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> 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.

by bilekas 10mo ago

> 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 copilot we might be onto something.

anothernewdude 10mo ago
I've already jumped ship. Switching source control host was actually pretty easy. Builds still working just fine.
- thomasnno 10mo ago
  Great! Who did you jump to ?
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    The most obvious "all-in-one" package is GitLab, if you have the hardware for it and don't mind bit of bloat but all the needed features in one package. Personally, for smaller scale projects that still require collaboration over the web, Gitea/Forgejo + Woodpecker CI has been a really simple, lightweight and easy to maintain solution.
    - germandiago 10mo ago
      I am self host8ng forgejo. What can other CIs do that I could potentially need that is absent?
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        If you're using the built-in Actions/CI/whatever it's called, and it works for you, then that's great, don't try to change :) I guess I'm mostly still with Woodpecker because of having used it for years already, don't think there is anything major missing with either approaches, but was a while ago I looked deeper into it, maybe someone else here knows more (recent) details.
    - ascendantlogic 10mo ago
      I really love Gitlab CI. I don't miss managing my own Gitlab server but I definitely prefer their CI product to actions.
  - anothernewdude 10mo ago
    Gitlab. Required very few CI/CD changes to be honest.
embedding-shape 10mo ago
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 continue using GitHub. Do you think these companies now suddenly stop wanting to move away from GitHub Actions because Microsoft suddenly changed their mind? I don't think so, probably less priority, but it will happen, because now the cat is out of the bag. If they'd just do user research before announcing changes and not use announcements as "testing the waters", I'm sure they'd see a lot less churn. But I guess some number counting team somewhere in Microsoft figured out they'd make more money by charging people to run software on their own hardware, so maybe I'm just dreaming.
- Xylakant 10mo ago
  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 self-hosted runners is actually fine. They’re not free for the provider either - log aggregation, caching of artifacts, runner scheduling, implementing the runner software etc are non-trivial problems for any larger CI system. So I’m actually fine with the proposed change since it also gives me the power as a customer to say “hey, I’m paying for this, fix it.”
  - hobofan 10mo ago
    I also think its fine and fair to charge for the general GHA infrastructure that one would also be using with self-hosted runners. I suspect that they weren't looking to make money off of those charges, but rather use that as a forcing function to push more usage of their managed runner (which are higher margin) which didn't work out. Rather than everyone saying "damn that makes alternatives financially unattactive", a good chunk of the feedback was "sure I'll pay those charges as long as I don't have to use the shitty managed runners".
grub5000 10mo ago
> 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.
- newdee 10mo ago
  For now
- bilekas 10mo ago
  It has reappeared on mine after mandatory windows updates which is frustrating and also it looks like it will be arriving on my TV soon too without the option to remove it. > https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/tv-providers/lg-tv-update-adds-non-removable-microsoft-copilot-app-to-webos https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/tv-providers/... So it's not a stretch to assume they will continue to force it in their OS.
- evilduck 10mo ago
  Why should anyone have to take action against it? Good products don't need to be forced upon users, an obnoxious ad in one of the dozen places Windows shows advertising would have sufficed. People even willingly fork over cash for ChatGPT and Claude and those don't even have OS ad placements or forced installs.
- renegade-otter 10mo ago
  Microsoft will remove something after an outcry and then will later get it back with no option to remove. This happens all the time. People have no attention spans these day as they move to the new outrage hashtag of the day, so this works.
amluto 10mo ago
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 be very, very low. An ingestion agent. Monitors the repository for pushes and PRs. A job agent. This runs a in a sandbox and gets the inputs from GitHub and runs what is effectively a workflow step. It doesn’t get any secrets — everything it wants to do is either accomplished in the form of JSON output, blob output, or an org-specific API for doing things that don’t fit the JSON output model. A thing to handle results. This is a simple service, connected to the database, that consumes the JSON job results and does whatever is needed (which would mostly consist of commenting on PRs or updating a CI status dashboard). For CD workflows, the build artifacts would be sent to whatever registry they go to. A configuration system, which would be some files somewhere, maybe in a git repository that is not the repository that CI is being done on. (GitHub’s model of Actions config being in-band in the repository is IMO entirely wrong.) And that’s about it. I’m not suggesting that I could duplicate the GitHub Actions in a weekend. But I wouldn’t want to. This would be single-tenant, and it would support exactly the features that the organization actually uses. Heck, even par-for-the-course things like SSO aren’t needed because the entire system would have no users per se :)
- Cheer2171 10mo ago
  [dead]
- bilekas 10mo ago
  I'm not sure why this is so downvoted given the climate. I guess it's the AI driven approach. These things, critical infra, are always done better with a few eyes in it.. introducing irresponsible ideas of "I'll just remake it with Claude without knowing the underlying infra" can hit a few nerves, also add a few lower level bugs, exploits etc. I don't think it's fair for the downvoted but I think it's worth discussing where we draw the line. Edit: I think AI is a tool not a replacement.
klaussilveira 10mo ago
We jumped ship too. Forgejo has been amazing.
nerdjon 10mo ago
That would be my guess, I know personally yesterday I finally setup Forgejo and today I plan to evaluate its runners or even just using a dedicated CI like woodpecker. Not fully sure what I will do regarding any open source repo's yet, but at least anything private I am already in the process of moving away. This was something I already wanted to do for privacy concerns (especially possibility using private repo's to train AI) so this was just the push I needed.
p_j_w 10mo ago
> Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copilot I think they'll take the opposite lesson. Copilot hasn’t lost them many users because Windows users are locked into the ecosystem and unable to leave. They will try to get GitHub into a position similar to that and then try this shit again.
renegade-otter 10mo ago
In the age of LLMs, "rewrite these actions to use XYZ instead" also makes this easier than ever. Not a one-shot solution, probably, but most likely not as challenging. Microsoft thinks it has a moat by locking people in, but they ticked me off hard enough (finally) for me to switch my gaming Alienware rig to Mint. It starts faster, too.

