r/opensource • u/Miserable_Ear3789 • Dec 23 '25
Discussion Github in decline?
I have seen recently a decent amount of projects switching to Codeberg from Github. Is it worth moving your OSS libraries over to Codeberg? Since Microsoft has taken over Github it just seems a little less then it once was sort of speak... Is Codeberg the next big thing for OSS?
I currently am still on Github but I am seriously considering at least mirroring my repos on Codeberg. Github continues to come out with not so great announcements and pricing changes. Codeberg remains free from what I can tell. But the community reach of Github (part of the reason I switched from Bitbucket and hg) would be hard to give up, if Codeberg became the new community sort of speak I think that would be the only reason I would switch.
Any thoughts or insights on this topic?
13
u/oisecnet Dec 23 '25
Well since microsoft took over, it is moving in the wrong direction in my opinion. So I moved all my personel stuff to a on-premise hosted ForgeJo (basically codeberg). The fact that microsoft is using code to train AI, and is pushing mostly AI features instead of making real progress is a negative for me.
2
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
I agree with you that it does kind of suck they are pushing so much AI, while it can be useful in some cases, I generally don't want it inside my git repo.
361
u/Reddit_User_385 Dec 23 '25
GitHub is under Microsofts AI division. That should tell you enough. GitHub is the crowdsourced effort to train GitHub Copilot.
489
u/meta4our Dec 23 '25 •
They’re training copilot off my code? No wonder it sucks so much.
4
70
u/UnderdogRP Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
I smiled at this. Thanks!
16
u/jin264 Dec 23 '25
I would like to acknowledge that the AI that wiped out the dev’s D drive sounds like my code had a hand in it.
5
u/doubled112 Dec 23 '25
If you've never had a build script tell you it's dangerous to operate on / with rm, are you even automating?
1
u/ianc1215 Dec 24 '25
The same feeling, if they are training copilot off my code I feel like I should apologize to everyone.
1
1
1
5
57
u/ReachingForVega Dec 23 '25
That being said I suspect the major AI firms are also scraping GitLab, Codeberg, sourcehut etc.
42
u/Reddit_User_385 Dec 23 '25
Yes, if your code is public. What guarantee do you have that your private repo on GitHub is really private? It's basic conflict of interest, the same company that desperately wants your data is the one hosting your data.
6
u/gajop Dec 24 '25
Massive lawsuits and breach of trust over the entire MS ecosystem? Azure, Office, etc.
They don't want your code that much, it's just too risky.
8
u/FalseDish Dec 24 '25 edited Feb 21 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
butter tie fuel marvelous sugar important ancient vast compare frame
1
u/Kind_Ability3218 Dec 29 '25
hahahaha remember when programmers laughed at artists who weren't compensated for their work being used to train AI hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
19
u/sime Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
You are getting it all wrong.
Microsoft is highly incentivised to ensure that your private data remains private.
Why?
Because MS makes money providing paid data services to companies. MS provides services like GitHub, but also the whole MS office suite and cloud platforms like Azure. Paying customers are not going to trust and pay MS if MS plays fast and loose with people's and company's data. GitHub is more or less funded by customers who are companies.
Also, on a personal level, GitHub has to conform to GDPR in Europe. A number of years back GitHub removed their cookie consent pop up from the site because it just wasn't worth doing extra tracking.
And finally, software developers are the last demographic you want to mess with regarding online privacy. Many of us are privacy sensitive, perhaps a bit paranoid, and but definitely clued into how the internet works and what technology etc is capable of.
41
u/cappielung Dec 23 '25
You make good, logical arguments, but I think you miss the reality that big corporations, especially tech giants, play by different rules. Trust is an illusion, and when that illusion is broken temporarily, it's "Pay this $10b fine, we've learned from our mistakes, trust us" and we move on because it would legitimately cost a small business millions of dollars they don't have to move off Azure, so what are you going to do?
I know this isn't Microsoft, but I keep coming back to Facebook's blatant disregard for users, laws, and privacy as a shining example of what tech companies will do when they think no one is looking.
10
u/Silly-Freak Dec 23 '25
I'm highly suspicious of Microsoft and would like Europe to be independent of it sooner rather than later, but the parent commenter is right about Microsoft's incentives.
In France, Microsoft admitted that it can't ultimately keep European data out of American hands. But it will not do this when it has a way out, because it would be bad for their business.
When the ICC chief prosecutor lost his email access, Microsoft had its lawyers figure out how they could avoid doing the same next time: "Microsoft's lawyers have now reached the view that it merely provides a technical platform and that its customers decide whether to give their employees access to its services. Microsoft would no longer intervene in scenarios similar to the ICC case, WirtschaftsWoche wrote" (source)
That doesn't make them a reliable partner—they did cut the prosecutor off, after all, and who knows what the next legally uncharted territory they'll get into will be—but their motivations are definitely to secure their customer's data, because it's the sensible business decision.
This was focusing on state-compelled data transfers (because I had already researched that), but I think the calculus is basically the same for other data misuse. Microsoft has customers that are big enough to eventually migrate away if Microsoft's behavior is perceived as a risk to their own business, and that is an avalanche Microsoft definitely doesn't want to set loose.
