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Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

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Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not exactly a role model when it comes to communication.

Perhaps he should be. This idea that we should tolerate terrible things and only respond to them politely seems to produce bad outcomes, for some mysterious reason.

I am not convinced of this. Being rude and insulting someone’s intelligence is rarely a good trait. Linus got away with it due to the unique circumstances: leader of an incredibly popular open source project and a gatekeeper to a lot of access to it.

My argument against how he handles things has always been that while it may seem effective, we do not know how much more effective he would be if he did not curse people out for being dumb fucks.

And it doesn’t seem like this is a requirement for the job: lots of other project leaders treat others with courtesy and respect and it doesn’t seem to cause issues.

The reality is that it is easy to wish more people were verbally abusive to others when it isn’t directed at you. But soon as you are on the receiving end of it, especially as a volunteer, there is a greater than not chance that you will be less likely to want to continue contributing.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#262

The edit history of the announcement is quite a ride: > [2025-11-27T02:10:07Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the product have moved on to bigger and better things, with the remaining losers eager to inflict some kind of bloated, buggy JavaScript framework on us in the name of progress [1] > [2025-11-27T14:04:47Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the…

this Corporate Americanism is of only positivity and fake smiles is exactly how we end up with enshittified products, because no one is ever called out for it. If the feedback is too soft, it just gets swept under the rug.

we need less self censorship, not more.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#263
post #195

The edit history of the announcement is quite a ride: > [2025-11-27T02:10:07Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the product have moved on to bigger and better things, with the remaining losers eager to inflict some kind of bloated, buggy JavaScript framework on us in the name of progress [1] > [2025-11-27T14:04:47Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the…

Reads like an official White House statement[0]. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/yes-biden-spent-...

[flagged]

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#264
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like how you buy a standards committee. Just research about Office formats' ISO standardization process. I'm not insinuating MicroSoft will buy Codeberg, but I just wanted to say that, they are not foreigners to the process itself.

Are there standards committees with 786 voting members, of which you would have to convince at least 2/3 to betray the ideals of the association they chose to actively take part in to get the association to disband or otherwise stop it from pursuing its mission? I don't think your comparison works out.

~800 members? That's great to hear actually. I like Codeberg and want them to succeed and be protected from outside effects.

That's said, I believe my comparison checks out. Having ~800 members is a useful moat, and will deter actors from harming Codeberg.

OTOH, the mechanism can still theoretically work. Of course Microsoft won't try something that blatant, but if the e.V loses this moat, there are mechanisms which Microsoft can and would like to use as Codeberg gets more popular.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#265

The edit history of the announcement is quite a ride: > [2025-11-27T02:10:07Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the product have moved on to bigger and better things, with the remaining losers eager to inflict some kind of bloated, buggy JavaScript framework on us in the name of progress [1] > [2025-11-27T14:04:47Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the…

I say this as someone who has been cautioning about Microsoft's ownership of GitHub for years now... but the Zig community has been high drama lately. I thought the Rust community had done themselves a disservice with their high tolerance of drama, but lately Zig seems to me to be more drama than even Rust. I was saddened to see how they ganged up to bully the author of the Zig book. The book author, as far as I coul…

I agree partially.

I do think that it was weird to focus on the AI aspect so much. AI is going to pollute everything going forward whether you like it or not. And honestly who cares, either it is a good ressource for learning or it’s not. You have to decide that for yourself and not based on whether AI helped writing it.

However I think some of the critique was because he stole the code for the interactive editor and claimed he made it himself, which of course you shouldn’t do.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#267

The edit history of the announcement is quite a ride: > [2025-11-27T02:10:07Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the product have moved on to bigger and better things, with the remaining losers eager to inflict some kind of bloated, buggy JavaScript framework on us in the name of progress [1] > [2025-11-27T14:04:47Z] it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the…

This, I was shocked when I read the first version. I get it if you’re an influencer, but as a programming language people need to expect you can manage your emotions and be objective

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with this at all. I think the reason Github is so prominent is the social network aspects it has built around Git, which created strong network effects that most developers are unwilling to part with. Maintainers don't want to loose their stars and the users don't want to loose the collective "audit" by the github users. Things like number of stars on a repository, number of forks, number of issues answ…

Github became successful long before those 'social media features' were added, simply because it provided free hosting for open source projects (and free hosting services were still a rare thing back in the noughties). The previous popular free code hoster was Sourceforge, which eventually entered its what's now called "enshittifcation phase". Github was simply in the right place at the right time to replace Sourcefo…

Technically so was BitBucket but it chose mercurial over git initially. If you are old enough you will remember articles comparing the two with mercurial getting slightly more favorable reviews.

And for those who don’t remember SourceForge, it had two major problems in DevEx: first you couldn’t just get your open source project published. It had to be approved. And once it did, you had an ugly URL. GitHub had pretty URLs.

I remember putting up my very first open source project back before GitHub and going through this huge checklist of what a good open source project must have. Then seeing that people just tossed code onto GitHub as is: no man pages, no or little documentation, build instructions that resulted in errors, no curated changelog, and realizing that things are changing.

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#269

I totally agree, Microsoft is ruining everything with AI, like all Microsoft product have been on decline for years even before the LLM era, and now they are on an even steeper decline. it makes me sad to see that github is now going through the same shit, and people are using other random half-ass alternatives, it’s not easy to keep track of your favourite open-source projects across many source forgeries. we need s…

See, AI accelerate productivity, with it Microsoft is ruining its products and brand even faster!

Re: Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

#270
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been complaints about it on Reddit as well. I registered an account recently and to me the annoying thing is the constant "making sure you are not a bot" check. For now I see no reason to migrate, but I do admit Forgejo looks very interesting to self-host.

I moved (from selfhost gitlab) to forgejo recently, and for my needs it's a lot better, with a lot less hassle. It also seems a lot more performant (again probably because I don't need a lot of the advanced features of gitlab).

I've been contemplating this for almost two years. Gitlab has gotten very bloated and despite disabling a number of services in the config, it continues to require increasingly more compute and RAM; we don't even use the integrated Postgres database.

There are a few things that keep me on Gitlab, but the main one is the quality of the CI/CD system and the gitlab runners.

I looked at Woodpecker, but it seems so docker-centric and we are, uh, not.

The other big gulf is issues and issue management. Gitlab CE is terrible; weird limitations (no epics unless you pay), broken features, UX nightmares, but from the looks of it Forjego is even more lacking in this area? Despite this seeming disdain, the other feature we regularly use is referencing issue numbers in commits to tie work together easily. On this one, I can see the answer as "be the change - contribute this to Forgejo" and I'm certainly willing. Still, it's currently a blocker.

But my hopes in putting this comment out there is that perhaps others have suggestions or insight I'm missing?

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