[HN Gopher] GitHub to Codeberg: my experience
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       GitHub to Codeberg: my experience
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 93 points
       Date   : 2025-11-30 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (eldred.fr)
 (TXT) w3m dump (eldred.fr)
        
       | darkamaul wrote:
       | I've noticed that several projects on the front page today (and
       | over the past few days) are migrating away from GitHub.
       | 
       | Is there any recent event or broader trend that explains this
       | shift?
        
         | quamserena wrote:
         | Zig's announcement[0] might provide some insight
         | 
         | [0] https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/
        
         | NewJazz wrote:
         | Ongoing availability issues, Microsoft's shoehorning of AI,
         | GitHub's focus on migrating to Azure infrastructure rather than
         | adding features and fixing shortcomings. If I had to guess.
        
           | ainiriand wrote:
           | ... Training their own models out of your code...
        
             | bloppe wrote:
             | If you're publishing your code anywhere, it's getting
             | trained on. MS does not restrict themselves to _only_
             | training on GH-hosted code.
        
               | ISSOtm wrote:
               | The point still stands for private repos, and also not
               | making the job easy for them.
        
               | throwaway290 wrote:
               | > If you're publishing your code anywhere, it's getting
               | trained on
               | 
               | citation needed. first they need to know my code
               | exists... spend time and traffic crawling it because it's
               | sure as hell not going to be hosted on azure... probably
               | get detected and banned.
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | Yet, not restricting themselves to train on permissively
               | licensed code only.
               | 
               | The two ends of the spectrum, _both_ source available
               | _and_ copyleft licensed code shouldn 't be used for
               | training, but who's listening.
        
         | Sytten wrote:
         | Not naming names but heard from contacts that it is currently a
         | sh*t-show of politics internally right now at GitHub and no
         | progress is being made/large parts of the platform are
         | abandoned unless P0.
        
         | 29athrowaway wrote:
         | The new focus of GitHub is to harvest data for AI.
         | 
         | Everything else not important to them.
        
         | epolanski wrote:
         | I'm personally very tired of shoving AI everywhere otherwise
         | GitHub is okay-ish albeit it seems it performed much better
         | when it was a rails website rather than a react "app".
        
       | michael_michael wrote:
       | Are there any alternatives to Github that offer similar bang for
       | the buck? Particularly for very small teams or solo devs that
       | need private repos? The author here specifically mentions
       | Codeberg, which seems like it's just for FOSS projects.
        
         | docsaintly wrote:
         | GitLab. There's also the option of self hosting it on a cheap
         | server if you don't like cloud services.
        
         | NewJazz wrote:
         | You can self host the software underlying Codeberg, which is
         | Forgejo. Then there is also GitLab which has a lot more
         | features but is arguably more intensive to maintain. And then
         | there is the long tail, such as the projects Forgejo was forged
         | from (Gitea and Gogs) and various other FOSS forges e.g. Phorge
         | which was forked from the now discontinued Phabricator.
        
         | femiagbabiaka wrote:
         | There's nothing about Codeberg that's FOSS only afaict.
        
           | MYEUHD wrote:
           | Codeberg requires that the repos you host are FOSS
        
             | femiagbabiaka wrote:
             | https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1219 Not true
             | anymore.
        
               | bradly wrote:
               | From the current Terms of Service:
               | Private repositories are only allowed for things required
               | for FLOSS projects, like storing secrets, team-internal
               | discussions or hiding projects from the public until
               | they're ready for usage and/or contribution.
               | They are also allowed for really small & personal stuff
               | like your journal, config files, ideas or notes, but
               | explicitly not as a personal cloud or media storage.
               | 
               | So the ToS says only private repos that support FLOSS,
               | but then backdoors into "small & personal stuff" which is
               | pretty loose and up to Codeberg's discretion so probably
               | not the best place for your private side project repos.
        
         | ackyshake wrote:
         | I like sourcehut. It's the only forge out there that isn't set
         | out to copy the Github UI like everyone else. And its UI itself
         | feels instantaneous, as if it was running locally.
        
           | ISSOtm wrote:
           | I also like it, particularly for its outstanding CI, but I
           | don't like the patch/email-centric approach. (Gave it a try,
           | didn't have a good time.)
        