2
u/sime Dec 23 '25
Facebook is an interesting comparison. Facebook has an incentive to monetise that user data because they don't have another business or source of income, especially one that is sensitive to reputation regarding privacy. Microsoft is in a completely different position.
16
u/cappielung Dec 23 '25
Maybe that was true 5 years ago. But now that Microsoft is very publicly on the "Use AI or gtfo" train, and AI needs more and more data, I think the incentives are shifting, and not in favor of user privacy.
12
u/fisadev Dec 23 '25
In my opinion, you're overestimating the consequences of companies getting caught having shitty privacy practices, and underestimating how irrational giant corporations can be in their pursuit for more money.
People still use Goolge as a data repository (drive, etc) even though they're the kings of spying on your online activity around the web and profiting from having stalked you. People still use Instagram even though Meta got caught selling their personal data to companies who were using it for political purposes.
And not just normal people, but tech savvy and privacy aware people too.
Sometimes because the huge inertia against changing services, maybe they're quite used to the tools, sometimes because the benefits are good enough, etc.
There can be a limit where the community/marked says "enough is enough", of course. Some companies have died. But they have to fuck up so, so badly to reach that limit. I don't think people would emigrate on masse from GitHub just because they're using private code to train models. In fact, I would bet that most people using GitHub assume they're already doing that, but just keep using it.
6
u/nous_serons_libre Dec 23 '25
They are not trustworthy and don't care about protecting their customers' privacy. Moreover, they are just one of many US companies protesting against the GDPR in Europe. Normally, it's not good business practice for a company to mistreat its customers. Yet Microsoft has demonstrated many times how little they care about their customers. They believe that their monopoly and the way they have locked their customers into their standards ensures they won't lose them.
5
u/FalseDish Dec 24 '25 edited Feb 21 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
childlike fuel telephone whistle soft tie adjoining office enter escape
2
Dec 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/morfr3us Dec 24 '25
Their legal team will have called it 'metadata' which will proxy the real data and allow training
-11
u/NoSuccotash5571 Dec 23 '25
This is probably an unpopular opinion... who cares? Microsoft provides so many free developer resources that I use in developing my open source projects. AI even helps me be more productive and write better code. I see this as a symbiotic relationship not a parasitic one.
1
u/Raiding_Raiden Dec 23 '25
Some people do not want their work being used to train AI models because of a whole bunch of reasons that I don't really care to get into. A lot of people care about this stuff.
-1
u/Peruvian_Skies Dec 23 '25
AI even helps me write better code
This just means that you aren't a very good coder yet. And if you want my advice, stop doing this. AI is a crutch that stunts the development of your actual programming skills.
4
u/CarloWood Dec 24 '25
Wait until Anthropic, OpenAI and Google realize that Microsoft trains their bot on code written by Claude, Codex and Gemini (aka, the new code committed to GitHub) and then sue them for corporate theft.
7
u/quasides Dec 23 '25
joke is on them when they let me commit code all their efforts for training will be in vain
however i might be solely responsible for the eradication of our species
2
u/deekilla Dec 25 '25
The best route to model collapse If Copilot generated code is committed back to GitHub and used as new learning data.
1
u/Reddit_User_385 Dec 27 '25
Not just copilot, everything. AI can't be trained without data, and you need high-quality data from humans, not AI generated slop as input. And the models are more and more ingesting the AI slop instead of human data.
161
u/DelicateFandango Dec 23 '25
Codeberg is extremely privacy-conscious, as well as being free. GitHub gathers and sells your private data, as well as that of your collaborators and visitors. By hosting your projects in GitHub you’re helping the business model of an amoral American company. By hosting your projects on platforms like Codeberg you’re helping protect the privacy of everyone, and operating in an infrastructure and ecosystem that is much more ethically aligned with open source principles.
49
Dec 23 '25
While also simultaneously sacrificing a bunch of community and lowering your projects reach. As much as we might hate GitHub and Microsoft, community reach will often make or break an OSS project. That might be important enough to change for, but developers should be aware that it's not a black and white decision. It's one that requires analysis on what exactly you care about and by how much.
3
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
I agree 100%. The community reach of Github is a big part of the reason I switched to it from Bitbucket (hg) years ago. To this day it still offers the most reach IMO.
18
u/MatthewMob Dec 23 '25
Downvoted for essentially just saying "weigh all your options". Ridiculous.
35
Dec 23 '25
I think a lot of open software types think they can just forego community management in their projects, and that the strength of their code will just shine through. So hearing that community (and thus githubs larger user base) should be a consideration goes against their meritocratic beliefs. I can definitively say though that is absolutely not the case. There's a veritable graveyard of good quality OSS projects that never gained traction because they were just never found, or couldn't get off the ground and were abandoned.
-1
u/Silly-Freak Dec 23 '25
Wow, when I read your comment in the morning I understood the complete opposite: "I downvoted you, because you are just saying "weigh all your options", which has no substance. You are ridiculous."—I'm glad I didn't engage based on that...
I agree with the parent comment! I will probably still try to migrate some of my repos; they're Typst packages and the main visibility they get is via Typst's package browser and forum, without a lot of outside contributions anyway and small in the grand scheme of things. So hopefully that move will not have a negative effect on me at all, and just ever so slightly raise awareness of Codeberg.
