sense. Sony did a marketing jab at MS for locking games to the console years ago. Though pretty goddamn wierd of a jab even if MS is the owner. Even wierder in that MS isn't the good guys in physical media either. Why is this being covered on slashdot?

    • A thousand physical CDs in response to Sony suspending physical media in the near future? Wow, what an epic BURN! I can almost hear the anguished screams from Sony HQ in Japan! "Curse you GitHub! How dare you make a mockery of our sound business decision!"

      How F-ing stupid.

      Who cares?

      Please, point out the person that:
      A) Has a github repository,
      B) Has a physical CD-ROM drive,
      C) Wishes they had a locked-in-time archive of their GitHub, and
      D) Can't be bothered to copy their repository onto a CD-R?

      If I worked at

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Hollerith cards would be funny, but the real joke would be if it was copied to those 96-column cards IBM invented for their updated keypunch. The square ones with the small round holes rather than the large rectangular ones.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        If a company came out with a service that would burn your data into a crystal that you could wear as jewelry, and the crystal was reasonably durable (ideally diamond, or something similar), that would be a useful (or at least novel) way to store valuable data long-term. Assuming there was also a convenient way to read it back when required, of course.

        This, however, isn't that. The whole point of git is that it distributes copies of your repository onto every client that clones it, so that the likelihood o

  • > Also, many will be lost or eventually/accidentally discarded, as GitHub seems to know. So this 'protest' is arguably 1,000 doses of expensively shipped e-waste.

    You could argue that, if you were an idiot.

    • And that the author thought it bore inclusion, and the editor failed to disagree...

      Remember what Tom's used to be?

  • Github is owned by MS, so this narrative is pure drivel spurred on by our attention needing news cycle.
  • Github's parent just laid off most of the Xbox division. As bad as it is to drop physical media, it doesn't look like Microsoft is going to last much longer either in that regard.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Github's parent just laid off most of the Xbox division. As bad as it is to drop physical media, it doesn't look like Microsoft is going to last much longer either in that regard.

      No, they plan to ultimately lay off 20% of Xbox staff, not "most":

      Microsoft's Xbox division also plans to cut 20% of its workforce this fiscal year. Xbox will account for 1,600 of Monday's cuts.

      Source: Business Insider [businessinsider.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        Actually it's 3200 and that's not including all the staff disappearing with the sale of some major studios. Basically this is an evisceration and it is clear that the XBox the console is fucked, and what remains will focus on casual and lame content - more Minecraft, more Candy Crush and similar slop.

  • CD microfiber disc cleaning kit, with TSA permitted plastic spray, isopropyl alcohol, blank labels, what's this?

    256 GB USB free with fill up form at the center? I'm so there, dude

    Oh, my bad -- repo, not retro

  • The problem isn't the physical disc, despite me personally liking physical copies of things I own, a physical disc itself doesn't guarantee anything. Many businesses, including Microsoft have proven this over the years with things like product activation and other DRM.

    The bigger issue with Sony is their willingness to pull licenses on things the user already owns, or placing other arbitrary constraints on things (like needing to sign or check in frequently enough, or risk account deletion).

    And Sony isn't e

  • 90s Microsoft (Score:3)

    by HnT ( 306652 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2026 @06:59AM (#66226440)

    How delusional and tone deaf do you have to be to think you can present yourself as the good guys, as if nobody remembers the FUD and destructive and much hated Microsoft of the 90s, and the horrible M$ of today, and the shallow husk they twisted GitHub into.

    • Even a piece of shit can do something you agree with. No one is saying that an action now wipes the sins of the past. But likewise letting the entire past overshadow any positive action is not just stupid, it's outright dangerous.

      What's your endgame here? Forever declare anything Microsoft do = bad? Because if that's the result it'll have a nice negative feedback effect. How long before Microsoft says "Well since we can't do anything good, why not lean fully into our evil past, fuck the users, they clearly

      • How long before Microsoft says "Well since we can't do anything good, why not lean fully into our evil past, fuck the users, they clearly don't care to be supported by us in any way."

        0. 0 seconds, microseconds, picoseconds, or any other division of time. Because that's how they are operating right now.