         | wyldfire wrote:
         | Sourcehut [1] is another interesting one.
         | 
         | [1] https://sourcehut.org/alpha-details/
        
         | bloppe wrote:
         | If you want bang for your buck, and you use free GitHub
         | Actions, then no.
        
         | cy6erlion wrote:
         | If you want a decentralized approach, you can selfhost cgit
         | (https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/) and receive patches via email.
         | People interested can subscribe via RSS. If you simply want a
         | way to browse your code on a static website checkout stagit
         | (https://codemadness.org/stagit.html) which is similar to cgit
         | but very light weight (it simply generates HTML of your git
         | repository).
         | 
         | Edit: There is also Fossil (https://fossil-
         | scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki) by the SQLite
         | developers. It is an SCM that is not based on git.
        
         | ISSOtm wrote:
         | Note that private repos are supported on Codeberg. (I would
         | link to one of mine, but you'd just see a 404 :P)
        
       | IshKebab wrote:
       | Does Codeberg provide free CI runners? I'd estimate Microsoft
       | spends over $100m/year on free Github CI. Likely their biggest
       | cost. It doesn't seem like a reasonable thing Codeberg to fund
       | for free.
        
         | duttish wrote:
         | For me this is the GitHub moat.
        
           | NewJazz wrote:
           | It isn't really a moat so much as a loss leader. Travis CI
           | was free back in the day IIRC.
        
             | bloppe wrote:
             | Well if/when GH eliminates the free tier, I'll probably
             | churn. I agree that's the main thing keeping me there.
        
             | WCSTombs wrote:
             | So it's a moat that trickles out to the sea and has to be
             | kept filled very expensively.
             | 
             | (I'm just keeping the metaphor alive because for me it is
             | the primary blocker, whatever we call it.)
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | They do, but their capacity is limited so you have to ask them
         | for access and make a reasonable case.
         | 
         | https://docs.codeberg.org/ci/
        
           | ISSOtm wrote:
           | Actually, that's only for the Woodpecker instance. Forgejo
           | Actions can be used without asking for permission, and three
           | tiers of (Linux-only, adm64-only) free runners are provided.
        
             | WCSTombs wrote:
             | Ok, that's very interesting. Last I checked only self-
             | hosted runners were documented, but I definitely want to
             | look into this.
        
           | schubidubiduba wrote:
           | Been a while since I applied, but when I did the "reasonable
           | case" was mostly just your repo being FOSS and having a
           | license file (+ a very vague description of what you plan to
           | do and how much resources you'll use)
        
         | oever wrote:
         | You can use your own Woodpecker instance with Codeberg. I do
         | this at work and privately and it works great and is much
         | faster than the free CI that Codeberg can afford.
        
       | Emen15 wrote:
       | What really stands out to me in this migration story isn't the
       | technical side at all, but the reminder that "feature parity"
       | isn't the real hurdle here. Codeberg is already good enough for
       | most day to day workflows; what it doesn't have is the
       | gravitational pull GitHub built through network effects,
       | integrations, and plain old inertia.
        
         | kaferoni wrote:
         | This is partially being addressed by projects like
         | https://tangled.org. It's built on the same protocol as
         | bluesky, meaning your identity is preserved across different
         | platforms so that _where_ your git is hosted is unrelated to
         | how you discover and connect with others.
        
           | bayindirh wrote:
           | FWIW, Forgejo (Codeberg) is also building federation
           | capability [0].
           | 
           | [0]: https://codeberg.org/forgejo-
           | contrib/federation/src/branch/m...
        
         | PunchyHamster wrote:
         | And just sheer amount of documentation and examples out there.
         | Everyone uses it, therefore everyone writes about it, the new
         | hire probably knows it, and if they don't they can find it
         | easily.
         | 
         | Then again maybe for stuff like actions and in general CI/CD
         | it's not all that bad, you don't need whole team to know
         | exactly how to write it, you just need to have _a_ person
         | knowing it. and it 's generally not all that hard to learn.
        
       | BrenBarn wrote:
       | More and more people seem to be migrating away from Github. Now
       | if only there were some Mercurial solutions among the
       | alternatives. . .
        
         | ISSOtm wrote:
         | SourceHut has Mercurial hosting: https://hg.sr.ht
        
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       (page generated 2025-11-30 23:00 UTC)