Migrating Dillo from GitHub

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

GitHub’s shift toward a heavy, JavaScript‑dependent, “app‑like” interface and tighter integration with Microsoft services is prompting some open‑source projects—like the Dillo web browser—to leave the platform in favor of self‑hosted forges and lighter alternatives such as Forgejo, Gitea, and GitLab. Commenters weigh trade‑offs between GitHub’s discoverability, CI tooling, and convenience versus concerns about accessibility, performance, centralized control, AI‑driven features, and noisy social workflows. Many see a broader trend toward decentralization and federation, with projects mirroring code across multiple hosts and exploring email‑based or repo‑embedded tools for issues and reviews to stay independent of any single provider.

GitHub’s JS-Heavy Frontend & Accessibility

  • Core trigger for Dillo’s move: GitHub’s interface “barely works” without JavaScript, blocking issues, PRs, and logs in a JS‑less browser.
  • Some argue this is not an accessibility problem by WCAG; others counter that requiring modern JS engines (or “JS VMs with bleeding edge features”) effectively excludes lightweight or niche browsers.
  • Several commenters feel GitHub has regressed from a fast, mostly non‑JS‑required site to sluggish, JS‑dependent pages.

React, “App‑Like” UX & Performance

  • Discussion of GitHub’s shift toward React and “app‑like” experiences: justification cited in a GitHub architecture talk (mobile as baseline, richer project UIs).
  • Many see this as fashion- or incentive-driven rather than user‑driven, noting the frontend codebase has exploded in size while feeling slower.
  • Skepticism that “app‑like” is meaningful for a code hosting website, especially when PR review and navigation are now janky.

Mobile vs Desktop Usage

  • Split views on mobile: some insist GitHub is primarily a desktop tool and optimizing for phones repeats “Windows 8” mistakes; others say they use GitHub on phones daily for notifications, issues, reviews, and even shipping code.

Alternatives & Self‑Hosting

  • Wide-ranging comparisons:
    • GitLab: seen as powerful with strong CI/CD but heavy, slow, and increasingly “slop”/enterprise‑oriented.
    • Gitea/Forgejo: praised as lightweight, easy to maintain, and resource‑frugal; some criticize their UX as rough or opinionated.
    • Gerrit, Sourcehut, Fossil, cgit also mentioned as more focused or simpler options.
  • Several users report very positive experiences self‑hosting Forgejo or GitLab; others prefer bare git+SSH with optional cgit for personal projects.

Decentralization, Federation & Single Points of Failure

  • Strong support for moving away from a single dominant forge; multiple commenters explicitly prefer a heterogeneous, federated ecosystem (Forgejo federation, etc.) over “the next GitHub.”
  • Concern about bans, policy changes, and dependency on Microsoft as strategic risks; mirroring and self‑hosting are seen as resilience measures.

Collaboration Models, CI & Issues

  • Some want “pull” workflows (email patches, offline review, tools like git‑bug or git‑appraise) instead of constant GitHub notifications (“push”).
  • CI: GitHub Actions is convenient and free but criticized as a “YAML jungle.” Forgejo Actions and GitLab CI receive praise but have quirks and limits.
  • Social problems on GitHub—drive‑by/AI PRs, noisy “good first issue” contributions, and open issues causing burnout—are cited as additional reasons to de‑centralize or lock down issue creation.
  • Dillo’s custom Markdown-based “buggy” tracker is admired as hackerish minimalism, though some doubt its scalability for rich media and larger teams.