Rant: I wish more people stopped using Github
Rant: I wish more people stopped using Github
They slowly started locking down the platform for people without accounts and it has been really annoying to use the website since. First it was not possible to search for code, then even searching for issues got more and more difficult with it randomly failing, and now it's gotten to the point where I can't search for a fucking project anymore!
Github's search is becoming as bad as reddit's, where if you want to find anything, a secondary service like SourceGraph, GrepApp, or even a dumb search engine is better. Sometimes those haven't indexed what I need (especially code search), so I have to download the bloody tarball and rg for whatever the fuck it is I was looking for.
Sometimes it will also block the VPN I'm using, so I have to proxy to a non-VPNed machine. The world could do without these unnecessary roadblocks.
What also grinds my gears is requiring an account to contribute. There is no way to send in a patch, raise an issue, or anything without an account there, so by if a project being on github, you have no choice but to give Microsoft your data to participate in opensource. Don't get me wrong, mailing-lists are filth, but and I'd rather claw my eyes out than participate in any project demanding their use, but Microsoft being the "lesser evil" is not a good look.
Please, for the love of opensource, get your project off of github, please. It's a monopoly at this point and doing microsoft things. This isn't the end and they'll probably do more stuff to see how far they can push it. We'll all be the boiled frogs.
Yes, I know they have a CI and some other features, but if all you're doing is hosting your code, please consider an alternative.
Possible alternatives in alphabetic order:
- Codeberg (could have federation in the future)
- Gitlab (has CI)
OneDev (no git SSH clone but feature-rich)not an instance for the public- Radicle (no CI, but federated)
- Sourcehut (minimalist, but fast as fuck)
or maybe others will suggest more.
Codeberg is criminally underrated. The UI is great, it's 100% open source, it has CI, and it will have federation in the future. It's a shame more people don't use it. Piefed/river and a bunch of cool niche projects are on it though :D
The lemmy developers should seriously think of moving lemmy to codeberg, it'd be in line with lemmy's anti-corporate stance.
The choice every developer has to make is between having a potentially successful project, with contributors and community engagement, or hosting their stuff on an open platform. PeerTube even has a GitLab of their own, and yet they host their main software on GitHub, because they simply have to.
Yep, codeberg is great for personal/hobby or small projects, but beyond that it's not ideal. The worst part is git is a decentralized protocol; yet github has centralized it, basically forcing developers to use it if they want their projects to live, or get a job. It's a vicious cycle.
But i still think developers should migrate to codeberg, if all of us just wait for codeberg to get big to use it, there'd be no users in the first place. Even if you put your project as a mirror, it's still a step, or even better: vice versa, see river.
I really don't understand it.
It is 5 minutes to create an account and you can even use the same SSH key everywhere technically.
Then just put a bit config per website and it literally requires nearly 0 additional work ever. You can commit to all the different places practically simultaneously.
I guess you have to go to different websites for issues and I don't know if codeberg specifically has CI/CD tools, but I don't get why devs refuse to work on things outside github.
Only if they measure their success in terms of traffic on a Microsoft web site.
Successful projects predate GitHub.
They are on Codeberg, but it's only as a github mirror.
I didn't know, thanks. But last commit was 8 months ago :(
I never sat foot on github, but moved from some shady place to Codeberg and it's just fantastic. It just works.
Only thing missing is some 5/10€ monthly plan where you get a golden leaf or something :-p
On a more serious note, gotta check out how to support them in some meaningful way.
I'm looking forward to when they implement fediverse integration.
Yeah. I know in my heart that I will get off my ass and move some projects over to Codeberg after federation arrives.
I selfhost using forgejo (the same project codeberg is using) and I only clone on github.
This should be a good first step to decentralize.
