Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Decentralized forges vs “fragmentation”

  • Many welcome projects moving to Codeberg/Forgejo, Sourcehut, Tangled, etc., seeing multiple forges as healthy decentralization rather than harmful fragmentation.
  • Git’s DVCS nature means hosting can be decentralized; “fragmentation” is mostly differing URLs and UIs.
  • Practical frictions remain: needing many accounts just to file bugs, different PR systems, and risk of name‑squatting when a project can plausibly live on several forges.
  • Some want standardized, cross‑forge pull requests and identity (ActivityPub, ATProto, DNS‑based identities) so contributors can use one account across many hosts.

Codeberg & Forgejo: pros, cons, and reliability

  • Positives: non‑profit, FLOSS‑focused, Forgejo (GPL) backend, lightweight pages that work well without JavaScript, GitHub‑login support, easy self‑hosting of Forgejo with runners.
  • Negatives: uptime and DDoS issues (recent 89–92% for main site), very small hardware footprint (three used servers, experimental Mac CI via donated broken laptops), philosophical reluctance toward Cloudflare‑style mitigation, FOSS‑only policy.
  • Some see the “hackerspace” infrastructure vibe as charming and sustainable; others find it unacceptable for serious or commercial work.

GitHub: AI focus, regressions, and Actions

  • Many argue Microsoft is pouring effort into AI branding (Copilot, agents, UI prompts) while long‑standing bugs and papercuts languish.
  • Complaints: sluggish, React‑heavy UI; broken/annoying dashboard feed; clunky web code navigation; inability to disable PRs on mirrors; lack of first‑class stacked‑PR support; brittle Actions DSL and runners (outages, subtle bugs, odd APIs).
  • Defenses: free multi‑OS runners are hugely valuable; code search is excellent; PR/issue ecosystem and social signals (stars, forks, followers) are a de‑facto quality and popularity proxy. Some users like the new dashboard and even the AI helpers.

Zig’s move and community behavior

  • Many read Zig’s move as mainly about GitHub Actions’ unreliability and general “enshittification,” with AI emphasis as part of a broader direction problem.
  • Others see it as an overreaction or “tantrum” that underestimates migration costs and GitHub’s remaining strengths.
  • The original announcement’s harsh language toward GitHub engineers was later edited to be more neutral, sparking debate over professionalism vs blunt honesty and concerns about Zig leadership’s maturity vs willingness to correct course.

Broader ecosystem and AI/legal concerns

  • Some recommend hosting primaries on Codeberg/Forgejo and mirroring to GitHub for discovery, but note you can’t disable GitHub PRs without social fallout.
  • There’s debate over whether training AI on MIT‑licensed code is acceptable; several commenters stress Zig’s main gripe here is service quality and product direction, not just AI training itself.