For a long time, I’ve thought of ‘taking ownership’ of my code, away from the prying eyes of corporations & the spectre of capitalism - from trying new hosted forges, such as SourceHut & Codeberg, to self-hosting Git software such as Gitea, Forgejo & GitLab.
After some amount of deliberation, I decided that I will be moving away from Github, but with some caveats.
What will actually happen?
Projects currently in progress and currently maintained, such as Readconquista & gradle-tailwind will be moved over to an existing Codeberg account (@wale) by 31 May, and will be mirrored to the existing Github URLs as above.
Repositories that have not been maintained will be archived on Github by 31 April.
I will still be active on Github when participating in issues / pull requests for projects that are domiciled on Github, as well as automated mirroring activity, but it will slowly drop in activity as time goes on.
Why are you making this move?
I have never really been impressed with the decisions of Github, especially because the platform uses its status as the ‘de facto’ host for open-source programs to continually throw its user-base to the wolves, legally and ethically. Copilot, for example, has never really been something I have been comfortable enabling - siphoning code from open-source repositories, creating new legal and ethical issues, in exchange for “developer comfort” is a horrible exchange. Github’s historical business deals have not impressed many either, such as the company selling to the U.S. immigration and customs department.
The Software Freedom Conservancy have also called on developers to give up Github, for much of the same reasons, and I would rather follow the organisations who aim to keep open-source alive - over a for-profit company that stands to gain a profit off the backs of the very developers that utilise it.
Why Codeberg?
Codeberg is a non-profit Git-based collaboration platform domiciled in Germany, and they aim to provide a safer open-source community without tracking or profiteering. Codeberg is also the custodian of the aforementioned Git project Forgejo, a soft-fork of Gitea. Over the past few years I’ve watched Codeberg grow, it has grown to hold a large community passionate about the open-source movement.
I’ve also chosen Codeberg due to my familiarity to the user interface due to my experience hosting Gitea & Forgejo, which provide a better development experience in my opinion - especially compared to my time trying to learn how to use SourceHut, which felt like it harked back to an era of mailing list patches being ubiquitous.
I hope to see open source be celebrated as part of the commons again in my lifetime, instead of having one platform consolidate our freedoms when publishing source code.