In news– The open-source software repository service GitHub was in the news after it was used to create and share an offensively named app(Bulli Bai) that sexually harassed Muslim women in India.
About GitHub-
- GitHub is the world’s largest open-source developer community platform where users upload their projects and code for others to view, edit, and tweak.
- Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.
- It offers the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features.
- The idea of the app is that any developer can upload whatever software code or app code or software idea they have on the platform, and have others collaborate with them to help improve it, find errors, and fix problems.
- Any public project can be viewed by others on the platform.
- Most of the features of the platform are free for users.
- Organizations can use paid accounts to upload their software and projects for collaboration.
- The platform uses the software Git, which was created in 2005 by Linus Trovalds, the developer of the open-source operating system Linux, to track changes in a set of files and for coordination in software development.
- Given the idea of GitHub, anyone can open an account and upload a code after providing just an email id.
- So even if an account is blocked or terminated, a new one can be created with another email id — and the offensive software code or apps can be uploaded again with perhaps a slightly different name.
Source: The Indian Express