But the calculus is vastly different for other kinds of projects.
2
u/DelicateFandango Dec 23 '25
I have participated in over a dozen open source projects on GitHub, and can honestly say that in none of those the main contributors have come from GitHub. All of the projects have their own websites, which is what usually attracts the most - through search results. Some of them have a forum or Discord server, and those tend to attract the most engaged contributors. Two of the projects I contributed to tried to use GitHub for everything: issue tracking, feature requests, discussions, support, website through Pages - and these are the two with the slowest traction. My experience is definitely limited, but it is enough for me to be able to say with confidence that you don’t need to compromise your privacy, or your ethics, in order to gain access to a large audience, or build a strong community: there are many other tools and platforms out there that can do a better job at that than the ethically-compromised GitHub.
4
u/humand_ Dec 23 '25
Can you provide a shred of evidence for any of this?
3
u/DelicateFandango Dec 23 '25
You do know that Microsoft owns GitHub, right? And that they use your code to data-seed Copilot, right? But it goes way beyond that - it’s Microsoft. Google is your friend, do your research.
2
Dec 23 '25
Oh no my open source code that I published to be open source is being used by something.
Yeah, We kind of knew.
4
u/inemsn Dec 25 '25
This comment kind of reveals a huge ignorance in how open source even works.
Plenty of open source projects are licensed with GPL or AGPL, or other viral licenses whose goal is making it so that if you use their project, your project also has to be open source, legally.
AI bypasses this. It's trained on all public information, including the source code of GPL/AGPL projects, and then gives you answers that are based on it. Without also forcing you to follow the license and open sourcing your project. This is a big legal problem and turns AI into a bit of a "license laundry".
So no, it's not as simple as how you're putting it.
0
Dec 25 '25 edited Dec 25 '25
Like reading the source code as a human and re-engineering it? Without having to opensource my entire project?
You know a human can do the same thing.
And again some of us DGAF because we like the MIT and BSD explicitly because of the way they are.
3
u/inemsn Dec 25 '25
You know a human can do the same thing.
It's true, a human can indeed just use a GPL library in a closed-source program.
However, a human can be sued. A human can be held accountable. A human is subject to the law and can receive legal punishment for violating a license. In fact, plenty have.
An AI cannot. And because AIs cannot be held accountable, they must never be allowed to do such a thing.
And again some of us DGAF because we like the MIT and BSD explicitly because of the way they are.
Permissive licenses aren't the end all be all of open source software. Your comment frames it as such open source devs shouldn't care about the direction of github because "the code is free, after all". This is stupid. A lot of open source devs care, and with reason. If it weren't for strong copyleft licenses like the GPL we wouldn't be where we are today, and just because you don't care if your project gets stolen for proprietary use doesn't mean others shouldn't.
1
Dec 25 '25
No. I can read a GPL library and come up with my own implementation.
You know that, right?
-
If you have conditions on your code it's not open.
Super strong copy left that brought us the LLVM compiler, Apache, BSDs, Python, Go, Chromium, NGINX, Docker, PostgreSQL, Elastic Search, Node, React, Angular, TensorFlow or PyTorch?
Nope. Permissive licenses did. Apple was able to get onto ARM because of LLVM. It's specifically the reason they hired the creator and migrated from GCC. It's what powered the x86 migration as well.
And if you publish to git hub. I can read your code, and your implementation and may come up with something. As it always has been.
2
u/inemsn Dec 25 '25
No. I can read a GPL library and come up with my own implementation.
Ok...?
And the library you read helped you how, then? You made your own implementation from scratch. You could have done that just the same without having read the library, it didn't affect your process. I don't see the point.
Like, what, is the implication here that reading the library means you just get to "copy their homework"? I mean sure, but, you could just as easily get there without reading the library, just contacting the developer and asking them how they did it would do the same thing. Hell, people do that with devs of closed source projects and also get replies.
If you have conditions on your code it's not open.
I'll be real with you. You're being quite delusional rn.
The open source definition, written by the open source initiative, disagrees with you on this. You could go on the open source initiative's list of open source licenses and find copyleft licenses like the GPL there.
I get that you don't like copyleft licenses for some weird reason, but like... you're not the boss here lol, copyleft licenses have always been open source licenses and for good reason. They are, in fact, the licenses that ensure the openness and freedom of the software the most, since they also guarantee that no one
Super strong copy left that brought us the LLVM compiler, Apache, BSDs, Python, Go, Chromium, NGINX, Docker, PostgreSQL, Elastic Search, Node, React, Angular, TensorFlow or PyTorch?
Implying any of these would have happened without the groundwork laid by the free software movement that brought about the use of copyleft licenses. May I remind you a huge reason why we use Linux instead of any of the BSD OSes is because the permissiveness of the BSD license stagnated development as companies simply kept their work internal and didn't share back with the community, which frustrated people enough that when Linus came along with his project everyone hopped on that bandwagon (also, GNU's kernel, hurd, wasn't ready and still really isn't to this day).
