I don't dislike Codeberg inherently, but it's not a "true" GitHub replacement. It can handle a good chunk of GitHub repositories (namely those for well established FOSS projects looking to have everything a proper capital P project has), but if you're just looking for a generic place to put your code projects that aren't necessarily intended for public release and support (ie. random automation scripts, scraps of concepts that never really got off the ground, things not super cleaned up), they're not really for that - private repositories are discouraged according to their FAQ and are very limited (up to 100mb).
They also don't want to host your homepage, so if GitHub Pages is why you used GitHub, they are not a replacement.
Unfortunately I don't think there's really an answer to that conundrum that doesn't involve just spinning up your own git server and accepting all the operational overhead that comes with it. At least Forgejo (software behind Codeberg) is FOSS, so you can do that and it should cover most of what you need (and while you're in the realm of having a server, a Pages-esque replacement is trivial since you're configuring a webserver anyway.) Maybe Gitlab.com, although I am admittedly unfamiliar with how Gitlab's "main" instance has changed over the years wrt features.
> If you do not contribute to free/libre software (or if it is limited to your personal homepage), and we feel like you only abuse Codeberg for storing your commercial projects or media backups, we might get unhappy about that.
Emphasis mine. This isn't about if it's technically possible (it certainly is), it's whether or not it's allowed by their platform policies.
Their page publishing feature seems more like it's meant for projects and organizations rather than individual people. The way it's described here indicates that using them to host your own blog/portfolio/what have you is considered to be abusing their services.
Seems fair to me, they're a nonprofit that exists in our lived reality and not an abusive monopolist that can literally throw a billion dollars to subsidize loss leaders.
All it shows the world is why there needs to be a VAT like tax against US digital services to help drive a public option for developers.
There's no reason why the people can't make our own solutions rather than be confined to abusive private US tech platforms.
Are you seriously trying to pitch the flaming garbage heap that is Microsoft Windows as "better technology"? Microsoft is a predator, they offer licenses to schools at a knock-down rate in order to nurture a dependency on their product. The volume of cash that has been extracted from the general populace in this way is obscene. To top it off they have gone out of their way to sabotage free and open competitors, limiting the market to their shitty and overpriced offerings.
Disagree the only alternative is to let the people decide, I don't trust a dozen men that already have deeply undemocratic beliefs to dictate the direction of tech for society.
You are against democracy, I am not. Democracy has led to some of the best advances of civilization, all oligarchies have done is introduce mass poverty, mass misery, and mass death.
At least with democracy we went to the moon for mankind, not shareholders.
Reading what you quoted, no it is not, as long as you contribute to free software or you have projects that are open source. Not just your personal homepage. If you only have a personal homepage and nothing else that is open source, then they have a problem.
Which makes it not really a suitable replacement for GitHub, which is my entire point.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying Codeberg is bad, but it's terms of use are pretty clear in the sense that they only really want FOSS and anyone who has something other than FOSS better look elsewhere. GitHub allowed you to basically put up anything that's "yours" and the license wasn't really their concern - that isn't the case with Codeberg. It's not about price or anything either; it'd be fine if the offer was "either give us 5$ for the privilege of private repositories or only publish and contribute public FOSS code" - I'm fine paying cash for that if need be.
One of the big draws of GitHub (and what got me to properly learn git) back in the day with GitHub Pages in particular was "I can write an HTML page, do a git push and anyone can see it". Then you throw on top an SSG (GitHub had out of the box support for Jekyll, but back then you could rig Travis CI up for other page generators if you knew what you were doing), and with a bit of technical knowledge, anyone could host a blog without the full on server stack. Codeberg cannot provide that sort of experience with their current terms of service.
Even sourcehut has, from what I can tell, a more lenient approach to what they provide (and the only reason why I wouldn't recommend sourcehut as a GitHub replacement is because git-by-email isn't really workable for most people anymore). They encourage FOSS licensing, but from what I can tell don't force it in their platform policies. (The only thing they openly ban is cryptocurrency related projects, which seems fair because cryptocurrency is pretty much always associated with platform abuse.)
