6 ms·

Help encourage alternatives by trying Gitlab.com or Codeberg.org or Tangled.org or others, and please star some projects there to help motivate more options.

by jph 2mo ago

Help encourage alternatives by trying Gitlab.com or Codeberg.org or Tangled.org or others, and please star some projects there to help motivate more options. Self-promo links below if you would like to star a few of mine good for developers. https://gitlab.com/architecture-decision-record https://gitlab.com/architecture-decision-record https://gitlab.com/ways-of-working https://gitlab.com/ways-of-working https://gitlab.com/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure https://gitlab.com/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure

crabbone 2mo ago
I started my career in programming with Subversion was the most popular tool. I also had to work a little with VSS, Perforce, Mercurial and, obviously, Git. I was one of the first users of Google Code... So, relatively, not so long ago it was pretty common to host all this stuff yourself. I don't think (or maybe don't remember) Subversion having any Web interface of its own, but, since forever Git came with GitWeb. I remember configuring it for the first time: any extra bit of configuration, especially those that resulted in some added interactive functionality seemed exciting. For a week, I'd push something to my branch and immediately refresh the browser page to see my changes reflected in the remote repository :D The infatuation wore off very quickly: after a month I have almost forgotten the Web interface even existed. The cycle repeated with hosted services, the addition of PR interface, the addition of "pages", the bug reports, the built-in Wiki. After discovering the new gadget and associated hype, invariably, came the realization that the predating existing functionality was... better. The PR discussion in the Web page detached from the code is a lot worse than the PR discussion in the PR itself. The built-in issue tracker doesn't come close to the stand-alone product functionality. The built-in Wiki is ridiculously underwhelming when compared to an actual Wiki. And so was the CI. For me, it started with Gitlab. There are oh so many reasons to hate Jenkins, so, whenever anyone announced an alternative platform, I'd absolutely check it out, and so did a lot of others, I presume. I was super hyped up about the possibility of running CI from the command line, completely locally on my laptop. And then it turned out to be a bait-and-switch kind of thing. I've created monumental dozen-steps and branching pipelines connecting multiple projects only to realize that the best CI is the one that uses as little as possible of the platform tools. In the end of the day, I came to realization, that beside the social aspect of the platform like GitHub, everything that it offers on top of the essential Git repository storage is too low quality. And so do competitors. If I was ever again tasked with setting up a company code repository storage, I'd go with a physical server attached to the local office network, unless there's no office, in which case, probably, some EC2 VM would do the job... Places like GitHub or Gitlab lure you in with their free tier offering, where you get the storage space and some other goodies for free, but once you need to upgrade to the paid tier, you inevitably realize that it's not worth the money they charge for it.
voidnullvalue 2mo ago
Codeberg isn't a viable infrastructure alternative. Its an opinionated community not a neutral host as they will delete repos based off subjective opinions on LLM usage and resource consumption. If continued hosting is dependent on moderators deciding if a project fits whatever the current philosophy is, and the whims of the moderation team, then I cannot consider it a serious choice for infrastructure. Infrastructure should be neutral. Codeberg is a social club
- pojntfx 2mo ago
  Codeberg is one public flagship instance. They are not neutral and don't claim to be. Decisions on what to host are made via elections by e.V. members. Other platforms (GitHub, GitLab, Tangled etc.) will eventually run into this same thing as well, e.g. how GitHub responds to DMCA requests, the difference with Codeberg is that there are elections which decide on what gets hosted on the main instance. For hosting slop or running a ton of actions, the recommendation is to self-host Forgejo directly instead, meaning that you, not the e.V. pays for the consequences, and you'd use the future AP federation support for cross-instance support. Forgejo is particularly simple to self-host as well, and lots of people do it (ffmpeg, Fedora and more). That way, you get to set your own rules and e.V. election results have no effect on you.
- jph 2mo ago
  Can you suggest a viable infrastructure alternative? My wishlist: free for open source and paid for closed source, able to do simple projects that are handwritten and also complex projects including AI LLM code that needs CI/CD/auditing, and hosting in the UK or EU. Aside, I donate money to Codeberg because I think Codeberg is a wonderful service with strong commitment to free open source, and because I host some larger projects and AI projects that are for public welfare social good.
  - icy 2mo ago
    https://tangled.org https://tangled.org would love to have you :) We're hosted in the EU, and are free for open source, forever. Tangled is also designed to be federated from ground up, so you get to own your infra & data while still participating in an open network.
1matin 2mo ago
GitHub being ruined after the AI hype is a shallow take imo. The root problem isn't AI, Microsoft, or Azure; It's why people keep _trusting_ centralized infra. GitLab and Codeberg can absolutely become trash, each in their own way. The solution isn't just "migrating off of GitHub"; it's "migrating to a platform that is unownable by design, not only hope". And there are no good enough decentralized alternatives to GitHub yet. Tangled.org's decentralization has serious holes. Radicle made an alien universe; a niche within a niche. Also, it's already having problems with ISPs: https://radicle.dev/2026/04/23/domain-move https://radicle.dev/2026/04/23/domain-move
- moffkalast 2mo ago
  Azure was arguably as garbage four years ago as it is today, the only thing that's changed in the past few years is MS mandated vibe coding, and suddenly Github has an outage every week? A ridiculous coincidence if it's not causal.
- varun_ch 2mo ago
  What are the serious holes?
  - 1matin 2mo ago
    The main hole is that ATProto's data model is a bit awkward for a code forge. Issues/PRs/comments are records owned by their authors, not by the repo. So an issue can span N users' PDSes. That's a neat model for social media, but a forge wants the repo to be the durable owner/context of its issues and history because that's where the comment/issue/etc. logically belongs. The solution? tangled.org acts as a super advanced cache/aggregator for that. What can possibly go wrong?
    - brw 2mo ago
      There's a good chance this will change in the future and the repo on the knot will also contain the social aspects of repos (issues, PRs, etc.) > As time goes on we are re-assessing the idea of users owning what is "collaborative data" (issues, PRs, etc.) on their PDSes - soon may come the day that an issue also lives on the knot as a source of truth, with an accompanying pointer record on user PDS to attest that it's theirs. from https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core/tree/master/knot2 https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core/tree/master/knot2
giancarlostoro 2mo ago
Rather use BitBucket or GitLab really, both GitLab and BitBucket have been around nearly as long as GitHub? Apparently BitBucket and GitHub are both 2008, and GitLab is 2011. The others you mentioned could go on a whim.
- tcfhgj 2mo ago
  I don't know BitBucket, but GitLab is felt extremely bloated and slow - Codeberg is much leaner and faster
aic0d3r 2mo ago
gitlab has my vote

