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Running a git forge is easy, I find the social coding/network effect the stickiest part of GitHub. I want my code to be discoverable, and I want to discover oth

by cedws 2mo ago

Running a git forge is easy, I find the social coding/network effect the stickiest part of GitHub. I want my code to be discoverable, and I want to discover others' code. I wanted to leave GitHub but I'm still stuck there. What it would take for me to finally leave is some kind of federation of the social features, so I can port my stars over, see what others are working on, etc.

t1234s 2mo ago
In the end GitHub will be a dating site
- Gander5739 2mo ago
  Github for lesbians: https://xkcd.com/624/ https://xkcd.com/624/
- DesaiAshu 2mo ago
  Or a music making platform
  - Scandiravian 2mo ago
    Or a bimonthly curated box of snacks
- stevekemp 2mo ago
  We already have linkedin for that!
Pxtl 2mo ago
Fediverse all the things.
worldsayshi 2mo ago
I remember there's at least one serious effort for forge federation. But don't know what it's called or how to search for it. Edit: here's one: https://forgefed.org/ https://forgefed.org/
Brian_K_White 2mo ago
And the forks/network tree. For any given project, are there any forks / is this one a fork, and which ones are more recently/actively maintained, and what are the changes? That network display where you can not only see all the forks in a timeline, but click on the individual commits is super handy. Idk how you'd assemble that out of a federated system. It's probably possible but seems like it would require a lot of update traffic going in all directions between all nodes.
markerz 2mo ago
Are we using GitHub differently? I don’t understand how the social network part of GitHub has to do with having your code discoverable and to discover. I’ve never stumbled upon a project by browsing GitHub casually. It’s always through finding the product first and trying to find the source code. If the source code is on some other website, I’ll probably figure it out, but it’s be a new muscle. Same with making an issue or a PR. The barrier is higher but not so high that I wouldn’t complain about a bug. If anything, I find the social tools on GitHub like PR reviews, issue management, and notifications to be terrible for their job. Perfectly fine for a 1 person project and absolutely awful for a team.
- cedws 2mo ago
  Yes, I think many people use GitHub just for code storage, and that's fine. I casually browse GitHub sometimes in the same way I do HN. I follow friends and colleagues and through the feed see what they're building and starring. I use global search to find tools and libraries that do what I want. Sometimes, I come across a repo I like that's on say GitLab, but not GitHub. I quickly forget about such projects because they live in my bookmarks instead of my stars list. >I find the social tools on GitHub like PR reviews, issue management, and notifications I don't consider these social features, at least not in the way I'm talking about.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    If nobody was using GitHub you'd be forced to get used to bookmarks, and that would be good.
- dijit 2mo ago
  > I’ve never stumbled upon a project by browsing GitHub casually. Same. The “discoverability” of github is two things: 1) Recognition of the name; so if I cannot find the source code and I believe something to be open source I will google the product name with “github”. 2) I can reasonably expect everyone to have an account, so getting issues and PRs is less effort than with other forges. But I’ve practically never discovered some new FOSS from githubs social features, and I actually look at my friends activity feeds.
nativeit 2mo ago
I’m in something of the same boat, although I don’t particularly care about my own stars and what not, for me it’s just a rather effective place to find open source projects to use/contribute towards (along with hosting for my own projects). I have found running GitHub mirrors for my own projects hosted on a private Forgejo instance works well enough, but the fracturing of GitHub will inevitably cause more difficulty in discovering others’ work. I suppose that opens opportunities up for either federation, or at least aggregation (Sourceforge has been doing that already, although I find its interface a little clunky).
inigyou 2mo ago
How much do you actually use social features of GitHub besides bug reporting? Your stars list is browser bookmarks. You can see what others are doing even if you don't have accounts on their sites.
- cedws 2mo ago
  >You can see what others are doing even if you don't have accounts on their sites Not practically. That works up to a number like three. Are you really going to manually poll every account you care about?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    How were you doing it on GitHub?
  - Shish2k 2mo ago
    I would imagine RSS solves this pretty nicely? (Though personally I subscribe to project blogs for major updates; the GitHub news feed is overwhelming with information I don't care about)
627467 2mo ago
https://gitnostr.com/ https://gitnostr.com/
lispwitch 2mo ago
Forgejo is actively developing ActivityPub-based federation support as a set of experimental features (https://forgejo.org/2023-01-10-answering-forgejo-federation-questions/ https://forgejo.org/2023-01-10-answering-forgejo-federation-...), including federated starring: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/1680 https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/1680
- jeremyjh 2mo ago
  If by actively you mean: after 3 years, nothing shipped but federated stars (maybe, none of the links in that PR work or contain the content promised, Codeberg still has no actual support for federation with other instances). Forum entirely dormant since August 2025.
inigyou 2mo ago
At some point the whole internet switched over from a project-centric to a platform-centric mental model for most people. It used to be "I want to talk to these people. Oh, they're on IRC" and then it was "I'm on IRC. who can I talk to here?" and while that might not be so bad for IRC, it's catastrophic when it's proprietary platforms with lock-in.
- jeremyjh 2mo ago
  Cool story bro. I don't think that describes anyone in the market for an open source software produce to use. Instead, what it means is that before opening an issue or submitting a patch to a project, if I must create a new account on an alternate forge there is a good chance I simply won't. I'll still use the software, I just won't make casual contributions to upstream. If I get invested in it and can see myself making a series of contributions then sure I'll click through and register and put up with all the things I may have to learn (at least Forgejo is a pixel-perfect clone of Github and I don't have to learn anything). The main issue though, is that I won't star a repo on an alternate forge. That is the main reason many projects will only consider Github - if they have no revenue they must have traction, and GitHub stars are a good substitute for meaningful measures of that.

by cedws 2mo ago

t1234s 2mo ago

In the end GitHub will be a dating site

Gander5739 2mo ago
Github for lesbians: https://xkcd.com/624/ https://xkcd.com/624/
DesaiAshu 2mo ago
Or a music making platform
- Scandiravian 2mo ago
  Or a bimonthly curated box of snacks
stevekemp 2mo ago
We already have linkedin for that!