I support moving off GH but
There is no way to send in a patch, raise an issue, or anything without an account there
Currently this is the case everywhere? With the exception of projects that take email patches, currently all the options are centralised/not federated, and even if e.g. Forgejo finished adding ActivityPub integration you'd still need an account on some Forgejo instance to contribute. Same for email patches; they still require having an email address. If it's specifically about giving MS your data, sure, although iirc the only data they actually require is an email address. You can use duckduckgo's duck addresses to get one that's relatively anonymous (i.e. can be deanonymised by duckduckgo but I doubt anyone's conspiring that hard to deanonymise a random github user).
Yeah and that makes sense. There’s plenty of examples of open source projects that have had their issue trackers flooded with politics rather than real issues and they have to then spend all their time policing and cleaning that up and that’s using GitHub’s user reg system and basic protections against spam accounts. Without requiring any sort of auth or user reg that would be impossible
If you look at a project on sourcehut while not logged in, you will see instructions on the side how to create a patchset and mail it directly to the maintainer, no account needed.
You still need an email address…. which is functionally an account.
Pretty sure gitlab requires you to enter a CC to make an account as well, which turned me off from submitting a bug report a few weeks or so back
While I agree about most of your gripes. I don't think requiring an account to contribute is unreasonable. I can underdtand not wanting to create an account and give them personal info and such. But if that is your stance, stop using them entirely. Giving them code is even worse.
Specifically for the rate limit issue, a lot of nix's derivations are hosted on GitHub and now and then the rate limit problem comes up when I rebuilds a dev environment.
Nixos.org is kind enough to host gigabytes of cache, but to get a ~40MiB tarball, we need to beg at the door of M$. Path dependency is really a trap.
Yeah, nix is utterly dependent on github and there have been many discussions about it. The majority of the community is very against migrating and refuses investing in anything else.
I remember a project abused github as their CDN, and github shut that down. Can't remember the name but it was something plant-related (the name). Pods or something. If nix ever scales up massively, github just might rate limit the repo.
For a small project I recently switched to fossil from git. It’s also distributed version control, but includes a bug tracker, wiki, and other stuff as well. It’s minimalist, but hosting yourself is super easy.
Default git over ssh is often enough as well. Combine with any bug tracker and CI you like. You don’t need to use an all in one tool like GitHub.
Gitlab just reduced their monthly ci minute cap.
Fucking.... Goddammit Gitlab!
I used codeberg and liked it. This is a good reminder to try to stick with it moving forward
I use Codeberg and even paid to be a member, because it goes directly to support the development of forgejo.
I've stopped using github because I hate advertising and nags. Probably most people don't care much about it, but for me github nagging and 'reminding' me about copilot is just so off-putting that I immediately want to leave the site. I don't want my attention stolen like that.
Yes, I know they have a CI and some other features
Github actions are terrible - fight me.
commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: actions commit: Another actions fix commit: Fixing actions commit: Fixed issue with actions commit: Actions not logging in properly commit: typo in actions commit: Created GH actions!Just commit to a different branch, and then rebase to main. If you're putting this shit into main, it's not the tool's fault.
Let me generalize that - yaml pipelines are terrible 😀
act drastically reduced the amount of back-and-forth getting actions right for me
It's an interesting idea - but I've not been able to get it to work. Some of that is due to us using "GitHub Enterprise" which is somehow MUCH worse than the normal hosted GitHub - but we get to pay more for it! I haven't tried it with "normal" github.com actions yet - does it deal well with shared workflows and custom builders?
As the primary author of my previous org's GHAs (not GH Enterprise, just the team tier) I found some feature gaps compared to org[n-2]'s Jenkins but they were fairly quickly filled.
I was initially skeptical but it wasn't more than a month or two before I was just glad to be off Jenkins. And now that I'm back to a big org with a big Jenkins footprint, I really miss GHA.
Having everything be contextual in the same place is a huge value add for me.
Lol this is literally me right now. (Well waiting for another run to probably fail) So also on here.
