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Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

howtogeek.com

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Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#221

Post by kstrauser »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #203
MintsJohn wrote: post #170

I tried codeberg, used it a year, then early this year in all their wisdom codeberg decided to show adverserial random text instead of my repo, reporteldly to mess up llm training to user agents they weren't sure were human. Codeberg had one job, serve my repo, it didn't do that, when brought up, I was told it was a feature not a bug, they could maybe whitelist me but that wasn't my problem, it was that random people…

codeberg's one job gets interfered with by freeloaders hammering expensive views (like git blame) inconsiderately.

You’re so right. I have a public-facing Forgejo server. Before configuring Anubis, scrapers were sending it about 600K requests per day. Copying and pasting from my blog post about it:

* For every Git commit, fetch the version of every file in the repository at that commit.

* See git blame for every file at every commit.

* Attempt to download the archive of each repo at every commit.

* Run every possible pull request search filter combination.

* Run every possible issue search filter combination.

* Fetch each of those URLs at random from some residential IP in Brazil that had not ever accessed my server before.

Afterward, it dropped to several hundred. Expect anti-attack features to keep getting stranger and more visible as scraper get still more aggressive.

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#223

Post by moberemk »

gortok wrote: post #113
karel-3d wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

howtogeek is low-effort content mill, it's just upvoted here because of the headline, there is 0 actual effort in the article

I don’t know if it’s because of the weasel words in the article or the extensive use of passive voice in the article, but this article feels in part like it’s AI generated. I am exhausted with having to figure out whether someone wrote something or let AI generate it for them. Reading articles like this has become less pleasurable since the advent of generative AI. There’s no feeling or heart in the article, and it’s…

Thank you! I immediately had the same reaction and was disappointed no one else pointed it out, though I'm guessing it's because most people just read the headline before commenting

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#224

Post by sroussey »

anematode wrote: post #216
saghm wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't they just rate limit them? Are they literally using a new IP for every request?

There are indeed scrapers which use tens of thousands of distinct IPs, and so rate limiting them isn't a solution.

We used to call this snow shoeing.

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#225

Post by markstos »

I co-maintain a popular Linux launcher, Fuzzel, on Codeberg. We have no shortage of contributors despite not being on Github and the quality of contributors there is fairly high. In the past there were performance problems, but it's worked well enough lately.

My personal repos are on Gitlab. The UI is cluttered, but it works well enough.

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#226

Post by tosti »

whalesalad wrote: post #200
hackthemack wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your complaint about Anubis? I see the "checking if you are human" kind of text too when going to codeberg, but it is usually only a second or two. It is because I run a bit of obfuscation and resistance to browser finger printing. But you find seeing the text for a couple of seconds too annoying to use codeberg? Maybe it is more than 2 seconds for you? Everyone has their views on what is acceptable in the world a…

Seeing the Anubis weeb interstitial is super annoying.

Agreed. I installed the NoPow add-on and that worked (in Firefox).

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#228

Post by nearlyepic »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #215
nearlyepic wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sucks, but that ship has sailed. Hey, this attitude sucks. Would you tell this to someone who got beat up in an alley?

That is exactly what I would say. He got beat up, it is a fact and happened in the past. Unless you have a timemachine to undo it, nothing can make that undone. Now you can endulge in pain, anger, misery etc. - or you could get up, swallow the pain and look forward.

Genuinely disgusting that your first thought is therapy speak platitudes rather than holding someone accountable.

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#229

Post by cmrdporcupine »

TheChaplain wrote: post #217
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on Codeberg for my projects since September but will pull them if this happens. I see no definition of what "mostly using AI" means and refuse to be "punished" for the choice of tooling I use. The tone and content of the thread on Mastodon is absolutely toxic. I'd rather self-host than deal with the ambiguity and threats. Invariably from people who don't even make anything. I have plenty of concerns around…

If I understand it correctly, their target is projects like the recent pgrust (PostgreSQL in rust) which are full conversions of projects that no-one else will ever use. It's just noise.

Proposed language only says:

  7. You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as *Claude*, *OpenAI Codex*).
Who defines "mostly"? And what's the definition of "written"? If I'm heavily prompting, curating, reviewing, and editing after the agent has gone through, is that somehow now "allowed?" Who makes the decision and how can I appeal?

Almost everything I write now has some agentic aspect to it, and I'm by far not the only one. That wasn't the case when I started my projects but it is now.

But I'm a software engineer with 25-30 years of experience and a computer nerd since 1979 when they wheeled the Apple II into my Grade 1 classroom. I'll reserve the right to decide what tooling I use to write my copylefted free software.

Given the Mastodon thread linked above I don't trust the people involved to be the judge jury and executioner. Insults flew freely and moral absolutism with it. I'll just pull my project off their infrastructure rather than be subject to their personal whims.

Re: Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

#230

Post by erlau »

inkysigma wrote: post #92

Given more code hosting services, I wonder if we'll also see a corresponding increase in the number of alternative VCS or if git is legitimately very entrenched as a tool. I am just being a bit grouchy but I do wish there was more development of alternative VCSs. pijul at least looks cool even if I don't know if it scales well. Git LFS can be somewhat finicky to work with so maybe we'll see perforce like systems. It'…

I do think git serves a lot of people's needs very well. I see a lot of people being quite happy with direct github alternatives. Self hosting may become more popular too, I hadn't heard too many self hosting stories until recently. If LFS is your pain (I cannot stand to use git lfs) I have to mention oxen, which is open source and self hostable, but also has a hosted option. It handles large files right out of the gate and doing so faster than everyone else is one of its core missions. Still using github for distribution though, lol, see https://github.com/Oxen-AI/Oxen. I am also curious about where jj will go, its philosophy is really interesing, and sounds promising.
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