I’ve been on Codeberg for over a year now and the experience has been great. It has been around for a while, it’s fast, thanks to Forgejo, the self-hostable open-source software that Codeberg uses, which also offers great features.
However, it lacks a good CI/CD system. I feel like Woodpecker (the CI/CD system Codeberg uses) can’t do more complex things. Forgejo/Gitea have their own CI/CD system which is better, but Codeberg still uses Woodpecker.
But other than that, why isn’t Codeberg more widely adopted? Even privacy advocates continue to use GitHub, despite its acquisition by Microsoft. I agree with the sentiment that GitHub has a large user base, and its widespread adoption is undeniable, but I still think more people should try Codeberg or even self-host their own Forgejo/Gitea instances.
So, I’m curious to hear your perspective. What are the reasons that keep you tied to GitHub? Do the features and network outweigh the privacy concerns? Are there specific functionalities that you rely on and haven’t found elsewhere?
I would have given it a go, but reading their terms it seems they don’t like people having non-foss code there, and I would like to have both my foss and non-foss projects together on one platform.
I’ve been thinking about self-hosting forgejo though!
Edit: I did move from GitHub to GitLab, but don’t really wanna stay on GitLab either.
I’ve been self-hosting Forgejo for a while now and I really quite like it.
Same
Similar - I thought about codeberg for the source of my interactive climate model,
but am not yet ready to give it a pure-foss license - might split in parts with different licenses. Could try self-hosting.Off-topic but don’t want that link go to waste: your link is broken! (very cool project btw)
Thanks, fixed! As you can see parts of the science code are already accessible via the ‘cogs’, but not yet the structural code - anyway keeps evolving, update soon.
I develop a moderately popular open source project and self-host it on Gitea. But I also mirror it on GitHub and accept PRs there. And one PR submitter on GitHub said they preferred to contribute there because that’s where potential employers look for open source activity.
Could employers also look on Gitea/Forgejo? In theory, yes. But some of them literally ask for your GitHub profile on their application forms…
We also ask for a GitHub handle but when one supplies Codeberg or GitLab it’s seen as very positive. Might not be the case for standard HR though.
Why do this if it missleading? Why not ask for a list of VCS links & why suggest only one—especially the Microsoft one, then be excited if something else is submitted?
To be honest, I didn’t know by heart what we stated exactly. It says “Open source”. When we ask we may well say “like a GitHub handle”.
For people without much experience it can all be a bit daunting. They’ll know about GitHub and it helps them identify what we’re hoping to see. By now I expect links to open source work in a CV due to the nature of our company but it’s not a requirement.
It’s a balancing act in getting the right hints in a vacancy for people in the know and providing enough info for people who don’t know yet.
GitHub wasn’t all that bad years ago and it’s easy seeing this find their way in HR forms and taking as long to be removed again. I certainly wouldn’t shun entering a CodeBerg/GitLab/selfhosted url in a form where I should enter a GitHub handle.
Federated instances. When thats stable, I’ll switch.
privacy/GDPR nightmare
Why exactly?
Depends how it’s implemented. We’ll see.
mind share – GitHub is the Coca-Cola of git, Codeberg and SourceHut are the RC Colas – people are already on GitHub, their projects are already on GitHub, their workflows are already on GitHub, their friends are already on GitHub, their co-workers are already on GitHub, and on and on …
it’s the same issue with Facebook – everyone knows Facebook is shit, but leaving Facebook means convincing your friends and family to leave Facebook, and convincing their friends and family to leave Facebook … outside of a global event like a pandemic, a nigh impossible task …
I disagree somewhat. In general, the network effect is very strong of course, but git is already decentralized. You can pretty much just git push to somewhere else or even use email.
The rest is just (useful) extra stuff.
GitHub has managed to conflate “git” and “GitHub” in a lot of people’s minds (including people who should know better) – git may be decentralized, but to people who think git is GitHub, it’s meaningless
That’s correct, but it still can be separated without too much effort, unlike if it would just be one thing.
Codeberg and Vervis are working on federated git which largely solves this problem IMO.
Already using Codeberg.
Holding back? I’m not held back. Codeberg would be a step back, I self host Forgejo and am so hyped up for forgefed.
