It does not seem unreasonable that if the locally-run actions are using some GitHub resources (for logging, maintenance,etc) then there's a cost to that. What a reasonable charge is, is open to discussion.
GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#102There's one thing I don't understand. Isn't GitHub action just "take a repo, do something with it, save something somewhere". So how is it different than writing a bash script that "clones the repo, do something with it, pushes the changes back"? If actions became paid feature, wouldn't that just generated myriads of show hn posts like "I recreated GitHub actions in xyz"?
(DECLARATIVE CI WHY?????)
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#103Outside of work, I'm a very sporadic coder. On some side-projects where I'm using Actions, I'll have an inspired few days of progress followed by completely idle weeks/months/quarters. Losing free Actions doesn't particularly bother me, and I have no issue with paying what is most likely a negligible amount, but I don't really want to have a credit card on file which could be charged some unbounded amount if somebody…
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#104There's one thing I don't understand. Isn't GitHub action just "take a repo, do something with it, save something somewhere". So how is it different than writing a bash script that "clones the repo, do something with it, pushes the changes back"? If actions became paid feature, wouldn't that just generated myriads of show hn posts like "I recreated GitHub actions in xyz"?
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#105> GitHub stated that it has canceled the price increase after reviewing developer feedback. It added that it will take time to listen to customers and partners. I get the feeling they got the feedback that their runners are not as indispensable to developers as they thought and realized they would lose a significant amount of users. Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copil…
I wonder if Microsoft will ever get that asking users before making changes can help them avoid looking bad in public. Maybe half of all clients I work with use GitHub Actions for CI (the rest basically all use Jenkins), most of those using Actions use self-hosted runners for performance and security reasons, almost all of them reached out to me asking how difficult it would be to move away from GitHub Actions yet co…
The idea nowadays is iterate fast and break things (as long as it’s not your wallet or your leg).
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if Microsoft will ever get that asking users before making changes can help them avoid looking bad in public. Maybe half of all clients I work with use GitHub Actions for CI (the rest basically all use Jenkins), most of those using Actions use self-hosted runners for performance and security reasons, almost all of them reached out to me asking how difficult it would be to move away from GitHub Actions yet co…
Fun thing is that almost every other CI as a service provider charges you in some shape or form for self hosted runners. CircleCI limits the number of self-hosted Job Running in parallel based on your plan and charges a fixed base fee per seat. So moving away from GHA will not make self-hosted runners free, they’ll move into a different pricing structure that may or may not be beneficial. And I think charging for sel…
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun thing is that almost every other CI as a service provider charges you in some shape or form for self hosted runners. CircleCI limits the number of self-hosted Job Running in parallel based on your plan and charges a fixed base fee per seat. So moving away from GHA will not make self-hosted runners free, they’ll move into a different pricing structure that may or may not be beneficial. And I think charging for sel…
Gitlab enters the room, where self-hosted runners are as free as in free beer (maintenance yes, but no limit on runners and no pricing expect on a per-user basis).
Gitlab has proven in the past perfectly happy to hike prices above GitHub, after attracting enough switchers.
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#108> GitHub stated that it has canceled the price increase after reviewing developer feedback. It added that it will take time to listen to customers and partners. I get the feeling they got the feedback that their runners are not as indispensable to developers as they thought and realized they would lose a significant amount of users. Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copil…
I feel like I could specify and vibe-code a CI workflow system that would be dramatically better (for a single organization’s workflow) than GitHub Actions. And hosting it would be barely more complex than hosting a GitHub Actions self-hosted runner. The stack would be: Postgres, as a job queue and job status tracker. The entire control plane state lives in here. Even in a fairly large org, the transaction rate would…
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#109> GitHub stated that it has canceled the price increase after reviewing developer feedback. It added that it will take time to listen to customers and partners. I get the feeling they got the feedback that their runners are not as indispensable to developers as they thought and realized they would lose a significant amount of users. Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copil…
> Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copilot we might be onto something. You can just uninstall Copilot? It’s nowhere on my Surface Laptop 7 with W11.
Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun thing is that almost every other CI as a service provider charges you in some shape or form for self hosted runners. CircleCI limits the number of self-hosted Job Running in parallel based on your plan and charges a fixed base fee per seat. So moving away from GHA will not make self-hosted runners free, they’ll move into a different pricing structure that may or may not be beneficial. And I think charging for sel…
Depends if they are using another CI provider or running Jenkins themselves. But also, Circle CI would be a known cost change. Right now, the only thing you know is that GitHub wants to start charging money. You have no idea what new pricing model they come up with.