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I do work at GitHub. I shared the above as a nuanced "yes and" to the pain that Mitchell is feeling. In the same way that Mastodon didn't replace Twitter even
by idan 5mo ago
I do work at GitHub. I shared the above as a nuanced "yes and" to the pain that Mitchell is feeling.
In the same way that Mastodon didn't replace Twitter even when Twitter went to shit, I don't believe in the various GitHub alternatives becoming a broadly-used thing. Maybe we'll end up with more GitHub-alikes like Codeberg, mabye we'll end up with some communities adopting novel forges like Tangled and Forgejo. But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated. Has the same energy as "20XX is finally the year of linux on the desktop".
My very personal hot take: the likeliest happy future is _most likely_ to happen through improving GitHub. I vote with my feet to do that from inside, and that's all I wanted to add. Hence "I hope we do the things that make you want to come back one day." I believe in it enough that I choose to work here on exactly that, because like Mitchell, I care very much about the platonic ideal of GitHub. He's ready to move on, and I'm not yet. There's no value judgment hiding inside that.
- WD-42 5mo agoComparing to twitter is astute, as there are some analysis that point to it being mostly bots in 2025. I can see the same happening for GitHub, in fact it seems to be actively trying to move in that direction: a platform for AI agents to host code, to review code, with little to no human activity. Just like everyone who didn’t want to deal with bots left twitter, they will soon leave GitHub for similar reasons. I’m sure there is a future for GitHub as the code hosting platform for agents but it should be no surprise then when real people like Mitchell and the rest of us jump ship.
- margalabargala 5mo agoI'm glad you are optimistic. GitHub will need employees with that attitude if they're going to pull out of their current trajectory. To be clear- from a user perspective, "improving GitHub" means "restoring reliability to what it was 6 years ago". There's no killer feature that makes people stop leaving, if my PRs don't lead every third day and actions never work.
- slowmovintarget 5mo agoSecurity: No leaking PII, no compromised build pipelines. Uptime: 4 9s minimum for paying customers for the core service (not necessarily the social features, but pull requests have to work).
- pcdevils 5mo agoMore AI it is
- grogenaut 5mo agoI may have my timelines wrong but I don't remember github being rock solid 5 years ago. I remember multiple outages keeping us from pulling code for go packages that were not using an enterprise dependency cache and killing multiple days of work a year for those systems. It's what I used as a forcing function to move people TO an enterprise dependency cache, and to find the few scofflaws running work code off of github.com versus enterprise.
- margalabargala 5mo agoYou're right. I was misremembering this graph: https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/ https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/
- tlunch 5mo agoThat is a pretty wild graph
- throwaway2037 5mo agoCan you explain more of what you mean by "wild" here? I never worked on any SaaS that had such high uptime. It seems pretty good to me. In 10 years, it was always better than 99.5% uptime. That seems impressive to me for a huge, complex SaaS like GitHub.
- altairprime 5mo agoI think a better comparison would be between GitHub and 1Password. Both started out as really excellent things for individuals and both became really awful things for individuals in their pursuit of enterprises.
- NetMageSCW 5mo agoWhat do you find awful about 1Password today?
- codebje 5mo agoNot the parent, but the only thing I really hate about 1Password is that I can't tell it to never offer to save a specific site's password. I can turn off all offers to save passwords, or I can have the stupid pop-up ask me multiple times a day if I want to save that password. The pop-up chases me across the site until I get rid of it. Aarrgh. Blood boiling. Rage overflowing. Other than that it's fine, I guess.
- cout 5mo agoI have the same complaint about lastpass. With lastpass it's doable, but I have to keep looking up how to configure a site to never site and never ask.
- throwaway2037 5mo agoI have the same issue when using Google Passwords. One specific example: Many of my bank websites require 2FA with a code via email, SMS, or token. Each time, Google Chrome asks me if I want to update the password with the 2FA token. I have no idea how to disable it. Am I doing something wrong?
