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Handling the great code forge fragmentation

alexselimov.com

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Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#21

Post by 0xc133 »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #10

I don't think we're anywhere close to the downfall of GitHub. It'll be a very slow decay. The fact is, lots of people are very happy using AI tools, and most of those hook straight into GitHub. If AI is driving all this new code, it's only going to make moving away from GitHub more painful. Businesses I've spoken to hate the idea of moving their code forge. Migrations like that suck and they're expensive. There isn't…

> It'll be a very slow decay

Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#22

Post by ncruces »

From the point of view of "small open source project" I honestly have no idea what I would move to.

I happen to make, I think, $5/month in donations (thank you). According to GitHub's numbers, they offer me about $25/month in the product everyone likes to hate: Actions.

I could certainly cut costs if I had to (half the cost, certainly not half the value, is mac runners), but my projects are definitely in a better shape for having this.

So: where do I get a better deal?

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#23

Post by skydhash »

ChickeNES wrote: post #16
embedding-shape wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these articles are meant for people who entered the developer ecosystem after GitHub became ubiquitous, because those developers basically only ever known GitHub, and some even see GitHub and Git as synonyms. The rest of us who started developing before GitHub, or been around communities that self-host their infrastructure, we're already used with everything being spread all over the place, this place accepts…

> this place accepts patches via email, this one wants a URL to a pastebin containing the patch I for one would never contribute to a project that requires one of the above. I know some will shoot back with "but Linux!", but that's the exception that proves the rule.

> I for one would never contribute to a project that requires one of the above.

They’re not exactly begging for your contribution, are they? It’s very much voluntary. They’re just stating how to communicate with them.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#24

Post by nativeit »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #10

I don't think we're anywhere close to the downfall of GitHub. It'll be a very slow decay. The fact is, lots of people are very happy using AI tools, and most of those hook straight into GitHub. If AI is driving all this new code, it's only going to make moving away from GitHub more painful. Businesses I've spoken to hate the idea of moving their code forge. Migrations like that suck and they're expensive. There isn't…

I’m prob not the “average” user in this context (meaning that I am not a SWE or professional developer, but rather a code-curious sysadmin and consultant with too many hobbies), and I consistently use GitHub Copilot to write and push code to a self-hosted Forgejo…unless it’s a productive fork for contributing, or simply something I don’t want to take up space on my own server, anyway. I agree it’s likely to be a slow decay. GitHub is problematic, but it doesn’t summon the sort of white-hot resentment that pushed people to abandon other platforms en masse.

I am concerned that it will be much more difficult to discover FOSS projects with whatever the new regimes are, similar to how Discord has walled off a great deal of the discussion forums and collaborative groups.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#25

Post by nativeit »

ncruces wrote: post #22

From the point of view of "small open source project" I honestly have no idea what I would move to. I happen to make, I think, $5/month in donations (thank you). According to GitHub's numbers, they offer me about $25/month in the product everyone likes to hate: Actions. I could certainly cut costs if I had to (half the cost, certainly not half the value, is mac runners), but my projects are definitely in a better sha…

I have found Forgejo’s actions to be functional for my own purposes, although rather incomplete compared with GitHub. That said, porting an action from GitHub to Forgejo was fairly easy the one time I was forced to do so.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#26

Post by jamesfinlayson »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #10

I don't think we're anywhere close to the downfall of GitHub. It'll be a very slow decay. The fact is, lots of people are very happy using AI tools, and most of those hook straight into GitHub. If AI is driving all this new code, it's only going to make moving away from GitHub more painful. Businesses I've spoken to hate the idea of moving their code forge. Migrations like that suck and they're expensive. There isn't…

> Businesses I've spoken to hate the idea of moving their code forge. Migrations like that suck and they're expensive. There isn't a meaningful differentiator between the other managed options, so the goal would just be to stand still. Unless GitHub's stability spirals fast I don't see a big wave of businesses leaving.

Yep, been through a somewhat pointless GitHub to GitLab migration because, at the time, GitLab was cheaper. Now GitHub is cheaper again and the migration was a big annoying and expensive project.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#27

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai »

ChickeNES wrote: post #17
skydhash wrote: post #3

That looks like a whole load of work. The thing thay is not defined is why I should do it. Also forge are already fragmented. I use OpenBSD and the software in ports comes from all over the web. You got the forges, web links,… As far as collaboration go, you can always send an email to the person. Up to them to accept it. If I care that much, I will publish a blog post or share it via the community’s channel. Those a…

> The thing thay is not defined is why I should do it. Most of the reasons seem to boil down to "X bad", where X is some combination of Github, Microsoft, America, and AI

...and X itself as well

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#28

Post by ncruces »

nativeit wrote: post #25
ncruces wrote: post #22

From the point of view of "small open source project" I honestly have no idea what I would move to. I happen to make, I think, $5/month in donations (thank you). According to GitHub's numbers, they offer me about $25/month in the product everyone likes to hate: Actions. I could certainly cut costs if I had to (half the cost, certainly not half the value, is mac runners), but my projects are definitely in a better sha…

I have found Forgejo’s actions to be functional for my own purposes, although rather incomplete compared with GitHub. That said, porting an action from GitHub to Forgejo was fairly easy the one time I was forced to do so.

Actions, as I get use them for free really seem irreplaceable.

See, I only have one project where this actually matters (and help maintain another), but: I get to test on mac and Windows, both ARM and x64, for free.

Then, with a one line import, I can use Linux+QEMU to test a bunch of other architectures.

Adding a couple other deps, I can have VMs to test: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, illumos, Solaris… the list goes on.

And thanks to other providers I now also get RISC-V, IBM Z and Power runners for free.

So, yeah, for the other projects, I could have CI on a self-hosted Forgejo instance. I could also run tests on my dev machine before commiting and get 95% or the same benefit.

The value in CI is that it can run tests that are inconvenient to run locally.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#29

Post by account42 »

> I hope to someday be a 10x bathroom tile developer with a git contribution heatmap being a solid color.

But why? Those are there to manufacture engagement on GitHub, it doesn't have any inherent value to track that.

> Get your username locked in NOW

Instead use the opportunity to move to your own domain.

Re: Handling the great code forge fragmentation

#30

Post by account42 »

spankalee wrote: post #18
selfhoster1312 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's great people are working on it, but why reinvent the wheel? Radicle and Forgejo/Forgefed were already under way before starting Tangled. What would be a selling point that would justify breaking compat with existing solutions ? (to be fair, forgefed is largely unimplemented so far)

atproto apparently has some real advantages over ActivityPub in terms of data portability. Similar to Bluesky vs Mastodon, with Mastodon you're fairly strongly coupled to your server, you' can't just move your data and retain all your connections. atproto makes that possible, and that could be really important if you want to say move from a shared forge to a self-hosted one or vice versa. atproto apps also tend to se…

atproto as it is today is effectively centralized.
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