Pxtl 2mo ago

Fediverse all the things.

worldsayshi 2mo ago

I remember there's at least one serious effort for forge federation. But don't know what it's called or how to search for it. Edit: here's one: https://forgefed.org/ https://forgefed.org/

Brian_K_White 2mo ago

And the forks/network tree. For any given project, are there any forks / is this one a fork, and which ones are more recently/actively maintained, and what are the changes? That network display where you can not only see all the forks in a timeline, but click on the individual commits is super handy. Idk how you'd assemble that out of a federated system. It's probably possible but seems like it would require a lot of update traffic going in all directions between all nodes.

markerz 2mo ago

Are we using GitHub differently? I don’t understand how the social network part of GitHub has to do with having your code discoverable and to discover. I’ve never stumbled upon a project by browsing GitHub casually. It’s always through finding the product first and trying to find the source code. If the source code is on some other website, I’ll probably figure it out, but it’s be a new muscle. Same with making an issue or a PR. The barrier is higher but not so high that I wouldn’t complain about a bug. If anything, I find the social tools on GitHub like PR reviews, issue management, and notifications to be terrible for their job. Perfectly fine for a 1 person project and absolutely awful for a team.

cedws 2mo ago
Yes, I think many people use GitHub just for code storage, and that's fine. I casually browse GitHub sometimes in the same way I do HN. I follow friends and colleagues and through the feed see what they're building and starring. I use global search to find tools and libraries that do what I want. Sometimes, I come across a repo I like that's on say GitLab, but not GitHub. I quickly forget about such projects because they live in my bookmarks instead of my stars list. >I find the social tools on GitHub like PR reviews, issue management, and notifications I don't consider these social features, at least not in the way I'm talking about.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  If nobody was using GitHub you'd be forced to get used to bookmarks, and that would be good.
dijit 2mo ago
> I’ve never stumbled upon a project by browsing GitHub casually. Same. The “discoverability” of github is two things: 1) Recognition of the name; so if I cannot find the source code and I believe something to be open source I will google the product name with “github”. 2) I can reasonably expect everyone to have an account, so getting issues and PRs is less effort than with other forges. But I’ve practically never discovered some new FOSS from githubs social features, and I actually look at my friends activity feeds.

nativeit 2mo ago

I’m in something of the same boat, although I don’t particularly care about my own stars and what not, for me it’s just a rather effective place to find open source projects to use/contribute towards (along with hosting for my own projects). I have found running GitHub mirrors for my own projects hosted on a private Forgejo instance works well enough, but the fracturing of GitHub will inevitably cause more difficulty in discovering others’ work. I suppose that opens opportunities up for either federation, or at least aggregation (Sourceforge has been doing that already, although I find its interface a little clunky).

inigyou 2mo ago

How much do you actually use social features of GitHub besides bug reporting? Your stars list is browser bookmarks. You can see what others are doing even if you don't have accounts on their sites.

cedws 2mo ago
>You can see what others are doing even if you don't have accounts on their sites Not practically. That works up to a number like three. Are you really going to manually poll every account you care about?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  How were you doing it on GitHub?
- Shish2k 2mo ago
  I would imagine RSS solves this pretty nicely? (Though personally I subscribe to project blogs for major updates; the GitHub news feed is overwhelming with information I don't care about)

627467 2mo ago

https://gitnostr.com/ https://gitnostr.com/

lispwitch 2mo ago

Forgejo is actively developing ActivityPub-based federation support as a set of experimental features (https://forgejo.org/2023-01-10-answering-forgejo-federation-questions/ https://forgejo.org/2023-01-10-answering-forgejo-federation-...), including federated starring: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/1680 https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/1680

jeremyjh 2mo ago
If by actively you mean: after 3 years, nothing shipped but federated stars (maybe, none of the links in that PR work or contain the content promised, Codeberg still has no actual support for federation with other instances). Forum entirely dormant since August 2025.

inigyou 2mo ago

At some point the whole internet switched over from a project-centric to a platform-centric mental model for most people. It used to be "I want to talk to these people. Oh, they're on IRC" and then it was "I'm on IRC. who can I talk to here?" and while that might not be so bad for IRC, it's catastrophic when it's proprietary platforms with lock-in.

jeremyjh 2mo ago
Cool story bro. I don't think that describes anyone in the market for an open source software produce to use. Instead, what it means is that before opening an issue or submitting a patch to a project, if I must create a new account on an alternate forge there is a good chance I simply won't. I'll still use the software, I just won't make casual contributions to upstream. If I get invested in it and can see myself making a series of contributions then sure I'll click through and register and put up with all the things I may have to learn (at least Forgejo is a pixel-perfect clone of Github and I don't have to learn anything). The main issue though, is that I won't star a repo on an alternate forge. That is the main reason many projects will only consider Github - if they have no revenue they must have traction, and GitHub stars are a good substitute for meaningful measures of that.