Whenever I need to fix something with them, I go onto a separate branch, write a sane commit message once and suffix it with a "1". Then the next time, I just grab the same
git commitcommand from my history and change the "1" to a "2", then to a "3" etc..
I'm really looking forward to Forgejo federation
sounds awesome
I don't know if they need more funding or contributors or something, but that has been on the roadmap for years now. I think all they can federate now are stars.
But I do hope that it'll arrive soon. Github needs a federated alternative and gitlab isn't going to give it to us. Radicle already has federation, but only within its network, so not exactly optimal.
I see projects move over to Gitlab a lot lately, but without porting over the issues. That means a huge amount of history and discussions are lost. If you want to find out why something is the way it is, old issues would be a goldmine. Sometimes they are still up on archived GitHub, but not always.
It's a shame because how gitlab is basically begging to be bought out and hides a lot of useful features behind subscriptions.. I remember when it was originally just a GitHub clone way back when.
Complaining about needing an account to contribute is wild to me.
I read it as needing a Microsoft account, and having to accept Microsft's terms and conditions, in order to contribute to an unrelated (and probably open-source) project. That's a valid complaint.
The problem is that you end up using software that's hosted on GitHub and then you'd like to report a bug or contribute a fix. You also don't want to give your data to Microsoft. Both can be true, because the projects on GitHub don't exist in isolation there.
idk, the only "personal data" GitHub requires is an email address... If you don't have a throwaway one not associated to your identity yet, what are you even doing on the internet :D
It was easy enough to introduce Git with a self hosted Gitea at my work place 4 years ago. I see Codeberg is based on a fork of Gitea called Forgejo, so I guess it is also good.
It's basically the same even the same plugins mostly work. I believe the biggest changes are on time to market (PRS are quicker but more experimental). And they are doing heavy work on federation.
There's a comparison here: https://forgejo.org/compare-to-gitea/
without these unnecessary roadblocks
But then how will they harvest your data?
If I have to search something in a repo, I just clone it and use my IDE. GitHub search sucks, but I don't think it's possible to have a web experience that is on par with an actual environment an IDE.
VSCode runs on the web and has IDE-grade search functionality
I literally just need dumb search. No regex, no nothing, but just for that you now need an account. Especially on mobile, I'm not going to clone every repo I come across. It's a hassle already.
If I really do care and dependent on the repo, I'll clone it. Otherwise I just drop it most of the time or use a third party service. But ever since Microsoft bought github, it's been really annoying.
Yes, I know they have a CI and some other features, but if all you're doing is hosting your code, please consider an alternative.
Don't worry, their CI is pure garbage.
That’s not very nice.
To garbage.
I mean, at least in a pinch you can burn some garbage to stay warm. Its going to suck but not as much as actions.
Which service has better CI? Genuine question
Gitlab CI is so far ahead of github actions... The only thing it doesn't have is a marketplace, but otherwise it's superior in nearly every aspect.
Enshittification is everywhere.
The fundamental flaw of autonomous, individualistic organizing is that it puts a ton of weight on a handful of people.
As soon as a corporate entity sweeps in and offers a huge payout in exchange for less work, the temptation to sell out becomes severe.
whats funny is I was working in an azure shop and we got rate limited on api calls that caused all sorts of issues and for modern times it really was not a lot of calls. Much less internal calls from a customer on one of the big three cloud computing providers. Seriously!!! Oh and their support was like. Yeah it will do that.
Can confirm this type of thing. Under the Microsoft umbrella stuff doesn't get special treatment or exemptions from rate limits.
Instead we make multiple accounts and randomly pick ones to use for various api calls. We waste time fighting with secondary rate limits for them as well as guess how to avoid them.
Ooof its been awhile and honestly just going back and getting details on the issue is something Im generally paid to do but I can say we got the account from our infrastructure folks and it was seperate from what they were using but it actually impacted them moving vms in a batch script. we were just grabbing metric and metadata.
