Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Perceived Problems with GitHub

  • Reports of wrongful account bans affecting orgs (e.g., CI disabled when a banned contributor opened a PR), with opaque appeals.
  • Complaints about reliability and performance: low effective uptime, frequent rate limiting even for light use, and “bloat” in UI/UX and features.
  • Frustration with policy changes (e.g., removal of the “who starred this repo” view).
  • Discomfort with GitHub’s and Microsoft’s ties to US government/military and broader big-tech ethics.
  • Concerns that GitHub is “LLM‑obsessed,” pushing AI features and predatory pricing around AI products.

Motivations for Leaving

  • Ideological: objection to Microsoft, AI training on code, US government contracts, and corporate control over open source infrastructure.
  • Practical: better performance, more control over CI runners, fewer outages, avoiding surprise policy changes or bans.
  • Security/privacy: distrust of private repo handling; desire to keep code behind VPNs/tailscale and away from scrapers.

Alternatives and Self‑Hosting Experiences

  • Strong positive experiences reported with self‑hosted Forgejo and Gitea: fast, lightweight, GitHub‑like UI, integrated runners/registries, “fire‑and‑forget” maintenance.
  • Self‑hosted GitLab seen as heavier but “industry standard” and stable; Omnibus/Docker install described as straightforward.
  • Some host personal/private projects locally or on small VPS with bare Git; mirror to GitHub purely as backup or for discoverability.
  • Other hosted options discussed: Codeberg (Forgejo‑based, non‑profit, FOSS‑only), Sourcehut (simple, email‑centric), Heptapod and hg.sr.ht for Mercurial.

Debate over Codeberg’s Policies and Anti‑Scraping

  • Codeberg praised as a community‑run alternative, but:
    • Anti‑scraping measures (Anubis, adversarial text like iocaine) sometimes show garbage or “verify human” pages; some users left after real visitors were blocked.
    • A proposed policy to ban projects “mostly written by generative AI” is highly contentious:
      • Supporters see it as defending quality and ethics.
      • Opponents see it as arbitrary, ill‑defined, and hostile to users’ choice of tools.

Article Skepticism and Trend Questioning

  • Several commenters criticize the headline “developers are ditching GitHub” as clickbait without data.
  • Some acknowledge a visible trend in sentiment and alternative‑forge growth, but note GitHub still dominates.
  • Others call the piece low‑effort and possibly AI‑generated.

AI, Licensing, and Privacy Concerns

  • Many object to code used to train LLMs, especially when combined with layoffs justified by AI.
  • Some argue moving to public alternatives doesn’t stop scraping; only private/self‑hosted setups help.
  • Others consider trying to block all training a losing battle and focus on building better software instead.

Social/Discovery and Network Effects

  • GitHub’s social graph, stars, and trending used to be valuable, but some feel trending is now flooded with repetitive AI projects.
  • Small developers feel pressured to stay on GitHub for visibility and drive‑by contributions, even if they dislike it.
  • A common compromise: self‑host or use alternatives as primary, mirror to GitHub for reach.

Other Technical Themes

  • Interest in Git federation and decentralized forges (Forgejo federation efforts, Tangled, Radicle).
  • Desire for alternative VCS (Mercurial nostalgia, jj, pijul) and better large‑file support (e.g., oxen vs Git LFS).
  • Mixed views on GitHub‑like UI cloning: some want 1:1 familiarity; others say learning a new interface is trivial.