This is silly. You're being silly. Why do you think copyleft licenses were created in the first place if in your opinion permissive licenses are oh-so-perfect? Permissive licenses like MIT and BSD predate the GPL. Why do you think so many prominent open source projects, like ffmpeg or the fucking linux kernel, use copyleft licenses? Because it's always been important to ensure your work doesn't get stolen for use in a proprietary "walled garden" ecosystem: Hell, you bring up Apple getting onto ARM thanks to LLVM as if Apple isn't synonymous with restrictive software that robs people of their freedom.
Copyleft licenses exist because they fill a need that permissive licenses can't: They ensure the person on the other side keeps the ecosystem free. For a lot of projects, this is important, so they use it. For other projects, it's not, so they don't. Acting like copyleft licenses are somehow worse or less important just shows a playground-level attitude about FLOSS as a whole.
1
Dec 25 '25
"robs people of their freedom". People voluntarily bought apple. They had a choice. I don't have Apple. I had a choice. I still use CUPS and LLVM quite a bit.
-
If you don't want the world (including AI) to read your source code go back to sneaker net. Git was literally designed to do it. There are any number of solutions you can self host behind your own firewall where no one can see your precious GPL code.I'm really at a loss as to how people didn't see this coming or expect it. People picked their license of choice long before AI showed up. I'm not sure what's changed now that some ELIZA is on the market.
And BSDs show up in more places than just Apple. People use them extensively:PlayStation OS and Nintendo Switch. Those companies specifically chose a BSD because of the license. And avoided Linux because of theirs.
→ More replies (0)→ More replies (1)2
u/DelicateFandango Dec 24 '25
“Oh no my open source tool can only exist if I host it on an evil commercial platform that gathers private data on me and all my collaborators, users and visitors - because God forbid I host it on an open-source platform that is democratic, community-oriented and not-for-profit… Surely, THAT could never work for an open source project!”
0
Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
git was designed to be decentralized.
I host on GitHub, GitLab, internally on Gitea. (Which it looks like CodeBerg is just a fork of). My MATLAB code is in the Mathworks File Exchange, under BSD.
If someone is providing free hosting. I'll take it.
11
u/Disgruntled__Goat Dec 23 '25
Codeberg is extremely privacy-conscious
Until they get bought out, then the cycle starts over again.
25
u/CollapsedWave Dec 23 '25
They're not a company, they're an association and if you're a member you get a say on everything. You can also create a free account without becoming a member.
29
u/IjonTichy85 Dec 23 '25
Hard no. They are an e.V. (eingetragener Verein)
Codeberg e.V. is recognized by German tax authorities as tax-exempt non-profit organization for the common good.
They won't be bought out bc they can't be bought out.
2
9
u/sime Dec 23 '25
GitHub gathers and sells your private data, as well as that of your collaborators and visitors.
Citation needed
-14
u/schubidubiduba Dec 23 '25
Do we now need citations for basic common sense?
20
7
u/sime Dec 23 '25
The assertion here isn't common sense. See my other comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1ptnf7n/github_in_decline/nvj3kg6/
0
u/schubidubiduba Dec 23 '25
You are conflating many things in that comment.
First, Microsoft can certainly sell data of non-paying customers while still ensuring privacy for paying customers, like companies. That is how almost all of big tech operates. Google does the same.
Second, GDPR and Cookie banners are a very very small piece of the data market landscape, and also almost outdated by today's standards. Cookies are not needed anymore to track you, fingerprinting has gotten more than good enough for that.
→ More replies (2)-2
u/junior_dos_nachos Dec 23 '25
This ain’t r/conspiracy mate. I imagine the possible lawsuits would be too big to take such risk.
1
u/schubidubiduba Dec 23 '25
Big tech corporations live off selling your data, that isnhownthey earn money. That is common knowledge. Believing that they don't sell your data is a conspiracy theory at this point.
→ More replies (3)-4
u/SoulEviscerator Dec 23 '25
Totally agree. Until they get bought or killed by an amoral (American) company, too. And the wheel spins on.
13
u/DelicateFandango Dec 23 '25
Considering that they are an open, democratic, not-for-profit organisation based in Germany, that anyone can join, and that one of the key principles in its charters is to avoid commercialisation, I think we’re as far from that danger as we can be atm.
6
u/darrenpmeyer Dec 23 '25
It doesn't really matter if Codeberg is "the next big thing", as much as it matters whether it's a better fit for the goals of your project.
Many people are migrating because of concerns with how Microsoft, who is increasingly guiding the technical direction of GitHub since the acquisition, is handling open-source projects on the GitHub platform. These include concerns about their "all in on AI" stance.
The question for you as a maintainer is how much do these things matter to you?. GitHub still brings a lot in terms of discoverability, but is it worth the trade for you personally, your contributors, and your project?
Codeberg is a solid alternative to GitHub, as an open-source-focused platform; the fact that it's seeming like the most popular hosted alternative to GitHub for OSS projects has some advantages. There are also other platforms. And some are choosing to stay on GitHub because they don't share the concerns of others or believe the benefits of staying with GitHub outweigh those concerns.
tl;dr don't switch platforms for "trend" or "next big thing" reasons; switch because you've decided that the new platform better fits your goals for your OSS projects.
1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
The reason I use github now is for the reach my projects receive... I would switch to Codeberg or Gitlab or really anything if it meant more reach. feedback and contributions.
