Let’s be honest, the majority here probably has a github account. Some of us are happy as a clam and wouldn’t switch no matter what happened, but there are some who would and haven’t yet. Why?
All it took for me to switch to GitLab was a larger free lfs quota which I wanted for a project. The superior webpage UI made me migrate every old project to it too.
I made a similar post a while ago if you want to see some more answers - https://lemmy.ml/post/1990593
With free time and some rest I’d move to sourcehut.
Elon Musk buying it.
Seriously though, it would take something rather drastic. Our company briefly tried using bitbucket, but it was just worse overall. Don't touch a running system.
Elon Musk buying it.
Holy hell, you went for the jugular.
The problem is that you lose out on dev attention when moving away from github.
I moved my projects into github when placeholder projects literally containing a README with a link to the real repo only got way more interaction on github than in the real repository: More stars, more views, more issue reports and even more PRs (where the devs have obviously Cloned the repo from the actual repository but could not be arsed to push there as well).
If you want your project to be visible, it needs to be on github at this point in time:-(
Pretty much any deterioration of service would do it, I'm not tied to github at all, it works but so does gitlab and self hosted solutions.
If the social features become too egregious. It's already turning into borderline LinkedIn with their new feed updates
Have you seen all the people just stuffing their profile README full of random graphics and stats and badges
I'll admit I have a badge there myself to highlight the languages I work on. But some people are sure driving it beyond
I also think the addition of the achievement badges was a mistake, a coding platform doesn't need this kind of gamification
We run our own SourceHut instance because I hate all the social dopamine crap built into GH. I hate you need an account just to participate in a repo. I hate the heavy UI (sometimes it's better than others).
Also, srht supports hg as well as git.
The only reason I don't use srcht is its use of email for everything. It feels so last century.
This is what I love about it. Also email is used in the biggest projects in the world (including the linux kernel). It allows anyone to just clone & contribute immediately.
It's archaic. The linux kernel has the amount of contributors using email because it literally is the only way to do so. The linux kernel can command its method of contribution because of its importance. If you start a new project and your only method of contribution is email, I bet you'll miss out on most contributors. Same as if you limit real-time communication to IRC only (but at least there's matrix for that).
Well there are many smaller projects than the kernel that still use the email workflow. To me it's simple, not archaic. You're right though, you definitely would miss out on contributors but that's just the reality of the dev world today.
It may be simple in the sense of it being "lowtech", but it certainly isn't easy, IMO. I'd have to read a guide on how to send a patch or apply one from somebody else. Commenting on a line of code and following a discussion about it isn't very legible. There's no way to mark a discussion as resolved, now way to have a quick overview of the status of all the comments left on a patch, is it possible to submit a patch with multiple commits and if so how does one see the final result? Is it possible to sign my commits?
The UI and UX are need a lot of work, IMO.
I’d have to read a guide on how to send a patch or apply one from somebody else.
The guide is about 2 paragraphs and you'd also have to read a guide for how to create an account, fork, clone, push, send PR, etc. for the new normal workflow.
Commenting on a line of code and following a discussion about it isn’t very legible.
It's normal email bottom posting usually, pretty simple to follow. The srht UI does a decent job of this for you as well imho.
There’s no way to mark a discussion as resolved, now way to have a quick overview of the status of all the comments left on a patch
In email specifically, no. Of course you can mark it resolved if using custom software (ie, srht) that supports it. Not sure what you mean of quick overview, unless you mean via a webpage which again, srht provides. If straight email, you have to cycle through the emails. Which for me, just means typing "j" or "k" instead of page up/down like you would on GH, srht, whatever.
is it possible to submit a patch with multiple commits and if so how does one see the final result?
Yes, of course. No clue about seeing them all in one final patch. I suppose that's useful though I've never had an issue going through each patch individually. Maybe a feature suggestion for srht.
Is it possible to sign my commits?
I don't see why not.
I've used email WF, then "github WF", and found srht very refreshing when it launched. I still stuck with BitBucket because I didn't want to take the time to move over but once they removed Mercurial support, we went all in with srht and no regrets. Our code review process via email is so much faster for us now and prior to this move, I was the only person on the team who'd worked with the email WF before.
Of course, I totally get it's a personal preference and that a lot of younger developers have no experience with the email WF and humans are naturally resistant to change. They probably wouldn't enjoy it either.
ForgeFed and whatever Gitlab is doing with the PR federation taking off.
In the meantime I make my gh account as lean as possible.
- removed real name, photo and all links
- profile changed to private mode
- all gists and stars removed
- removed most useless repos, migrated one important repo to self hosted forgejo instance, remaining 2 are laying around
I use my personal account for work, but I'd close my account and create an employer-only one if I needed to.
Federation is honestly the biggest thing that could happen to github alternatives, IMO. They can work on CICD next, but federation would be so sick.
