Several companies have their own URL shorteners (Amazon, Youtube...); this is nothing new or wrong.
It's actually reassuring to know that one can it in the code (comments) knowing that the service provider doesn't do anything dodgy and that the links are reasonably long-lived (as a matter of fact, Github is not discontinuing already existing URLs).
If GitHub had wanted a GitHub specific URL shortener and did not want to further perpetuate confusion about the relationship between git and GitHub, they could have gone with gh.io, ghub.io, hub.io, or any other domain name that isn't 'git.io'. 'git.io' sounds like it would probably be an official domain of 'git'. But, 'git.io' is (was) actually a URL shortener for a specific hosted service whose only relationship to 'git' is that GitHub uses the 'git' software for version control. GitHub is not maintained by the git team nor is it a project of the git team. Git can be (and is widely) used outside of GitHub.
GP is not complaining about a GitHub specific url shortener.
That's not what the other comment was complaining about. If it were GitHub.io that would be fine.
They are saying that GitHub has had a long interest in people thinking that Git is something you only do with GitHub, reducing people from thinking about using Git without GitHub. Of course, to be clear, Git is a 100% independent project that existed before GitHub and GitHub has ZERO claim to anything about Git, it just uses it.
They're not discontinuing them for now. You already can't create new URLs, but they will be deprecating the service "in the future". What does that entail?
"deprecate" and "remove" are not synonymous and I don't see any indication they are being conflated here. Deprecation often precedes removal but that's the extent of it.
Deprecation generally means continued use of tool/API/etc. is actively discouraged. Users of a deprecated tool/API/etc. should find a suitable alternative for all their remaining use cases. In this case, once this shortener is officially deprecated, anyone using a git.io URL for any purpose should replace it with an alternative.
Deprecation is usually a precursor to removal. Once the tool/API/etc. has been deprecated long enough (relatively speaking), it's generally consider as safe as practical to remove the tool/API/etc. from service. That lead time can range anywhere from months to years.
Yes that's the way I use the word as well, it is a pet peeve of mine when that is not the case.
> "deprecate" and "remove" are not synonymous and I don't see any indication they are being conflated here. Deprecation often precedes removal but that's the extent of it.
The reason I'm equating "deprecate" and "remove" in this case is because they have already said there will be no more git.io links created -- so how can you "deprecate" it further? I suppose they could say "Hey, this is deprecated now and we're going to shut it down in six months", and in this case, the user behavior that is discouraged is "relying on the links".
It's actually reassuring to know that one can it in the code (comments) knowing that the service provider doesn't do anything dodgy and that the links are reasonably long-lived (as a matter of fact, Github is not discontinuing already existing URLs).