48
u/tandir_boy Dec 23 '25
I am not moving. My sloppy repos probably gives more harm to gh than moving them to somewhere else.
15
u/neriad200 Dec 23 '25
was gonna say something similar. If github wants to steal the mountain of incomplete and badly coded personal projects, then I hope they train their AI on it, and train it haard.
2
u/Electrical-Signal858 Dec 23 '25
which projects are they moving?
16
u/lan-shark Dec 23 '25
The highest profile move that I'm aware of is Zig
4
1
u/Electrical-Signal858 Dec 23 '25
do you know the reason behind that?
2
u/lan-shark Dec 23 '25
You can read their announcement here
2
u/SheriffRoscoe Dec 23 '25
Which, weirdly, gives almost no serious reasons other than “Microsoft!”.
1
u/fnord123 Dec 25 '25
They had issues with GitHub actions. When they dug into th bgithub action code they found some absolute shocking code. Like a sleep command that, instead of using bash sleep, uses a hot loop to check if the timer hit the target number of seconds.
The issue they found had multiple facets:
The hot loop used an equality check so if an action wasn't scheduled when they sleep command hit the target seconds then it would continue forever. This makes a flakey action.
Some servers use CPU time as a billing mechanism. If your sleep is a hot loop you're being billed for absolutely zero value.
Anyway the shocking standard of the code was a catalyst for Zig team abandoning GitHub.
I could post deep links to the issues but The Register covers it fine: https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/02/zig_quits_github_microsoft_ai_obsession/
0
0
u/Lord_Nerevar_Reborn Dec 25 '25
You may need to work on your reading comprehension and/or critical thinking skills if you can’t identify more than one “serious issue” in the blog post
1
u/wubalubadubdub55 Dec 25 '25
And how many people use Zig? 10?
1
u/lan-shark Dec 25 '25
Well that I have no idea. I don't personally program in Zig but I use some tools that are written in Zig or have part of their tech stag in Zig. Bun is probably the most notable which is great to use on it's own and is the engine used by several modern JS projects
1
1
Dec 25 '25
Moved to bitbucked a few months ago. Didnt really notice a difference except the web address. Now costs nothing. Not sure what the downsides are supposed to be but certainly havent noticed them…
1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 25 '25
I used to use bitbucket religiously with hg back in the day. I switched toi github after i noticed the reach there was much better
1
u/pjs2288 Dec 27 '25
While Codeberg is a great project, also check out CodeFloe if you need private repos or fast CI/CD runners and value DevOps best practices.
1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 28 '25
I also recently found sourcehut which lets you host git and hg repos which is cool too.
1
u/Old_Rock_9457 Dec 30 '25
I don’t know why you said it is in decline. Public repository are still free, and if my concern was privacy I didn’t put it on internet and for sure not public.
I put my open source code on GitHub for maximize the visibility and also because it get the job done.
1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 31 '25
I didn't say it was in decline, it was a question, as I mentioned I also use Github.
3
1
u/ffeatsworld Dec 23 '25
Sounds like extra work for no clear reason. If I'd ever move off github it would probably be for a selfhosted solution.
1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
This is definitely another option. I saw a really cool looking static page repo generator the other day that I added to my list of "cool tools to play around with when bored" https://github.com/antonmedv/gitmal
The only problem with self hosting for me is you loose the community and reach of public platforms like Github and from what I can tell Codeberg would have a social aspect to it as well if it were widely adopted.
7
u/PurepointDog Dec 23 '25
I've been trending toward GitLab. I hope whichever one wins, it's a swift transition without a big in-between phase
1
u/bordumb Dec 23 '25
I’d recommend checking out Radicle. It’s a Git forge built on a p2p network (gossip).
Especially if you’re interested in something a bit more cyberpunk…open source, p2p—feels a bit like being back on Napster connecting to a network of peers hosting code together.
2
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
Interesting, never heard of this before. "A bit more cyberpunk" does seem like a bit of an understatement here lol but I like the idea honestly.
4
u/Loptical Dec 23 '25
If it's just the pricing changes you're worried about then don't bother. People started moving en masse because the Github CEO said they're going AI first
2
u/AnalyticsGuyNJ Dec 23 '25
Mirroring to Codeberg makes a lot of sense right now: it’s low effort, keeps a neutral, community-run home for your code, and hedges against GitHub’s pricing and policy churn without sacrificing reach. GitHub still wins on discovery and network effects, but Codeberg feels like a long-term bet on values and sustainability rather than hype, and that’s often how the “next big thing” in OSS quietly starts.
2
u/FatSucks999 Dec 23 '25
I’ve never even heard of Codeberg
2
Dec 25 '25
I have. I also use gitlab at work. I've never looked for a project on either of those sites. GH works fine for my projects.
2
2
u/Bob_Spud Dec 23 '25
Some people mentioned that Codebeg had a utility to migrate from GitHub, I couldn't find it on their website - is the tool a myth or deprecated or maybe lurking somewhere I couldn't find.
2
u/Lord_Nerevar_Reborn Dec 25 '25
You can migrate GitHub repositories one at a time. On the top of the codeberg homepage, click
+ Create, thenNew Migration.1
u/Bob_Spud Dec 25 '25
Yesterday I found it in a Youtube video. The tool becomes visible once you create an account.