- altairprime 5mo agoWhen I quit using 1Password, it was when they dumped native apps for electron apps and quit supporting the product I’d been buying upgrades for every couple years, in order to pivot to a cloud model that lets them imposing an enterprise subscription model for enterprise users onto individuals. Dunno what they’re up to these days, but I’d be shocked if they could last six months without enterprise customers, so I know I’m not relevant to them anymore. And that’s the same way I view GitHub — individuals are financially and strategically irrelevant to their bottom line. It’s their right, certainly, but it means I use GitHub as a Google Site replacement and my only active repo is archived whenever I’m not pushing commits to silence all the unwanted crap that comes with a GitHub repo. I’d be daft to ignore free hosting and I don’t care in the slightest that it’s one nines. Makes me laugh every time, though, to think of all those billion dollar AI-layoffs businesses having to stop AI work for a day because AI proliferation broke the freemium model and GitHub’s too hooked on being home to unfunded, mission-critical infrastructure projects to close the barn doors on free.
- godelski 5mo agoThe problem is that from the outside it seems like Microsoft no longer cares about the product. So much so that "the product" has become "shareholders"[0]. We've just been moving into a world where metric hacking is the desired outcome, not an outcome to try to avoid. These companies are only surviving because of their monopoly statuses. Because of momentum. It's a powerful force. It's the reason Twitter still is around. The reason Facebook is still around. But them being around doesn't mean they're good. It doesn't mean they're useful. It doesn't mean it is a good product. It doesn't mean the users like it. It just means people are used to the way things are and they aren't angry enough to leave for something else. But these companies are actively creating friction for users, daring them to leave, gouging them for everything they can. FFS Microsoft is the largest contributor (even more than Valve) to creating "the year of linux". Sure, it'll never have M$FT's market share, but it sure is eating into their revenue. We've all lost sight of what made software so powerful in the first place. Why it became so successful and changed the world. We used to ship good products that help people, make their lives better, and make lots of money in the process. Now, I think all that anyone cares about is the last part. Now we're actively being hostile to those that make the systems better. And that system is fucked up and will destroy itself. That's not a good thing, because it does a lot of damage along the way. It is a system of extreme myopia. In the last 5 years I'd argue that most software has made my life harder and more complex, not easier. There are definitely exceptions to this (ghostty being a great example), but there is a strong trend. I know I'm not alone in this feeling and I think we're getting to a point where a lot of people are no longer willing to dismiss their own gripes. This is not a good sign... I'm glad you're optimistic. I do hope things can change. And my frustration is not directed at you. I really do want you to be right and I really do want to see change come from the inside. But I do not think those leading the companies now have any foresight. To be honest, I'm not even sure there's anyone at the wheel. It feels like we've just let the market forces steer the ship. If the currents steer the ship, then there's no captain, regardless of who claims the title. Frankly, I don't want to be on a ship without a captain, but here we are. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM
- komali2 5mo ago> But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated. Has the same energy as "20XX is finally the year of linux on the desktop". This is funny, because 2025-on seems to be starting some couple years of Linux on the desktop/laptop. Valve introduced millions of people to gaming on Linux, bazzite is exploding in popularity, and that popularity is pouring into other projects like Omarchy, Mint, Ubuntu. GitHub maybe will end up like Twitter - where the people who are there are there because they have to be, while the people actually enjoying their time online are on different platforms.
- pinkgolem 5mo agoI joined a startup 3 years ago as employe 6. everyone was using windows but I was used to working with macos so I got a mac. Took a year till everyone was using a Mac.
- jospeh554 5mo agoMost places I've worked I've had the autonomy to re-install my machine to whatever OS I worked with, so was always Debian Linux. Then I joined some mega-corp, with it's structures and set systems, so opted for a Macbook. Worst mistake of my life, OSX is horrid, I'd rather use Windows.
- nuc1e0n 5mo agoMaybe you can install homebrew and open source apps to make it more Linux like, but you'll still be stuck with Mac OS's shonky window and task management UI unfortunately.