by bilekas 10mo ago

anothernewdude 10mo ago

I've already jumped ship. Switching source control host was actually pretty easy. Builds still working just fine.

thomasnno 10mo ago
Great! Who did you jump to ?
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  The most obvious "all-in-one" package is GitLab, if you have the hardware for it and don't mind bit of bloat but all the needed features in one package. Personally, for smaller scale projects that still require collaboration over the web, Gitea/Forgejo + Woodpecker CI has been a really simple, lightweight and easy to maintain solution.
  - germandiago 10mo ago
    I am self host8ng forgejo. What can other CIs do that I could potentially need that is absent?
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      If you're using the built-in Actions/CI/whatever it's called, and it works for you, then that's great, don't try to change :) I guess I'm mostly still with Woodpecker because of having used it for years already, don't think there is anything major missing with either approaches, but was a while ago I looked deeper into it, maybe someone else here knows more (recent) details.
  - ascendantlogic 10mo ago
    I really love Gitlab CI. I don't miss managing my own Gitlab server but I definitely prefer their CI product to actions.
- anothernewdude 10mo ago
  Gitlab. Required very few CI/CD changes to be honest.

embedding-shape 10mo ago

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 continue using GitHub. Do you think these companies now suddenly stop wanting to move away from GitHub Actions because Microsoft suddenly changed their mind? I don't think so, probably less priority, but it will happen, because now the cat is out of the bag. If they'd just do user research before announcing changes and not use announcements as "testing the waters", I'm sure they'd see a lot less churn. But I guess some number counting team somewhere in Microsoft figured out they'd make more money by charging people to run software on their own hardware, so maybe I'm just dreaming.