This has been the agreed-upon way to do things within the MS umbrella for a while. Not sure why they won't just allow for setting a higher rate limit.
Each app registration in a tenant gets their own limits. Most backup platforms for an MS tenant have you register 4-10 apps so it can parallelize the backup load without getting rate limited.
I sound like a corporate shill but like, I don't know if this is due to abuse.
GitHub actions and certain things were free until the crypto bros started abusing it. There are certain challenges that happen at scale.
Want to mention that OneDev does support SSH clone. Only that SSH access to code.onedev.io is turned off (code.onedev.io is not a public hosting service, it is set up to develop OneDev itself).
Oh, that's a pity. So there is no public instance? If not, I'll just remove it from the list. code.onedev.io is thus a dogfooding instance?
That's M$ doing their EEE-dance as usual. Actions is pretty egregious, my company's decided that All must be in the cloud™, even CI/CD, so Actions it is... Soon enough, bit by bit, a lot will depend on GitHub's functionality and there you have it, full circle, it'll be a pain to move elsewhere. Or do you still think all GitHub is is a git front-end?
Gitlab probably isn't much better these days but at least it's open sauce. Until I build a forgejo instance it's gitlab for me.
But people said it wasn't a big deal if microsoft bought it all up!!?
I also want to note that in the year 2025, GitHub still does not support IPv6. Folks behind CGNAT in IPv4-starved geos suffer, as does everyone developing for all-IPv6 networks. And it's not like they can't do it, seeing as their various subdomains like pages.github.com have working IPv6 already.
rip gitorious
Who?
First result of a search:
Gitorious was a free and open source web application for hosting collaborative free and open-source software development projects using Git revision control. Although it was freely available to be downloaded and installed, it was written primarily as the basis for the Gitorious shared web hosting service at gitorious.org, until it was acquired by GitLab in 2015.
I hate that they started taking down emulation repos more and more. They have a majority and heavy visibility for companies.
It'd be cool to use one service to upload to everything simultaneously.
What do you mean? Github has remotes and you can push to all of them at once. Or dk mean something else?
Presumably they mean on the PC side. Like a tool where
git pushcan push to multiple repos, keeping it safe everywhere. I presume you'd have to pick some sort of pull priority order or something, and balancing changes pushed to different repo hosts could be a chore.
Account requirements seem like a worthwhile safeguard against spam.
Projects can still use and accept emails or whatever outside of GitHub.
I would be pretty interested in reading a more robust analysis between the alternatives you list and GitHub itself. Going to each one and giving them a glance really doesn't show me much other than "yup, it's similar to GitHub".
Look, I get it that it's trendy to hate on Microsoft, but these complaints don't even make sense. You complain about requiring an account to contribute, and then you propose some other services that do the exact same thing! Turning github into a 4chan style free-for-all is a terrible idea. Maybe that's exactly why you VPN got blocked, because it's enabling spam accounts. And what info are you giving Microsoft to create an account? An email, a password and a username? Not exactly doxxing material, is it? I just searched for some code from one of my repos in incognito and it was the first thing that popped up.
Microsoft is not preventing you from migrating, it's just that there is no standard for issues, discussions, PRs etc. But every other service has an import tool that can do it if needed. And if you're only hosting code (doubt) you're a git remote add & git push away from being free of that evil Microsoft that is hosting all your repos for free.
I hate Microsoft and big corporations just about as much as anyone on Lemmy, but geez, pick your battles people.
I feel some sadness in seeing Microsoft's slow sludge of enshitification oozing forward and gradually engulfing github. There's still a way to go before it become totally crap, but it is definitely getting worse and will continue to get worse as Microsoft does their best to mine whatever value they can from everyone passing by.
Knowing this, I think it is wise to start looking at alternatives.
In what way has Microsoft enshittified GitHub? Since the acquisition they’ve mostly made more services free for open source users, and prices and features haven’t gotten more restrictive.