In the aftermath of Github banning or suspending dozens of popular accounts, the erotic game modding community wonders if they should move to platforms like GitGoon instead.
I think sometimes people forget that one of the main features of Git is that it’s decentralized. You don’t need Github; just push your repo to a different remote.
Everyone that clones the repo (usually) has a full copy of it, including all history, and theoretically you can clone the repo directly from their copy. Of course, that’s often not practical, which is how we ended up with these centralized services.
The main issue with losing a Github repo is the auxiliary non-Git-powered features of Github, like issue tracking.
This aspect of it being decentralized is so important to remember.
People sometimes give me quizzical responses when I point them to the repository for the Bypass Paywalls Clean plugin because it’s hosted on a Russian git site (gitflic.ru). The plugin was chased off the Firefox add-ons site/Chrome add-ons site, it was chased off of Gitlab, it was chased off of Github, all over DMCA takedown requests. People act like “well it must be shady because it’s not on a well known git site” and yet is hosted in a country that doesn’t respect the US copyright cabals control over media literally because that’s the only safe harbor for it. The developer even has this snippet on his description of the plugin:
PS although the add-on was removed from Mozilla’s add-on store (AMO) (because of DMCA Takedown Notice) it’s still signed and manually checked for security by Mozilla (hence the delay in signing).
Yet it’s super common for people to be absolutely suspicious of it. Including being suspicious of the traffic leaving the plugin when it’s not being used which turns out to be the plug-in checking for updates every time.
Using alternative gits is so important and is literally what allows programming and especially open source programming, to thrive.
No worries at all! I battled with that choice for a while when I was self hosting. I had already been so deep into using GitLab CI that it would’ve been a pain to migrate to Forgejo Actions, though to be fair when I had setup GitLab the Actions system didn’t actually exist yet.
And if you plan to expose it to the Internet, GitLab being a much larger project has more potential security issues to keep up with which is another important note.
(Though as always when publicly exposing services to the Internet, keep up with patches either way and stay safe!)
Because it’s going to implement federation soon
Nobody is going to sign up to your website just to post an issue on one repository. Federation is perfect for software forges.
Maybe I’m just dumb, but I always thought half of GitLab’s features were unavailable to self-hosted instances. It’s why I just self-host Gitea and Woodpecker instead.
I would like to see a Git repo hosting solution that also stores issues and other meta data in either an ancillary git repo or a branch of the git repo as files.
I think sometimes people forget that one of the main features of Git is that it’s decentralized. You don’t need Github; just push your repo to a different remote.
Everyone that clones the repo (usually) has a full copy of it, including all history, and theoretically you can clone the repo directly from their copy. Of course, that’s often not practical, which is how we ended up with these centralized services.
The main issue with losing a Github repo is the auxiliary non-Git-powered features of Github, like issue tracking.
This aspect of it being decentralized is so important to remember.
People sometimes give me quizzical responses when I point them to the repository for the Bypass Paywalls Clean plugin because it’s hosted on a Russian git site (gitflic.ru). The plugin was chased off the Firefox add-ons site/Chrome add-ons site, it was chased off of Gitlab, it was chased off of Github, all over DMCA takedown requests. People act like “well it must be shady because it’s not on a well known git site” and yet is hosted in a country that doesn’t respect the US copyright cabals control over media literally because that’s the only safe harbor for it. The developer even has this snippet on his description of the plugin:
Yet it’s super common for people to be absolutely suspicious of it. Including being suspicious of the traffic leaving the plugin when it’s not being used which turns out to be the plug-in checking for updates every time.
Using alternative gits is so important and is literally what allows programming and especially open source programming, to thrive.
Host your own forgejo
Why not use codeberg.org?
Why forgejo over self-hosted gitlab?
Depending on what your needs and available resources are, GitLab is fairly heavy especially in comparison to Forgejo.
Forgejo is also infinitely easier to run. Its a static go binary that uses an sqlite database.
Fair! Mind you, the question was genuine curiosity. I don’t have projects of my own hosted at this time, but I may soon.
No worries at all! I battled with that choice for a while when I was self hosting. I had already been so deep into using GitLab CI that it would’ve been a pain to migrate to Forgejo Actions, though to be fair when I had setup GitLab the Actions system didn’t actually exist yet.
And if you plan to expose it to the Internet, GitLab being a much larger project has more potential security issues to keep up with which is another important note.
(Though as always when publicly exposing services to the Internet, keep up with patches either way and stay safe!)
Because it’s going to implement federation soon
Nobody is going to sign up to your website just to post an issue on one repository. Federation is perfect for software forges.
Maybe I’m just dumb, but I always thought half of GitLab’s features were unavailable to self-hosted instances. It’s why I just self-host Gitea and Woodpecker instead.
I would like to see a Git repo hosting solution that also stores issues and other meta data in either an ancillary git repo or a branch of the git repo as files.