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Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

jorijn.com

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Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#181

Post by tao_oat »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I've also heard of Tangled [0] which is decentralized and built on the AT Protocol like Bluesky but also has some genuinely useful features that GitHub has been dragging its heels over in implementing, like PR stacking, such that entire companies have sprung up to add that feature in GitHub. Has anyone tried this? [0] https://tangled.org/

Yes -- it's definitely alpha software, but usable for open source. There are interesting experiments like tack[1] to wire in custom CI. I imagine they'll be able to support private repos eventually once ATProto supports private data, but that may take some time.

[1]: https://tangled.org/mitchellh.com/tack

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#182

Post by mannanj »

bayindirh wrote: post #11
giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

Everyone seems to be leaving GitHub, and forgetting the entire spirit of what git is in my eyes. Git was always meant to be decentralized, the problem here is that all the tooling around git was centralized to GitHub because it was a cleaner experience, they scaled nicely, and were properly maintained. I would prefer to still see mirrors on GitHub that are auto-synched because I've seen projects for years either self…

While I'm not forgetting the spirit of what Git is, I'm also remembering how GitHub used "all open repositories" to train their first Copilot without telling anyone. So, no thanks. I'll not be committing any personal code there anymore. And no, I don't care for the social aspects either. Discoverability, stars, and AI bot powered issue bombardment. I'm fine like this. Also, remember, "Open Source is not about You".

The training on "all open repositories" is the only training we heard about. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't beneath these greedy companies to train on other data, and respond "oops! we didn't that would happen" (by which they mean get found out).

Leaving is still the right move. But this applies to all centralized large services: Our use of Google and Google Drive, any Microsoft products, Adobe products, etc.

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#184

Post by marxism »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

Everyone seems to be leaving GitHub, and forgetting the entire spirit of what git is in my eyes. Git was always meant to be decentralized, the problem here is that all the tooling around git was centralized to GitHub because it was a cleaner experience, they scaled nicely, and were properly maintained. I would prefer to still see mirrors on GitHub that are auto-synched because I've seen projects for years either self…

Something nobody's really calling out: Forgejo is genuinely hackable. I just added a "showcase" mode to my instance: private repos can show their README and root file listing publicly (so I can advertise that a project exists and what it does), but viewing actual code, cloning, issues, PRs are all locked behind group membership.

About an hour of work, small and frankly trivial diff: https://peoplesgrocers.com/code/forks/forgejo/pulls/1

I didn't have to fight the architecture at all, the seams were right where I needed them. Added migration adding a boolean column to the repo config table, a few tweaks in permission middleware, and voila, it just worked. Really excellent decoupling in the Forgejo codebase [1]

You can't do anything like this with GitHub. That's the actual freedom! Separate from the where-do-I-host-my-git question. There is a big difference between software that "sure technically I can change it since I have access to the source" vs software that's been constructed specifically to be customized and changed.

[1] Permission checks live in obvious places, the template system let me modify UI without touching unrelated code. Someone (many someones) clearly cared a lot about keeping this codebase modifiable by outsiders, and it shows. That's hard to do and should be more celebrated.

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#185

Post by donmcronald »

hperrin wrote: post #52
limagnolia wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgejo is doing a lot of work to make the tooling decentralized, too. They are using open protocols and standards to link self hosted forges together.

I can’t wait for federation in Forgejo. With that, there’s honestly no reason not to host your own forge.

I would love to see it happen, but an internal service vs something exposed to the internet can be challenging.

I think services like Cloudflare could play a role if they were able to provide some kind of forward auth and preferential treatment of core users during overload. My self hosted systems would have to be the source of truth and Cloudflare would have to be replaceable for me to consider using it.

Think along the lines of automated pre-auth that coordinates with the origin based on some standard.

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#186

Post by the__alchemist »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

Everyone seems to be leaving GitHub, and forgetting the entire spirit of what git is in my eyes. Git was always meant to be decentralized, the problem here is that all the tooling around git was centralized to GitHub because it was a cleaner experience, they scaled nicely, and were properly maintained. I would prefer to still see mirrors on GitHub that are auto-synched because I've seen projects for years either self…

I do not mean for this to come across as a nit, but think it's worth stating explicitly:

> Everyone seems to be leaving GitHub

A small minority is leaving Github; this group is more likely to write articles about the choice than those who still use Github.

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#187

Post by chris_money202 »

pixlmint wrote: post #70
giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

Everyone seems to be leaving GitHub, and forgetting the entire spirit of what git is in my eyes. Git was always meant to be decentralized, the problem here is that all the tooling around git was centralized to GitHub because it was a cleaner experience, they scaled nicely, and were properly maintained. I would prefer to still see mirrors on GitHub that are auto-synched because I've seen projects for years either self…

GitHub centralizes 2 things: Authentication, as well as Repository Hosting. Does the code really need to be hosted in a central location like this? (Clearly not, which is why people are leaving GitHub in the first place) But the one part GitHub provides that's genuinely valuable is the social aspect, and when you get a PR from a user named torvalds you can trust that this is in fact Linus. This isn't the case with mo…

I would argue GitHub does a lot more centralization than just those two. It's an entire developer platform centered around Git. It does hundreds of other things that some developers use, and some don't.

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#188

Post by andrewzeno »

I think this article is great, but it doesn't focus on the open source aspect. GitHub still has effective monopoly on open source, simply because of how much free resources they provide, let alone higher chances of getting your project discovered and fewer barriers for people reporting issues.

Re: Leaving GitHub for Forgejo

#189

Post by zuzululu »

I'm kind of baffled why everybody is suddenly hating on github? I use it just fine. I'm actually impressed how well codex is able to interact with it. I virtually do not need to fret about git commands or managing github to respond to issues anymore.

I don't see an alternative and its a bit of a stretch to expect people to follow you unless you are famous or have that audience reach already which many of us do not.

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