        Microsoft is actually more evil than they used to be. They used to make software for your hardware, now they tell you to get your hardware for their software. Their OS is the most egregious spyware ever created and has a license to match, allowing Microsoft to both practically and legally lift any data they want from your machine and show it to anyone they want for any reason they deem fi

        • Microsoft is actually more evil than they used to be. They used to make software for your hardware, now they tell you to get your hardware for their software.

          That's just absolute horseshit and shows you have rose coloured glasses on. Those of us with functioning memories actually remember that you basically never upgraded Windows. You bought a new computer to run the new windows. Things only changed with Windows 7, and that only changed because Vista was so fucking horribly bloated that it was many years before it even ran smoothly on the hardware of the day leading to many people having quite new computers already when Windows 7 was released.

          • Those of us with functioning memories actually remember that you basically never upgraded Windows. You bought a new computer to run the new windows.

            I never thought of my memory being especially great until I got to compare it to yours, where you forgot that computer technology was moving rapidly enough that the average person wasn't buying a new one more often than a new version of Windows came out. Today I also learned that you're not a PC enthusiast, because you didn't build more PCs than that in that period. Windows licenses transferred freely. Some of us were actually building PCs and successfully used the same license for multiple machines as we r

  • Making actual mass published software disc would be impressive.

    Burning a bunch of DVD-R isnâ(TM)t nearly as impressive.

    However, maybe we should all go buy a few stacks of DVD-RW to help support their manufacturer

  • Nothing says "physical media really is useless" than applying it to a small easily accessible code base that can be replicated by a simple command, and also making the physical media available as a "limited run" of 1000 items, further emphasising that it is completely pointless for any pratical purpose and only suitable for collecting.

    Good work Microsoft, nice attempt at a jab, but you've made Sony's point for them. *facepalm*.

  • I recently dug out my CD/DVD backups from the early oughts and they all read fine so far (about forty but I've a couple hundred remaining to inspect). I'll burn backups to the few that still matter of course.

    Besides distro-sampling I used to burn many bootable live WinPE-ish CD in the BartPE era which booted much more reliably than discs written at higher RPM. I always burned at slowest available speed to reduce mechanically-induced errors, mostly using CDRWIN trial version as I had zero need for faster wri

  • I recently had to deal with some xray images on CDs, and discovered to my surprise that I didn't have a reader... I tossed away all CDs like a decade ago, and old hardware just got replaced, all without drives. Nothing came with cd-rom drives in at least a decade, no? So genuine question, how many folks still have a cd-rom drive to be able to read those CDs?

    (I ended up buying a cheap drive just to read those xray images... but haven't used it for anything since).

    • > old hardware just got replaced, all without drives

      I felt that coming...
      Years back a friend's laptop died, I scavenged the DVD drive. I bought an enclosure for it and since then it's been serving as an external drive. Now it's the only drive I have. And man am I happy to have it, since I once again buy music CDs, to be ripped and added to player library.

      • But you do know that for about 20 bucks you can get an external USB 3 Blu-ray RW drive, right?

        • I only use bluray for movies, got a PS5 for that.

        • The cheapest one I can see on Amazon is $59 and it's some no-brand product I wouldn't buy.

          Where do you get one for $20? Aliexpress? Is it also a bullshit no-brand device?

          • It was from AliExpress indeed, but to be clear, it was a Blu-ray reader and CD DVD writer.

            • Got it, indeed, that is important for clarity.

              I still have a couple of DVD burners from olden times, but I'd love to be able to write a blu-ray. That would actually be useful. Hardly anything I want to back up will even fit on a DVD any more...

  • A $5 month VPN and a subscription to ThePirateBay+ means I am ahead of the industry curve.
  • 1000 CD's - so that holds like what - 20% of WIn11?
  • github burn /dev/cdrom0 https://github.com/Octocontrab... [github.com]
  • I have a crappy old IDE (not even SATA) cdrom in my closet which I bought a usb to IDE cable for. I can't find the power bricks to any of my old laptops with working DVD or CD drives. I think it would be hillarious if they just made a CD with an autorun.inf that played Never Gonna Give You Up. How many people would actually know

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