by jph 2mo ago

crabbone 2mo ago

I started my career in programming with Subversion was the most popular tool. I also had to work a little with VSS, Perforce, Mercurial and, obviously, Git. I was one of the first users of Google Code... So, relatively, not so long ago it was pretty common to host all this stuff yourself. I don't think (or maybe don't remember) Subversion having any Web interface of its own, but, since forever Git came with GitWeb. I remember configuring it for the first time: any extra bit of configuration, especially those that resulted in some added interactive functionality seemed exciting. For a week, I'd push something to my branch and immediately refresh the browser page to see my changes reflected in the remote repository :D The infatuation wore off very quickly: after a month I have almost forgotten the Web interface even existed. The cycle repeated with hosted services, the addition of PR interface, the addition of "pages", the bug reports, the built-in Wiki. After discovering the new gadget and associated hype, invariably, came the realization that the predating existing functionality was... better. The PR discussion in the Web page detached from the code is a lot worse than the PR discussion in the PR itself. The built-in issue tracker doesn't come close to the stand-alone product functionality. The built-in Wiki is ridiculously underwhelming when compared to an actual Wiki. And so was the CI. For me, it started with Gitlab. There are oh so many reasons to hate Jenkins, so, whenever anyone announced an alternative platform, I'd absolutely check it out, and so did a lot of others, I presume. I was super hyped up about the possibility of running CI from the command line, completely locally on my laptop. And then it turned out to be a bait-and-switch kind of thing. I've created monumental dozen-steps and branching pipelines connecting multiple projects only to realize that the best CI is the one that uses as little as possible of the platform tools. In the end of the day, I came to realization, that beside the social aspect of the platform like GitHub, everything that it offers on top of the essential Git repository storage is too low quality. And so do competitors. If I was ever again tasked with setting up a company code repository storage, I'd go with a physical server attached to the local office network, unless there's no office, in which case, probably, some EC2 VM would do the job... Places like GitHub or Gitlab lure you in with their free tier offering, where you get the storage space and some other goodies for free, but once you need to upgrade to the paid tier, you inevitably realize that it's not worth the money they charge for it.

