They slowly started locking down the platform for people without accounts and it has been really annoying to use the website since. First it was not possible to search for code, then even searching for issues got more and more difficult with it randomly failing, and now it’s gotten to the point where I can’t search for a fucking project anymore!

Github’s search is becoming as bad as reddit’s, where if you want to find anything, a secondary service like SourceGraph, GrepApp, or even a dumb search engine is better. Sometimes those haven’t indexed what I need (especially code search), so I have to download the bloody tarball and rg for whatever the fuck it is I was looking for. Sometimes it will also block the VPN I’m using, so I have to proxy to a non-VPNed machine. The world could do without these unnecessary roadblocks.

What also grinds my gears is requiring an account to contribute. There is no way to send in a patch, raise an issue, or anything without an account there, so by if a project being on github, you have no choice but to give Microsoft your data to participate in opensource. Don’t get me wrong, mailing-lists are filth, but and I’d rather claw my eyes out than participate in any project demanding their use, but Microsoft being the “lesser evil” is not a good look.

Please, for the love of opensource, get your project off of github, please. It’s a monopoly at this point and doing microsoft things. This isn’t the end and they’ll probably do more stuff to see how far they can push it. We’ll all be the boiled frogs.

Yes, I know they have a CI and some other features, but if all you’re doing is hosting your code, please consider an alternative.

Possible alternatives in alphabetic order:

  • Codeberg (could have federation in the future)
  • Gitlab (has CI)
  • OneDev (no git SSH clone but feature-rich) not an instance for the public
  • Radicle (no CI, but federated)
  • Sourcehut (minimalist, but fast as fuck)

or maybe others will suggest more.

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I’ve stopped using github because I hate advertising and nags. Probably most people don’t care much about it, but for me github nagging and ‘reminding’ me about copilot is just so off-putting that I immediately want to leave the site. I don’t want my attention stolen like that.

  • lobut@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    I sound like a corporate shill but like, I don’t know if this is due to abuse.

    GitHub actions and certain things were free until the crypto bros started abusing it. There are certain challenges that happen at scale.

  • communism@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    I support moving off GH but

    There is no way to send in a patch, raise an issue, or anything without an account there

    Currently this is the case everywhere? With the exception of projects that take email patches, currently all the options are centralised/not federated, and even if e.g. Forgejo finished adding ActivityPub integration you’d still need an account on some Forgejo instance to contribute. Same for email patches; they still require having an email address. If it’s specifically about giving MS your data, sure, although iirc the only data they actually require is an email address. You can use duckduckgo’s duck addresses to get one that’s relatively anonymous (i.e. can be deanonymised by duckduckgo but I doubt anyone’s conspiring that hard to deanonymise a random github user).

    • kautau@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yeah and that makes sense. There’s plenty of examples of open source projects that have had their issue trackers flooded with politics rather than real issues and they have to then spend all their time policing and cleaning that up and that’s using GitHub’s user reg system and basic protections against spam accounts. Without requiring any sort of auth or user reg that would be impossible

  • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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    10 months ago

    It was easy enough to introduce Git with a self hosted Gitea at my work place 4 years ago. I see Codeberg is based on a fork of Gitea called Forgejo, so I guess it is also good.

  • sirdorius@programming.dev
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    10 months ago

    Look, I get it that it’s trendy to hate on Microsoft, but these complaints don’t even make sense. You complain about requiring an account to contribute, and then you propose some other services that do the exact same thing! Turning github into a 4chan style free-for-all is a terrible idea. Maybe that’s exactly why you VPN got blocked, because it’s enabling spam accounts. And what info are you giving Microsoft to create an account? An email, a password and a username? Not exactly doxxing material, is it? I just searched for some code from one of my repos in incognito and it was the first thing that popped up.

    Microsoft is not preventing you from migrating, it’s just that there is no standard for issues, discussions, PRs etc. But every other service has an import tool that can do it if needed. And if you’re only hosting code (doubt) you’re a git remote add & git push away from being free of that evil Microsoft that is hosting all your repos for free.

    I hate Microsoft and big corporations just about as much as anyone on Lemmy, but geez, pick your battles people.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      I feel some sadness in seeing Microsoft’s slow sludge of enshitification oozing forward and gradually engulfing github. There’s still a way to go before it become totally crap, but it is definitely getting worse and will continue to get worse as Microsoft does their best to mine whatever value they can from everyone passing by.

      Knowing this, I think it is wise to start looking at alternatives.

      • bamboo@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        In what way has Microsoft enshittified GitHub? Since the acquisition they’ve mostly made more services free for open source users, and prices and features haven’t gotten more restrictive.

        • sirdorius@programming.dev
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          8 months ago

          I just saw this late, but I agree here. Also they added CI to Github with very generous limits (which were promptly abused to mine bitcoin), whereas before you had to use something like TravisCI which hit free limits constantly or some complicated solution using your own Jenkins server. Not to mention very restrictive private repos before the MS takeover.

          People just like to complain because “Micro$oft bad” but when you point out the facts it’s just crickets…

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Yes, I know they have a CI and some other features

    Github actions are terrible - fight me.

    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: actions
    commit: Another actions fix
    commit: Fixing actions
    commit: Fixed issue with actions
    commit: Actions not logging in properly
    commit: typo in actions
    commit: Created GH actions!
    
    • sirdorius@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      Just commit to a different branch, and then rebase to main. If you’re putting this shit into main, it’s not the tool’s fault.