- someguyiguess 5mo agoInstall SizeUp. I paid $10 10 years ago and have been using it ever since. Far better window management than any Linux distro I've used. (and better than windows but that's not saying much) edit: 13 years ago
- kstrauser 5mo ago> But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated. I've moved my projects over to my own personal Forgejo (when I don't care about collaborating on them) and Codeberg (when I do). I find that ecosystem vastly simpler in the common ways that matter. For instance, viewing large diffs and syntax highlighted files is unbelievably faster, about as fast as GitHub's use to be before it was "improved". For every way I use those forges as a solo or small-group contributor, the alternatives are as good as or better than GitHub today. Some product manager could become a company legend by figuring out how and why that is, then getting someone to do something about it.
- rob74 5mo agoYes, sure! OP didn't say that there aren't alternatives or that the alternatives aren't any good, they just said that GitHub is so huge it will probably continue to remain relevant, no matter how bad it gets. And they have a point - X is one example, but even SourceForge (remember SourceForge?) is still around, despite being an undeniably shitty platform that tried to install adware on their user's computers.
- someguyiguess 5mo agoAh yes. Just like how Blockbuster Video remained relevant and everyone still uses it today.
- kstrauser 5mo agoBut OP did say the alternatives were “so much more complicated”. If you showed a new dev both GitHub and Forgejo, I’m not sure they’d notice the differences other than the latter being much faster for many common operations. It and Codeberg aren’t more complicated in any tangible way. If GitHub’s internal thinking were “well at least we’re easier than Codeberg”, then they may find that the moat isn’t nearly so deep as they might hope.
- nine_k 5mo agoSpeaking of a "year of Linux on desktop", it's mostly not happening because the desktop lock-in has largely eased. I of course love my Linux desktop, but I use relatively few native applications, and every one of them is multiplatform now. Windows desktop becomes less and less relevant in its own way, by degradation of experience, and by being replaced with consoles and the Steam Deck. Same may happen to GitHub. CI/CD tools and workflows can become more portable and adaptable. Independent code review tools that can use GitHub API along with a few other APIs may become popular. GitHub will become one of, not the one. I won't call it a bad outcome.
- renegade-otter 5mo agoI think the same of AWS. There are alternatives out there, especially for small personal projects. I use Digital Ocean and couldn't be happier. The bill is small, and it's refreshingly simple to host a container. I still have battle scars from trying to set up AWS Fargate. It's just a hodge podge of corporately requested features at this point.
- lugoues 5mo agoHonestly many companies would do well to use these services. I think we get too much into the idea our apps need the same guarantees as the large products out there. Define your SLAs and then choose the platform.
- nashadelic 5mo agoWhats funny is that nearly every major desktop app and feature has come out on macOS first and windows has nearly always been an after thought
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- watwut 5mo agoIt is actuly good for the ecosystem to have competition. Githubs quasi monopoly was a bad thing. And will continue to be a bad thing in the future if it remains
- scubadude 5mo agoGitHub lost me when Microsoft used my shitty code to train shitty AI without my permission.
- someguyiguess 5mo agoWym? They had a banner up for months asking if you wanted to opt out.
- Lammy 5mo agoHow do I opt out if somebody pushes a copy of my project's repo to their own namespace on GitHub?
- fragmede 5mo agoWho's this random somebody that has a copy of your code that you don't want shared or trained on? GitHub's no saint here, but it seems like that somebody is an issue, not GitHub.
- Lammy 5mo agoUntil now there was never a reason to have a permissive software license that tries to restrict where the recipients can store the code, because this is a new issue. My software is AGPLv3 but I'd rather just stop sharing my code entirely than let these corpos profit from my work for free. Mirroring onto GitHub is very very common since GitHub is frequently accessible in network environments where random others forges may not be.
- xinayder 5mo ago> But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated. None of the alternatives you cited are as complicated as GitHub. Also, GitHub started with this Actions bullshit which is just reinventing the CI wheel and overcomplicating stuff that was already made simple. The one thing I hate Forgejo about is for being compatible with Actions and promoting is as the way to go for CI, when you have much better alternatives like Woodpecker, where you can actually understand the underlying code for your CI/CD pipelines.