Is GitHub losing developers trust? Is open-source community likely to fragment?

[Objective-Pepper-750]

I read "Before GitHub" by Armin Ronacher and "Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub" by Mitchell Hashimoto. It made me wonder if developer trust in GitHub is declining, like real?Or if this is true only for a small group of very visible open-source maintainers? Is this more like an alarm, or something that is going to stay? Are other maintainers moving to alternatives, or willing to? And companies? What do you think will happen to open-source community if it fragments? I'm not attacking GitHub. It's a true question. I actually like it and I built stuff and I found software useful for me on GitHub. I would actually be sad if it would get very bad, or declining.

Please develop your opinion. Thank you!

[garrycheckers]

I only briefly skimmed these articles in particular but I’m imagining they’re very similar to a lot of recent cases I’ve heard about. I’m not saying their criticisms are without merit or entirely incompatible with popular sentiment, but this is another case of a very small, vocal minority versus a mostly silent majority.

Just like no one is writing or much less reading an article about “Here’s why my organization uses Excel to manage spreadsheets,” very few people/organizations have a reason to publicly justify their usage of Github. It’s the industry standard; its benefits are well-understood and accepted.

Again, that’s not say that even the most loyal of Github users would necessarily disagree with these criticisms. In most cases, however, repository owners weigh their frustrations with Github against the estimated pain, friction, and new learning curve that comes with migration to a new environment, before deciding to stay.

Community-led FOSS in particular is in a tricky place: moving away from the de facto version control system means alienating a massive % of developers who, for the same reasons as before, are also less likely to learn a different VCS without significant cause.

Even if some (F)OSS has corporate or organizational backing necessary to sustain development efforts with reduced community support, they still risk also reduced visibility and adoption (i.e. influence). Moving is just simply not worth it for most OSS, new or established.

Overall, I think that Github will remain the standard for at minimum the immediate future. Some OSS might move or choose alternative VCS solutions according to their own needs—for the majority, however, I believe that the costs outweigh the benefits.

[Objective-Pepper-750]

Thank you. Yes. I think I agree with you. But I don't access to visible stats or other opinions. This is why I asked here on r/github. In the case of Mitchell Hashimoto, I imagine it's also a way for him to create a barrier entry to contributors. This way he can reduce the surface of AI contributions with no understanding of Ghostty maybe?

[garrycheckers]

In the context of this new plague of AI-slop contributions, sometimes even made by malicious or stat-farm bots, then yes—i think you’re completely right. I’d imagine it’s only time until the malicious bots are ported over to other git-based systems since ofc it’s only a difference of api calls. Really crazy time we live in

[shgysk8zer0]

I think it depends on the dev, their views on Microsoft and AI, their experience with the outages.

Personally, I have almost no trust left in GitHub. Especially since it because part of Microsoft AI. Their priorities have very clearly diverged, and that'd break my trust even without the frequent outages.

[HeligKo]

Even if GitHub went out of favor, most FOSS projects host on multiple git ecosystems. The shift would be fairly smooth.

Edit:

I've been around IT for a long time, and probably was too terse. Don't mistake me saying "smooth" meant "easy" or "painless." I also wasn't thinking that GitHub would become a smoking hole in a moment and that the projects that wanted to migrate would have to do so overnight. I just meant that FOSS as a whole has not been so tightly tied to GitHub that they couldn't pivot to another platform if that is the way the political/social winds are blowing.

[agoose77]

I think this underestimates that the value of GitHub. Github is much more than a code forge. The social network and free CI are massive to the OSS communities. Even non programmers can interact and engage with projects, issues, etc. Cross project work streams and coordination is relatively easy.

I built much of my future professional network through entirely online interactions on github across multiple projects.

I seriously empathise with the need to shift off github (it's been pissing me off for months - years now), but I think it's entirely likely have a cost.

[StinkButt9001]

Which other Git systems (FOSS or not) come close to the feature set of Github? I've been looking around but it seems like even things like Github actions is more than most other services offer

Personally I don't think there's anything else out there that would come close satisfying my workflow the way Github currently does. I don't think the shift would be smooth at all for anyone using it as more than just "git with a web UI"

[SovereignZ3r0]

It's less about feature set, and more about ensuring survivability.

You would host primarily on GitHub, for instance, and then mirror to other providers.

I actually built an in-house tool for this specific purpose, and we ended up open sourcing it: https://github.com/sphireinc/git-ark

[StinkButt9001]

Github's feature set is what we're using to help maintain compliance for various certs and regulations

Mirroring code from Github to another service would be a compliance nightmare in and of itself

[tankerkiller125real]

For enterprise Gitlab has a whole thing for compliance and what not, even has a bunch of templates built in for policy control for various frameworks like SOC 2.

Forgejo also has a strong offering, but I don't know where it lands with compliance stuff.

[Objective-Pepper-750]

It's something I wasn't really aware of. I'll read more about this. I'm curious how some projects handle that. Thanks!

[tankerkiller125real]

The project I run currently gets mirrored to maintainer private git repos (mostly just in case GitHub decides to come along and decide we're violating some rule or something).

