Stop using gitlab.com for projects - Credit card info required for new registrations

vivi@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 457 points –

If your IP (and possible your browser) looks "suspicious" or has been used by other users before, you need to add additional information for registration on gitlab.com, which includes your mobile phone number and possibly credit card information. Since it is not possible to contribute or even report issues on open source projects without doing so, I do not think any open source project should use this service until they change that.

Screenshot: https://i.ibb.co/XsfcfHf/gitlab.png

123

You are viewing a single comment
View all commentsShow the parent comment

https://codeberg.org/

I would LOVE to switch to codeberg for work, but my work requires that all data be hosted in the US, so I recently pitched GitLab as an alternative to GitHub, even though it's not perfect.

For work gitlab is fine, I'm sure your company can get the accounts verified for example. At least it's not microsoft

Wait. Wtf does it need to be US specifically? So the goverment has full access to the data or what?

Probably so other governments don’t have full access.

Well, EU or some countries like Switzerland dont allow themselves access to the service.

Export controls or legal compliance, most likely. Export controls because the code may be a protected technology, or compliance because the company doesn't have gdpr or some other legal framework.

In which case, get your code off the net and use Forgejo to get your own instance, same as codeberg. If hosting location is a real issue, bring it home.

That's eventually the plan, but I expect that process to take on the order of a year, unfortunately.

git clone and say that code is on your computer

What's your experience like with this? I'm seriously considering Gitlab & Github alternative.

Codeberg the community is very nice with strong focus on the right to privacy and free software, which I feel reflects itself especially in a lot of copylefted projects on the service.

Codeberg the collaboration platform is in my epxerience by the simple fact of critical mass quite a bit less 'collaborative' for many projects. There's a couple projects with tight communities, and a lot of single dev projects with maybe a drive-by PR.

Codeberg the software runs on Gitea (/Forgejo) which is wonderful software - slim, simple enough to get everything done without being in the way.

There's efforts to open up the gitea/forgejo forges to federation, which would be a very neat way to fix the collaboration issue and is - in my view - the way forward for open, decentralized collaborative software creation. It's still quite a ways off (especially from bring mature enough to be used day-to-day) but when it gets there platforms like codeberg will be the first to adopt it and to also benefit massively from it.

I don't use codeberg much, but I have my own instance of Forgejo so I'm using the same software. My experience is that it's really nice. The feeling is one of having what you need and no bloat.