is it just me or GitHub is turning into some sort of LinkedIn

sizeoftheuniverse@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 383 points –

Initially, LinkedIn was just another site where you could find jobs. It was simple to use, simple to connect with others; it even had some friendly groups with meaningful discussions.

And then it gained monopoly as the "sole" professional network where you could actually land a job. If you are not on LinkedIn now, you are quite invisible in the job market. Recruiters are concentrated there, even if they have to pay extremely high prices for premium accounts. The site is horrible now: a social network in disguise, toxic and boring influencers, and a lot of noise and bloated interface to explore.

When Google decided to close their code.google.com, GitHub filled a void. It was a simple site powered by git (not by svn or CVS), and most of the major open-source projects migrated there. The interface was simple, and everything was perfect. And then something changed.

GitHub UI started to bloat, all kinds of "features" nobody asked for were implemented, and then the site became a SaaS. Now Microsoft hosts the bulk of open-source projects the world has to offer. GitHub has become a monopoly. If you don't keep your code there, chances are people won't notice your side projects. This bothers me.

Rant over. I hate internet monopolies.

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At least, there's Codeberg, run by a German nonprofit, who's challenging the monopoly. It is aimed exclusively for FOSS projects, private repositories are forbidden. They are running Forgejo as their bloat-free software forge server.

Now, I think every Web2 website must be operated by a nonprofit.

From my PoV it's probably many of these projects are effectively public good spaces. Hosting a code repository has become less of an esoteric thing and turning into a public good benefit (like a physical library but virtual for code). Spaces like Reddit and Twitter are todays analogous of a public discussion forum in a park or at a bar.

Internet tools have become so ubiquitous they are critical to serve public needs and public benefits. However these internet spaces are increasingly commercialized and privatized, which runs against them being valuable public goods (see the difference between Wikipedia, run primarily for public benefit, and Wikia/Fandom).

Overall codeberg has been pretty decent, it's where the Kbin project is located. There's been a few outages over the last few weeks but overall it's pretty good.

Github has had some outages recently too. Codeberg's recent outage was particularly bad, but not serious.

Yes, I also experienced some outages and thus delayed pushing (which made me re-think again of overusing git submodules).

Nevertheless, I migrated my works from my server and Github to Codeberg recently.

wasn't codeberg using gitea? not it says powered by forgejo

Gitea was taken over by a for-profit company, Forgejo is a fork by the previous maintainers to continue it fully FOSS without any of the shenanigans. See also their FAQ.

Forgejo is apparently a fork of Gitea.

Codeberg has private repos

Section 2.1.2 of Codeberg Terms of Service says:

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 it's not for proprietary projects anyway.