I set up mirrors for my more important stuff to Codeberg and GitHub for visibility.
About CI/CD: does Codeberg not let you enable actions, which are basically the same as GitHub actions but for self hosting? That’s what I use for my self hosted CI. I think you can add your own workers for orgs, repos, and profiles too on Forgejo, should be doable on Codeberg too. (I don’t use Codeberg CI, only my own)
How do you feel about privacy/GDPR in relation to federated services like this? Seems a bit of a minefield and probably most all of those services are not technically legal.
Why exactly would it not be ok with the gdpr? I can’t think of anything right now. Having a few diverse isn’t really a new idea, it’s basically the www all over again and mastodon and lemmy &Co exist already.
Or are you referring to registering CI workers? That might be a bit of a problem, yeah, as you’re basically giving the git hoster remote code execution (on a docker container). Not really a problem if you host your own of course.
For one there’s no incentive for individuals running an instance to care about compliance in the first place, regardless of the actual issues at play. One obvious issue that comes to mind is the right to be forgotten. FOSS software can be easily modified and if servers don’t comply with such requests properly then your rights are being violated and good luck doing anything useful about it.
Blah Blah
It does. It applies to any service that has a single EU user. And that doesn’t mean someone in the EU. It means an EU citizen, even if they are living abroad.
Blah Blah
Anyone who ever hopes to actually move or operate in the EU will be forced to comply. So an instance owner in the fediverse might operate their instance out of the US. Then the US enacts some law to force handing over user data. The server owner wants to move (themselves or the server) to the EU. Well, they’re now fucked.
Or if an instance owner wants to sell something on the site, guess you’re not selling to 50% of your users.
I‘m way ahead of you. Using three forgejo instances and patiently waiting for federation. I love forgejo.
Honestly, I’m just happy with GitLab. Their CI is fantastic and the other built-ins are great too. I haven’t felt the need to switch.
@danielquinn @Tomkoid That might change very quickly after Gitlab finds a buyer.
Personally, it’s because I don’t code
Forgejo/Gitea have their own CI/CD system which is better,
I didn’t like their CI setup. I’m hoping to stick with GitLab despite the upcoming purchase and idiotic decisions like embedding VSCode and the new runner naivete, just for their better CI setup.
GitHub constantly becomes more bloated, clunky and privacy/license concerning AI BS. It almost feels like using 2010 TFS server with git flavor. Unfortunately, It has a huge user base and it’s hard to incentivize people to use other platforms.
It’s easier for well-established projects to host their own git infrastructure. But for new projects and solo developer, it harder to get interaction on other platforms. I think that’s why even Gitea team uses GitHub as a main location for development. Similarly, I still mirror my public repositories to GitHub for the same reasons even though I prefer using my own Gitea server.
Codeberg/Forgejo only supports Git for VCS which is a major downside. There’re good alternatives to Git, but their code forges are all pretty lackluster—and I continue to use them looking for tool/place to host.
I use codeberg for public repos and gitlab for private repos (codeberg doesnt like people hosting private repos on there—theyll allow it but they strongly encourage people to make their projects public, especially after your repo reaches a certain size).
I wouldn’t say that codeberg is not widely used. A lot of the software I use is hosted on there. I would say that the most common git hosting platforms I see for foss projects is github > self-host > sourcehut > codeberg > gitlab > other. But that’s obviously a selected sample of the software I tend to use or at least browse.
Can you elaborate on their actions on discouraging users’ private repo? Ty.
I was hosting a private repo on there and it got to ~100MB at which point there was a banner at the top of my repo basically saying that they would encourage me to make it public considering the size. I don’t remember if they stopped me from doing further pushes because of the size or not, but at that point I moved it to gitlab
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them doing this btw, they’re not a cloud file hosting service, they’re a foss-promoting git hosting service so I think it’s reasonable enough that they prefer people share their projects especially beyond a certain size.
Good to know. Ty.
I don’t know how many people care about it, but i like github “sort by thumbs up” functionality (see example) . it’s a simple indicator of what is more or less valued by the community.
I don’t really code, on the rare occasion that I do it’s for some one-off thing I don’t really care about maintaining or documenting.