voidnullvalue 2mo ago

Codeberg isn't a viable infrastructure alternative. Its an opinionated community not a neutral host as they will delete repos based off subjective opinions on LLM usage and resource consumption. If continued hosting is dependent on moderators deciding if a project fits whatever the current philosophy is, and the whims of the moderation team, then I cannot consider it a serious choice for infrastructure. Infrastructure should be neutral. Codeberg is a social club

pojntfx 2mo ago
Codeberg is one public flagship instance. They are not neutral and don't claim to be. Decisions on what to host are made via elections by e.V. members. Other platforms (GitHub, GitLab, Tangled etc.) will eventually run into this same thing as well, e.g. how GitHub responds to DMCA requests, the difference with Codeberg is that there are elections which decide on what gets hosted on the main instance. For hosting slop or running a ton of actions, the recommendation is to self-host Forgejo directly instead, meaning that you, not the e.V. pays for the consequences, and you'd use the future AP federation support for cross-instance support. Forgejo is particularly simple to self-host as well, and lots of people do it (ffmpeg, Fedora and more). That way, you get to set your own rules and e.V. election results have no effect on you.
jph 2mo ago
Can you suggest a viable infrastructure alternative? My wishlist: free for open source and paid for closed source, able to do simple projects that are handwritten and also complex projects including AI LLM code that needs CI/CD/auditing, and hosting in the UK or EU. Aside, I donate money to Codeberg because I think Codeberg is a wonderful service with strong commitment to free open source, and because I host some larger projects and AI projects that are for public welfare social good.
- icy 2mo ago
  https://tangled.org https://tangled.org would love to have you :) We're hosted in the EU, and are free for open source, forever. Tangled is also designed to be federated from ground up, so you get to own your infra & data while still participating in an open network.

1matin 2mo ago

GitHub being ruined after the AI hype is a shallow take imo. The root problem isn't AI, Microsoft, or Azure; It's why people keep _trusting_ centralized infra. GitLab and Codeberg can absolutely become trash, each in their own way. The solution isn't just "migrating off of GitHub"; it's "migrating to a platform that is unownable by design, not only hope". And there are no good enough decentralized alternatives to GitHub yet. Tangled.org's decentralization has serious holes. Radicle made an alien universe; a niche within a niche. Also, it's already having problems with ISPs: https://radicle.dev/2026/04/23/domain-move https://radicle.dev/2026/04/23/domain-move

moffkalast 2mo ago
Azure was arguably as garbage four years ago as it is today, the only thing that's changed in the past few years is MS mandated vibe coding, and suddenly Github has an outage every week? A ridiculous coincidence if it's not causal.
varun_ch 2mo ago
What are the serious holes?
- 1matin 2mo ago
  The main hole is that ATProto's data model is a bit awkward for a code forge. Issues/PRs/comments are records owned by their authors, not by the repo. So an issue can span N users' PDSes. That's a neat model for social media, but a forge wants the repo to be the durable owner/context of its issues and history because that's where the comment/issue/etc. logically belongs. The solution? tangled.org acts as a super advanced cache/aggregator for that. What can possibly go wrong?
  - brw 2mo ago
    There's a good chance this will change in the future and the repo on the knot will also contain the social aspects of repos (issues, PRs, etc.) > As time goes on we are re-assessing the idea of users owning what is "collaborative data" (issues, PRs, etc.) on their PDSes - soon may come the day that an issue also lives on the knot as a source of truth, with an accompanying pointer record on user PDS to attest that it's theirs. from https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core/tree/master/knot2 https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core/tree/master/knot2

giancarlostoro 2mo ago

Rather use BitBucket or GitLab really, both GitLab and BitBucket have been around nearly as long as GitHub? Apparently BitBucket and GitHub are both 2008, and GitLab is 2011. The others you mentioned could go on a whim.

tcfhgj 2mo ago
I don't know BitBucket, but GitLab is felt extremely bloated and slow - Codeberg is much leaner and faster

aic0d3r 2mo ago

gitlab has my vote