johnnyjayjay Goto Github PK

I'm moving away from GitHub.

Anything new I create will be put on Codeberg. I will not leave GitHub completely, though.

Moving away from GitHub means that I will not start any new personal projects on this account and that I will archive most of my existing repos. Most of my repos here haven't been active in years and this is unlikely to change. In part, it's because I'm currently doing less programming than I used to. Another part of the reason is that I'm simply not interested in some of the things I used to develop anymore. I still work on new stuff though, just somewhere else.

Moving away from GitHub does not mean "leaving". I will not delete my account or become completely inactive. Since GitHub (unfortunately) has a near-monopoly on software forges, there is simply too much developer activity on here for me to quit entirely. I will keep checking in from time to time, star projects I find interesting, and make contributions to other projects that remain on GitHub.

I believe that at some point, the open source community's commitment to GitHub is going to blow up in our faces. It's practically inevitable. GitHub is itself not open source and a for-profit company steered by Microsoft. Give Microsoft a monopoly over something, and eventually they're going to start turning the nobs to see how much value they can squeeze from their users. Relying on GitHub alone is a bad move strategically, if nothing else.

Are you prepared for GitHub turning to shit? Are we? Think about the grip this single corporation has on the entire open source world. Software forges, like anything else, can enshittify. It's happened before, and it's bound to happen again. Right now, GitHub is still tolerable (though they have added a fair bunch of shit no one asked for in the past few years). How long is it going to stay that way? I don't know, but whatever the future holds, I don't want free software to suffer for it.

If you're at all concerned about this, please consider supporting an alternative software forge. Contribute to open source alternatives. Host your own. Or just start by creating an account somewhere else. Forgejo is a fork of Gitea maintained by the people behind Codeberg, a non-profit association building a GitHub alternative. They are working on some very exciting stuff, including federated software forges. Also take a look at SourceHut, another alternative that takes some approaches to providing a platform that are very different from GitHub-like forges.

Support independence, and help keep free software and open source alive. All things considered, we have a good thing going; let's not give a single corporation the keys to the castle.