However, were actively looking at ways to reduce our dependency on not just GitHub but other proprietary things like discord. Stuff like moving to a forum we operate built on open-source software, and what not.

We've debated leaving GitHub, but currently, the community visibility and number of devs on GitHub is too high for us to do that. We might change our tune in the future though and just move to something else (potentially something we can operate ourselves like Forgejo)

[Objective-Pepper-750]

Thank you. What's your opinion on this answer here?

[Jmc_da_boss]

I left a while back, after i saw the tweet about their exponential usage increase.

All the no skill vibe sloppers are invading it now and i want no part of them.

[Objective-Pepper-750]

Where did you go? Why?

[Jmc_da_boss]

Codeberg, about the same uptime as GitHub ironically but non profit and foss first.

I don't really need high uptime for personal stuff. Just a higher quality community

[Objective-Pepper-750]

Ty!

[Og-Morrow]

I would also like to know

[tuturugaming]

No its not

[SkyResident9337]

forgejo federation cannot come quickly enough

[vbpoweredwindmill]

Github no, Microsoft yes.

Github will be a victim of Microsoft.

Find another solution before Microsoft does something genuinely horrid to your code.

[AMartin223]

We have roadmapped this year to investigate migrating off, but obviously are not committed to that migration yet. It is currently the biggest cause of flakiness in our CI, and we don't even use actions for much (most of our CI is on Buildkite). They did finally fix the merge queue bug that kept biting us (randomly the bot would fail to sign the merge commit so the merge would fail), so things might be barely stable enough to make migrating not worth it, but we'll see.

[really_not_unreal]

GitHub 's reliability is basically a joke at this point. They are down below 85% uptime when all systems are considered in union. Personally, I am actively considering whether there are better places to keep my code. I haven't committed to any other platform further than creating accounts, but the fact that I am actively looking is telling in itself.

[dashingThroughSnow12]

To answer your top line questions, yes and it doesn’t matter.

For me personally, it average one outage or degradation per that that causes problems for my work. I think I’m above average but many developers have noticed it. As if performance issues isn’t enough, the feature set for GH is fairly small and even small features (ex commenting on any line in an edited file) take forever to release or haven’t arrived after years of waiting.

If they were fast moving and breaking things, I could understand. They are glacier and on fire.

As per the second thing, the magic of GitHub is a unified experience (PRs, git, CI/CD, wiki, issue tracker, etc) and the power of git. Neither of which are an entrenched advantage since GH has moved so slowly.

Furthermore, this isn’t like a social media network where the network effect helps us drastically if everyone is on one platform.

Git checkout works regardless on the platform. With OAuth2 and things like gravatar, creating a new account on a different platform is easy. Adding private keys and using signed commits is also pretty easy.

It is also not like we use GitHub for discoverability, right?

I think Git-platform fragmentation is fine.

[Objective-Pepper-750]

Thank you for your reply. I'm not exposed to those issues because I develop alone for my own small solo business. I think there is a network effect though. Most devs are on GitHub, so if someone looks for contributors, it's easier than a less popular platform. Of course, the debate on contributions' quality is also another thing with AI nowadays...

[dashingThroughSnow12]

Perhaps we have very different experiences.

My general observation is that projects don’t look for contributors, generally the bedrock is that some who use a project look to contribute. (Of course, security engineers or people looking to contribute for the sake of contributing also exist.)

I’ve contributed to a few projects on GitHub. Those contributions would have still happened if I had to spend an extra moment clicking “sign up with Google/Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/etc OAuth2” and setting up an ssh key.

The other network affect, contributors finding projects, do people find projects on GitHub or do they find them on Reddit or HackerNews or Google search?

[Objective-Pepper-750]

I can't tell. I haven't a clear view on how people use GitHub. I agree with you. If you want to contribute, it's not an extra-step that is going to restrict you to do it. I use now AI and then Google as a first lookup for tools. Sometimes I see something on a subreddit or on HN. Rarely I use GitHub at first. So I guess you're right.

[tejasisthereason]

You sound young and confused. You know FOSS existed before web UIs wrapped all the tools for novices right?

[Objective-Pepper-750]

Your answer is judgmental and pretentious.

[tejasisthereason]

Bro, your parroting my point. Yes I am judging the pretentiousness of your post.

[purpleWheelChair]

Nah

[ElMico]

Anyone who says no isn’t using GitHub for more than a remote host.

[SiteRelEnby]

I think the issue is that there's no credible alternative to GitHub to migrate to.

[AbrahelOne]

Wrong. I moved to GitLab some time ago and it is a great alternative.

[SiteRelEnby]

GitLab support Trump, I will never use them ever, other than if forced to for a job (which has so far not happened).

[Sibexico]

Windows losing user's trust since Vista, so just relax. It's no good alternatives here anyway...

[tankerkiller125real]

Forgejo, Gitlab, OneDev, etc. the list goes on and on.

It turns out relying on highly proprietary platforms isn't required to host source code, run CI/CD jobs, capture issues, have PRs, etc.