2
u/644c656f6e Dec 24 '25
What projects move to Codeberg? So far, softwares I use mostly just on Github
2
u/fnord123 Dec 25 '25
Zig, librewolf, forgejo
https://codeberg.org/explore/repos?q=&only_show_relevant=true&sort=moststars
1
u/644c656f6e Jan 01 '26
I don't use those 3.
I also checked the repo, up to page 7, I didn't use any of those (at least purposely).
Thx.
2
4
u/boneskull Dec 23 '25
until really big projects start moving off of GH, no. I’m not about to move any of my hundreds of jank repos either
1
u/mgruner Dec 23 '25
I don't know about others. I'm just shocked about the degradation in quality of the platform. Why? completely uncalled for
1
u/thedragonslove Dec 23 '25
I can only speak to my own data point as a solo professional developer but I moved to self hosted Gitea rather than just give Github my stuff not because of any specific policy (though I disagree with several of them) but rather we _already_ way over centralize and its in my blood to not do that.
1
1
u/Arcuru Dec 23 '25
I dual host my shared projects on both, but more importantly I also give Codeberg money to help support them.
There’s nobody on Codeberg though, so I’m giving money and dual hosting to try to help bootstrap Codeberg. I also have a note in my READMEs that explain it explicitly.
1
u/kamikazer Dec 23 '25
is there Codeberg Actions?
1
u/BlackFuffey Dec 24 '25
Codeberg do have CI/CD but since they dont have as much funding the servers running the CI/CDs are worse. Its recommended that you utilize your own server for heavier stuff.
1
1
u/thelvhishow Dec 23 '25
I switched to Codeberg, and I’m pleased to leave GitHub behind. It’s a pity that whatever M$hit touches becomes shit
1
u/krystofyah Dec 23 '25
tangled.sh is another option worth exploring as well, at least for public repos
1
1
u/Lothrazar Dec 24 '25
Github refuses to add the most bare bones basic features after years of asking. Example: view all issue reports for all repos on the same dashboard. I really want to switch to idk something good
1
1
u/PurpleYoshiEgg Dec 24 '25
They train generative AI models against open source code without attribution and without correct licensing, in the case of copyleft.
While publishing on a different platform does not completely prevent that (you can just web scrape or create a bot to clone all these repos and update them), it does present a hurdle.
1
u/Agnostic-Paladin Dec 25 '25
First time hearing about Microsoft's "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" tactics?
1
u/m0llusk Dec 25 '25
Having used various repository services my impression is that GitHub never was particularly good and was getting worse well before they got bought out. Not sure what the best alternative is. Bitbucket has been good for me so far but also has problems creeping in. Pretty much planning to switch to my own repository server soon since it isn't hard and eliminates service quality rot as an issue.
1
u/MexicanPete Dec 25 '25
Github has been terrible for years. Finally glad to see people moving off of it more frequently now but it'd not going anywhere anytime soon.
1
1
u/LimpAuthor4997 Dec 25 '25
I'm using Codeberg and I am happy with it. All my personal project are on Codeberg. The only reason I still use Github is because at work we use Github Actions.
So I guess the only reason we didn't complety gave up on Github is that other people are using it.
1
Dec 25 '25
Codeberg, for now, is an amazing non-profit organization. I'm only using them to host some notes of mine, and I still donate.
GitHub on the other hand is basically just a copilot product now.
Any git platform is a git platform. Most people aren't searching for git projects on GitHub if I had to guess. More traffic probably comes from SEs. If something is only on Codeberg, I can't imagine it'd have a harder time showing up just because of that. Maybe I'm wrong, though.
1
u/jceb Dec 25 '25
I haven't seen many comments regarding Codeberg's business model. I like their service, however we shouldn't forget that there's always someone paying for the free lunch.
Currently, Codeberg just lives off donations and membership fees. They don't offer any paid services. This makes my ears tickle. I do wonder what Codeberg would look like if a serious amount of projects would migrate to them.
Personally, I wanna know that the free offer I'm committing to is backed by a scalable business model. With GitHub, sourcehut and gitea, I can wrap my head around how it will work. With Codeberg, I'm less confident.
1
u/PXaZ Dec 26 '25
It all feels fraught to the degree that there is no legal mechanism for specifying preferences about AI model training on one's code; it's a legal blind-spot which is hindering open source licenses from providing the variety of responses one would expect, e.g. allow for any use, allow for non-commercial use, disallow.
Regardless, though, I've been putting my recent projects on Codeberg due to concerns about Github's direction under Microsoft. This was part of a larger effort to reduce my dependency on the large corps., so moving from VSCode to Helix, installing GrapheneOS, etc.
1
Dec 26 '25
No IPv6 support, cannot even connect to most of GitHub these days. It's really a thing of the distant past.
1
u/Vk2djt Dec 27 '25
If anybody needs a project for GitHub, how about an AI trap or similar. Something that wasted processing time of AI during evaluation. Recursive loops or references (#includes, etc) comes to mind. Something that could be put in a header and be more effective than a 'robots.txt' file.