Xylakant 10mo ago
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 self-hosted runners is actually fine. They’re not free for the provider either - log aggregation, caching of artifacts, runner scheduling, implementing the runner software etc are non-trivial problems for any larger CI system. So I’m actually fine with the proposed change since it also gives me the power as a customer to say “hey, I’m paying for this, fix it.”
- hobofan 10mo ago
  I also think its fine and fair to charge for the general GHA infrastructure that one would also be using with self-hosted runners. I suspect that they weren't looking to make money off of those charges, but rather use that as a forcing function to push more usage of their managed runner (which are higher margin) which didn't work out. Rather than everyone saying "damn that makes alternatives financially unattactive", a good chunk of the feedback was "sure I'll pay those charges as long as I don't have to use the shitty managed runners".

grub5000 10mo ago

> 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.

newdee 10mo ago
For now
bilekas 10mo ago
It has reappeared on mine after mandatory windows updates which is frustrating and also it looks like it will be arriving on my TV soon too without the option to remove it. > https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/tv-providers/lg-tv-update-adds-non-removable-microsoft-copilot-app-to-webos https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/tv-providers/... So it's not a stretch to assume they will continue to force it in their OS.
evilduck 10mo ago
Why should anyone have to take action against it? Good products don't need to be forced upon users, an obnoxious ad in one of the dozen places Windows shows advertising would have sufficed. People even willingly fork over cash for ChatGPT and Claude and those don't even have OS ad placements or forced installs.
renegade-otter 10mo ago
Microsoft will remove something after an outcry and then will later get it back with no option to remove. This happens all the time. People have no attention spans these day as they move to the new outrage hashtag of the day, so this works.

amluto 10mo ago

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 be very, very low. An ingestion agent. Monitors the repository for pushes and PRs. A job agent. This runs a in a sandbox and gets the inputs from GitHub and runs what is effectively a workflow step. It doesn’t get any secrets — everything it wants to do is either accomplished in the form of JSON output, blob output, or an org-specific API for doing things that don’t fit the JSON output model. A thing to handle results. This is a simple service, connected to the database, that consumes the JSON job results and does whatever is needed (which would mostly consist of commenting on PRs or updating a CI status dashboard). For CD workflows, the build artifacts would be sent to whatever registry they go to. A configuration system, which would be some files somewhere, maybe in a git repository that is not the repository that CI is being done on. (GitHub’s model of Actions config being in-band in the repository is IMO entirely wrong.) And that’s about it. I’m not suggesting that I could duplicate the GitHub Actions in a weekend. But I wouldn’t want to. This would be single-tenant, and it would support exactly the features that the organization actually uses. Heck, even par-for-the-course things like SSO aren’t needed because the entire system would have no users per se :)

Cheer2171 10mo ago
[dead]
bilekas 10mo ago
I'm not sure why this is so downvoted given the climate. I guess it's the AI driven approach. These things, critical infra, are always done better with a few eyes in it.. introducing irresponsible ideas of "I'll just remake it with Claude without knowing the underlying infra" can hit a few nerves, also add a few lower level bugs, exploits etc. I don't think it's fair for the downvoted but I think it's worth discussing where we draw the line. Edit: I think AI is a tool not a replacement.

klaussilveira 10mo ago

We jumped ship too. Forgejo has been amazing.

nerdjon 10mo ago

That would be my guess, I know personally yesterday I finally setup Forgejo and today I plan to evaluate its runners or even just using a dedicated CI like woodpecker. Not fully sure what I will do regarding any open source repo's yet, but at least anything private I am already in the process of moving away. This was something I already wanted to do for privacy concerns (especially possibility using private repo's to train AI) so this was just the push I needed.

p_j_w 10mo ago

> Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copilot I think they'll take the opposite lesson. Copilot hasn’t lost them many users because Windows users are locked into the ecosystem and unable to leave. They will try to get GitHub into a position similar to that and then try this shit again.

renegade-otter 10mo ago

In the age of LLMs, "rewrite these actions to use XYZ instead" also makes this easier than ever. Not a one-shot solution, probably, but most likely not as challenging. Microsoft thinks it has a moat by locking people in, but they ticked me off hard enough (finally) for me to switch my gaming Alienware rig to Mint. It starts faster, too.