GitLab already has stellar CI/CD, far superior to GitHub Actions IMO
Ah, I meant other alternatives besides gitlab. I agree that gitlab CICD (even their UI) is leagues ahead of github.
I saw in other comments that you aren't happy with the direction GitLab is going in and feel that they're focusing on business customers at the expense of open source users. Can you expand on that?
The project I am working on joined the GitLab for Open Source program and it was absolutely painless. All we needed to do was submit an application and now we're using Ultimate without paying a cent.
I'm not sure it's what you're referring to, but one of the pain points for me is that open source projects (that don't join the program) no longer have access to lots of free SaaS CI hours. That sucks, but I can't blame them - they had a plague of crypto miners taking advantage of those free CI hours. It's not reasonable to expect them to eat that cost, especially when the open source program is so easy to join.
I saw in other comments that you aren’t happy with the direction GitLab is going in and feel that they’re focusing on business customers at the expense of open source users. Can you expand on that?
Biggest pain point is contributing to projects across instances (no federation). IINM they had very few business customers asking for it and more community members asking for it --> no priority.
Then at some point they decided their main instance was costing them too much money and started limiting their offerings for open source projects. I can't remember all the changes, but IIRC it was limiting the number of users in groups, free minutes for CICD (understandable, no problem with that), moving some basic free features into premium like protected branches, code owners, issue dependencies, epics, roadmaps, etc. . Most of those things can be acquired for free on github + some other tool like JIRA.
They put all that behind premium which once started at 20$/user and is now 29$/user! Additionally, self-hosting doesn't solve anything as it's still behind premium. I contribute frequently to projects on github, so my activity on gitlab was not very high, so I wouldn't qualify for their open source program (at least I didn't back then). Regardless, I wasn't going to waste precious time filling out some form and possibly having to justify my activities on gitlab just to get what was free before. My prior positive tone about Gitlab soured and now I recommend people don't use Gitlab.
Gitlab might've had the stuff to become a github killer, but now they're just an expensive, inconvenient, open-source, sourceforge. Federation will get them a step closer, but if they don't get rid of that ridiculous tiering it won't get them more users. If I self-host, I'm offloading from their main service and get to pay them for it. No thank you.
I'm definitely not interested in convincing you to change your mind but I do want to reply to some specific items.
the number of users in groups
The only limitation I can find is that top-level groups on the free plan are limited to 5 users. Granted, there are certainly reasons to keep a group private, but public groups are not limited.
moving some basic free features into premium like protected branches, code owners, issue dependencies, epics, roadmaps
Protected branches are available for all plans. I'm pretty certain the rest of the features you mentioned were never free. You can disagree with that choice, but it is incorrect to say they were moved into premium.
I dunno, it's been a while since I looked at the stuff in depth. They are definitely not fresh in my memory. What really stuck with me were my negative feelings towards Gitlab. Maybe someday they'll pop up in my life again and surprise me 🤷
It's hard to overstate the psychology behind the github profile. As a developer, your github profile shows that you're actively developing, whether it's for open source projects or for work projects. My previously company used a private gitlab install, which meant only my open source work showed up on github. My current company uses github, which means my profile shows green all the time.
We're a small company, but the github costs are a drop in the bucket. As others have said, it'd take something truly federated, or a crazy price jump from Github, for me to consider moving. It's free for my open source projects, it's a small amount for my company, and I have a public profile I can point to whenever I'm discussing my development.
What did GitHub do?[serious]
Nothing too dramatic yet, but a lot of features GitHub provides are GitHub specific, not Git, which creates a lock-in and dependency that will cause problems sooner or later and make moving difficult.
Like what?
- OCI registry? GitLab.
- pull request model? Every one of the competing services
- CI/CD system based on YAML definitions? Most every competitor.
- static site hosting? Most competitors
- protected branches? Most competitors
I'm not saying there isn't vendor lock-in, but I am saying it likely isn't the features of GitHub that are limiting that. Third party integrations will follow wherever the foot traffic goes.
The issue isn't that the competition doesn't offer similar functionality, but that there is no way to move your data to another hoster. If you move CI, you have to rewrite it as everybody uses a different language. If you move pull requests, you lose contact with all the users that made those pull requests, as Github doesn't allow PMs and doesn't publish emails by default.
I can move a Git repository in a single line, I can even mirror it to multiple hosts at the same time with ease. With all the surrounding aspects of a project that isn't possible.
Though worth pointing out that this isn't a GitHub specific problem, all software hosting suffers from this. Moving data between different Open Source bug tracker ain't exactly easy either. There aren't very many tools that are properly distributed in the way Git is and the few that there are, don't seem to have very wide adoption (e.g.
git-bug).
I host my projects mostly on Codeberg but still keep a Github account because of the multitude of useful projects that are unfortunately hosted on GitHub. I wouldn't waste a second to delete my GH account if those projects migrated to Codeberg or any other Libre alternatives.
