HN

Need help?
<- Back
GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

lalitmaganti

Comments (117)

  • cedws
    Running a git forge is easy, I find the social coding/network effect the stickiest part of GitHub. I want my code to be discoverable, and I want to discover others' code.I wanted to leave GitHub but I'm still stuck there. What it would take for me to finally leave is some kind of federation of the social features, so I can port my stars over, see what others are working on, etc.
  • kloud
    GitHub is really two separate products: a code forge for teams and a social coding platform to collaborate on open source.When I use the social platform, it is mostly as a read-only website. I am occasionally commenting, opening issues, PRs etc. The slowness and annoyances do not matter that much.But I live in the team tool, where the annoyances and paper cuts are painful. Besides poor craftsmanship, there is often tension between the simpler design for social which sacrifices usability for pro use cases.The social platform, which has huge network effects and is really hard to replace, is basically a loss leader for marketing the team product. I wonder if it would be viable for another company to create a team tool that stands on its own by outclassing Github like Linear outclasses Jira? That should be easier to replace. And Microsoft could keep running the social platform for the time being, where the adoption of alternatives is much slower and requires a much longer time frame.
  • tombert
    I hadn't ever used the email-based pull request until I started using Sourcehut, but ever since I did I've honestly grown to prefer it. People shouldn't require an account at a for-profit company to make contributions to FOSS.Sourcehut is pretty niche but I like it a lot, and I don't really mind paying for things relative to the value they provide me.
  • delduca
    The only reason I keep my projects on it is the Windows and macOS runners.
  • anon
    undefined
  • jeremyjh
    Let’s be completely honest:When we say it’s about “discovery”, it’s not about people anonymously obtaining and using the software. What we really mean is that lots of users need to have accounts so that star count go up.
  • t1234s
    If your a small company developing something closed source is there any reason to use GitHub over just setting up a git infrastructure on your private server?
  • oooyay
    As a maintainer of an open source project I largely care about CI, discoverability on the web, and the sign up burden being small so that issues continue to be reported. I think Radicle and Tangled are probably the future in that way. Tangled needs to support private repositories and Radicle needs a real CI solution. We're not far off from either.
  • taminka
    99% of commits on a project come from 1% of contributors, so the main issue w/ migrating to an alternative isn't the networking effect of github, rather that you can't carry over github specific stuff (prs/issues)i personally like how radicle.xyz managed that, where they manage issues/prs/user identities as git objects, so your entire project is self contained as git repository
  • anon
    undefined
  • merelydev
    There is a view where developers think of a forge as a place where they host their code.Than there is another view where the forge is where you go to get code others have written, and this is where GitHub shines. Because of the collective audit.
  • pmontra
    > Bitbucket is the obvious existing counterexample: a conventional commercial forge that has never developed into a shared open-source community comparable to GitHubAgreed. All my customers are on Bitbucket. All the libraries used by their projects (Ruby, Python, JS) are on GitHub.
  • ckcheng
    How’s about radicle.dev ? Apparently like GitHub, but decentralized like Git.
  • anankaie
  • hungryhobbit
    This guy is defining himself into a corner:>GitLab is capable, but it feels incredibly corporate, even more so than GitHub.3 Nor have I found it as good as GitHub at helping people stumble across projects and developers.So it's not enough for an alternative to do everything you want ... it ALSO has to look "not incredibly corporate", and it has to bring millions of users to your project. Otherwise it's not viable.
  • VCFundedGenYer
    Codeberg is a perfect drop-in 1:1 replacement. I find this article to be pretentious nonsense.
  • inigyou
    Before we can talk about a replacement we need to know what is being replaced. If your criteria is a carbon copy of GitHub then of course only GitHub suffices. You have to be more specific about your needs before you can find something else.
  • abc42
    Sourcehut: https://sr.htNot a drop-in replacement for GitHub admittedly. Requires a bit more skills from the contributors. Which might be a fine gate, actually.
  • arikrahman
    I don't know, tangled.org seems promising.
  • HumblyTossed
    That's so sad. Maybe if devs weren't so FOMO, they wouldn't tie themselves so tightly to things like github, chrome, etc.
  • sylware
    My projects are gone from microsoft github.com. Not because I decided to move away, but mostly because github.com is now blocking noscript/basic HTML browsers for most of its basic functions, then it was actually them who did boot me away.Small Tech Discrimination.
  • rvz
    6 Years later, a priceless comment and aged like fine pristine wine. [0]The time to self-host over GitHub is now since they do not even have a CEO of GitHub anymore to help.[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868406
  • manlymuppet
    I think people trying to move off GitHub are being over righteous.There are far worse companies than GitHub. People acting like this company is the Nazi regime are being ridiculous. GitHub (like most of tech) is rather progressive, and trivial differences in perspective should not be taken so seriously.Of course, you can choose whichever service you'd like, for whatever reason you'd like, but acting like allies that agree with you on almost everything are enemies is no way to make progress. This is something that should not be high on the list of priorities.
  • luciana1u
    the git protocol has been federated and self-hostable since 2005. the part where a stranger finds your repo and stars it has not
  • markmental
    [flagged]
  • selectively
    [dead]
  • thataccount
    Github is not something that should be replaced. Rather, a different kind of model needs to exist. Before Git, there were things like Subversion, for instance. All of that slowed way down after Git showed up to the party because people liked the fact Git was "easier to use" and eventually networking effects. When Microsoft purchased Git, the death knell had all ready sounded, but nobody was listening.