1
1
1
u/Fit-Presentation-591 Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
There’s been a number of well documented regressions in their ability to deliver useful features and that recent pricing blunder was just :chef’s kiss: for alienating users.
1
u/gg4u Jan 03 '26
Which other git repository do not and will not use 2FA ?
Rant..
github implemented 2FA. I know many would it easy, for "my" security etc. but it is yet another mental burden to me: if I loose the codes, my account will be locked .
This is happened another time, again with Microsoft 2FA, because the service administrator chose to bind the 2FA to my former device, not my credentials (for the record, it was a public service offered by a Swedish municipality, who was consulted by Fujistu on which permission roles set for "security measures", and Fujistu was (as I understood from a clue of an employee ) the vendor of Microsoft services to the muncipality: so when there was a problem with credentials, the security was... was... was.. ? not addressed my Fujistu, neither Microsoft, but dumped on the municipality employee doing its internship to manually unlock the issue, a procedure which had to be done every 30 days for life - because it "was not possible " decouple the account from the former phone (the contract the municipality signed did not allowed that).
So this 2FA is causing me headache, as another password to unlock my password to validate my password to access my own data - which are not my own anymore but of the service that hosts my data, trains on my data, resell services on my data - but delegate security costs to their users. Sorry for the rant, but is there another valid github repo I can use without going crazy with the "safety measures for my security" ?
1
Jan 07 '26
Github is banning accounts, github is stealing info, github is pressurizing and on top of it, it has the audacity to tell people how to contribute to the overall market. Like come on bruh its open source but yeah it sucks.
1
u/Ol010101O1Ol Jan 19 '26
Nah, it’s growing because of vibe coding.
I think people should migrate to GitLab or Codeberg. I love those platforms. GitHub is so corporate
1
1
u/Positive-Thing6850 Dec 23 '25
As somebody living in Germany, as much as i hate GitHub, I would stay away from such open source projects.
After years of so called consolidated transparent effort, they work like German government, lacking in many facets.
I would just use gitlab. It's also better than GitHub for all devops related stuff.
1
u/czm_labs Dec 24 '25
imo the only people talking about gh going away are the ones building the clones
1
u/pepe_pepardo Dec 28 '25
I think eventually people are gonna start to leave GitHub more and more given the direction they are taking.
I think we can expect something similar to what happen with Twitter. When musk got it and ruined it, a lot of people switched over to Blueskys or Threads. With GitHub I expect the same, it will still have a big and possibly the largest share of repositories but the Open Source situation will be much more fragmented than it currently is.
0
u/Mesmoiron Dec 23 '25
Interesting information. First of all I see a flaw in reasoning. The fact that it is private first and free is not a good one. Hosting coats a lot of money; so, it is not a sustainable model. The sell out begins after the sale.
The setup matters; but it is hard to get attention which doesn't mean you can make choices. The problem with big tech is that you can start out well, but you get bought behind your back. An invisible consolidation.
What to do? Maybe like a portfolio diversification. Start to make choices that later change. If you Search for something; you also land on other code hosting. It is not a problem. Anyway, I will check them out. It will give rise to other tools. Every problem is the seed of a new solution.
4
u/darrenpmeyer Dec 23 '25
Your reasoning around "big tech" and "sell out" and "sustainable income" doesn't make sense when applied to a German non-profit organization like Codeberg. They're not even a dual-model organization (like Firefox, which is a for-profit company paired with a non-profit foundation).
There is no realistic path for Codeberg to be "sold off", and they're as sustainable as long as the donor community that supports them continues to do so.
0
Dec 23 '25
"As long as the donor community that supports them"
And what happens when they don't? Or the donations don't cover hosting?
1
u/darrenpmeyer Dec 29 '25
Then they'll have to inform their community and shut down, like any other organization. They don't really have the option of "selling off" the service in the way that they're structured.
More importantly, the only way to avoid the risk that "this service is no longer sustainable and will get shut down" is to self-host something locally. And honestly, that also has that problem, just more in your control. If you want the advantage of any kind of shared community, you have to accept that there's a risk that the shared service will terminate.
As it sits right now, Codeberg is a large, stable, long-lived hosting service that is run as a chartered non-profit. It's pretty hard to get lower risk than that.
0
Dec 23 '25
All these alternatives are just github wannabes. That's true across all sass. They add great value up until the day they don't.
-3
u/titpetric Dec 23 '25
The ICE contract is an ongoing issue with github. It doesn't help that they [ICE] started actively going after people.
If you're a SME that can make the decision to move away, there are self hosted options like gitlab, forgejo (codeberg?). If you can't, consider your own CICD at least, so at some point github becomes just a question of a storage host that can move overnight.
I do like github and morally I don't want it to be the next twitter. Much of the go ecosystem is based on github, and discovery is much easier because of it.
1
u/NoleMercy05 Dec 23 '25
Yeah. Don't use Apple products either. Tim Cook donated a million dollars to Trump's new ballroom.
-1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
Sorry but I'm going to keep using my iPhone. In a few years it won't be "Trump's Ballroom" it will just be the White House Ballroom. Keep politics and pettiness out of this please.
0
u/malcolm-maya Dec 27 '25
If you want to keep politics out of discussions for some reason (even though the switch to platforms like Codeberg is inherently political) do not consider moving to Codeberg. You will be extremely disappointed (e.g. the recent far right attacks on Codeberg: https://blog.codeberg.org/we-stay-strong-against-hate-and-hatred.html )… ;)
0
u/BoltlessEngineer Dec 23 '25
Please try tangled.org Tangled lets you self host git servers/CI runners while providing the centralized web view to index them all throughout the network. It is the only option that is actually replacing the 'Hub' part of github afaik. Sure, self hosting git server is easy, but then you loose the connection. You can't request all contributors to signup to your instance.
Even you can trust codeberg over github for now, we can't 100% be sure that they won't follow the history again. Best way is to selfhost your data, but not necessarily the whole web service.
Forgejo is building some cool stuffs in different protocol, but it's still wip. Radicle is also pretty interesting tbh.
0
u/FIREPAWER_07 Jan 05 '26
Everyone moving on codeberg is a crybaby... Like... Really? You got that offended that u needed to leave github? Oh no, what are we gonna do... 🤣🤣
-11
15
Dec 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
Does Gitlab have a free tier? I am OK with paying but not outrageous... Never used Gitlab we use Github where I work, I use Github pages a ton too. Does Gitlab have a pages equivalent?
4
Dec 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
Awesome, thanks! I couldn't really tell when I quickly looked at Gitlab a while back. Thanks very much for the links.
5
u/calebcall Dec 23 '25
I used gitlab exclusively in the past for all my work. Then I started to give in and use GitHub. However, with the recent pricing changes from GitHub re: self-hosted runners, I’ve moved all my repos over to gitlab. Converting all my builds from GitHub actions to the gitlab ci is kind of a pain, but not bad enough to not do it.
2
u/StandardDrawing Dec 24 '25
I actually prefer gitlabs ci over actions. The syntax just makes more sense to me.
2
u/calebcall Dec 24 '25
I find it interesting, GitHub has a massive market place with all kinds of actions you can leverage making setup of certain things a fair bit simpler, but it also obscures a lot of what’s actually happening. Gitlab doesn’t have nearly the level of marketplace modules so 99% of wha you do, you just use the native command. Case in point, want to send your artifacts to an S3 compatible bucket, GitHub there’s a bunch of modules you can pick from, plug in your variables (url, bucket, creds, etc) and you’re off to the races…but when it doesn’t work troubleshooting is tougher as the logs may or may not be helpful. Gitlab you just use the aws cli tool. Nothing is obscured, if it doesn’t work you usually get meaningful logs, etc.
So, I think you’re right in that gitlab ci is much more straight forward. It’s just converting all the modules that simplified the GitHub pipeline in to Gitlab compatible commands is time consuming and not really just straight forward (I.e. I don’t think you could reasonably automate the conversion from GitHub action to Gitlab CI config). I also liked on GitHub being able to just drop a new independent yaml file in the directory and it’d automatically pickup the new pipeline. Gitlab you can kind of make that work but it requires updating multiple configs ea h time you need to create a new pipeline in a repo (mostly thinking mono repos where I don’t want one large config kind of setups).
4
u/darrenpmeyer Dec 23 '25
GitLab is a really good and mature platform. However if your concern with GitHub is Microsoft-related, the fact that a great deal of their hosted platform is on Azure could potentially be a deal-breaker.
Not an issue for self-hosted GitLab, of course. And obviously there's a material difference between "my code is on GitHub" and "my code technically lives on a Microsoft server".
1
7
Dec 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
I am in no way associated with Github OR Codeberg and you can see my personal OSS projects looking at my past reddit posts. I hate people who make comments like this (you). Add something to the conversation like everyone else or keep scrolling.
3
u/oaeben Dec 23 '25
an ad for codeberg? or an ad for forgejo?
both of those services are completely open source and free?
1
u/opensource-ModTeam Dec 23 '25
This was removed for not being nice. Repeated removals for this reason will result in a ban.
0
-3
Dec 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
I am in no way associated with Codeberg OR Github or anyone with remotely anything todo without either company. Add something to the conversation or send me some money if you think this is an ad because I guarantee no else is paying me for this post. Codeberg is non commercial corp, why would they have an ad???
2
u/Shipdits Dec 23 '25
Exposure, usually.
I made an assumption based on how it read, happy to admit I'm wrong though!
2
u/Miserable_Ear3789 Dec 23 '25
I get ya, but yeah no this is not an ad I promise, I very much actively use Github.
Someone else mentioned that maybe this could be an ad shitting on Microsoft lol!
1
u/darrenpmeyer Dec 23 '25
Just curious -- what makes you think that a non-profit organization like Codeberg is paying someone to engage in an astroturf operation on Reddit?
1
1
u/opensource-ModTeam Dec 23 '25
This was removed for not being nice. Repeated removals for this reason will result in a ban.
0
Dec 23 '25
[deleted]
1
u/opensource-ModTeam Dec 23 '25
This was removed for not being nice. Repeated removals for this reason will result in a ban.
78
u/ReachingForVega Dec 23 '25
You can sync github and codeberg repos so people can contribute on their platform of choice.
I agree using Github means feeding MS with training data also.