I mean, it is arguably much easier to just write the HTML page and upload it with FTP and everyone can see it. I never understood why github became a popular place to host your site in the first place.
> I never understood why github became a popular place to host your site in the first place.
Easy: it was free, it was accessible to people that couldn't spend money for a hosting provider (read: high schoolers) and didn't impose arbitrary restrictions on what you were hosting.
Back then, your options as a high school student were basically to either try and reskin a closed off platform as much as you could (Tumblr could do that, but GitHub Pages also released in the time period where platforms were cracking down on all user customization larger than "what is my avatar") or to accept that the site you wanted to publish your stuff on could disappear at any moment the sketchy hosting provider that provided you a small amount of storage determined your bandwidth costs meant upselling you on the premium plan.
GitHub didn't impose those restrictions in exchange for being a bit less interactive when it came to publishing things (so no such thing as a comment section without using Disqus or something like that, and chances are you didn't need the comments anyways so win-win) That's why it got a lot more popular than just using an FTP server.
There are multiple reasons why FTP by itself became obsolete. Some of them I can think of off the top of my head:
1) Passive mode. What is it and why do I need it? Well, you see, back in the old days, .... It took way too long for this critical "option" to become well supported and used by default.
2) Text mode. No, I don't want you to corrupt some of my files based on half-baked heuristics about what is and isn't a text file, and it doesn't make any sense to rewrite line endings anymore anyway.
3) Transport security. FTPS should have become the standard decades ago, but it still isn't to this day. If you want to actually transfer files using an FTP-like interface today, you use SFTP, which is a totally different protocol built on SSH.
chrome and firefox dropped support for it 5 years or so ago, it has had a lot of security issues over the years, was annoying over NAT, and there are better options for secure bulk transfers (sftp, rsync, etc)
Depending on your hardware (SBC), FTP can also be several times faster than SFTP for transferring files over a LAN. Though I'll admit to having used other protocols like torrents for large files that had bad transfers or other issues (low-quality connection issues causing dropped connections, etc).
Finding an HTTP+FTP server was easier than finding github. Your OS probably has a FTP client installed already, but finding another one is easier than finding and most definitely easier than learning git.
And if you already knew how to write/make HTML you'd for sure already know all of that too.
This is definitely a matter of perspective. I have had a Github account since 2010, and git comes installed on Linux and macOS.
I don't always have a server available to host an HTTP+FTP server on. Or want to pay for one, or spend time setting one up. I can trust that Github Pages will have reasonable uptime, and I won't have to monitor it at all.
> And if you already knew how to write/make HTML you'd for sure already know all of that too.
This seems unnecessarily aggressive, and I don't really understand where it's coming from.
BTW, you can absolutely host plain HTML with Github Pages. No SSG required.
> And if you already knew how to write/make HTML you'd for sure already know all of that too.
That's a completely false statement. My kid took very basic programming classes in school which covered HTML so they could build webpages, which is a fantastic instant-results method. Hooray, now the class is finished, he wants to put it on the web. Just like millions of other kids who couldn't even spell FTP.
I touched on the issues with FTP itself in another comment, but who can forget the issues with HTTP+FTP, like: modes (644 or 755? wait, what is a umask?), .htaccess, MIME mappings, "why isn't index.html working?", etc. Every place had a different httpd config and a different person you had to email to (hopefully) get it fixed.
There was a lot of sites that provided some cpanel-like option as long as you're ok with yourcoolname.weirdhostingname.com. I believe they all came with a filebrowser and the always present public_html folder.
There was geocities (now gone) and a couple of *.tk domains that would inject their ads all over your page. Neither makes a great substitute for GitHub pages these days.
I just checked, I’m not using the feature but my current ISP still offers it: https://assistance.free.fr/articles/631 (10 GB FTP storage tied to the ISP-specific e-mail address).
Having looked it up, mine makes it an add-on service for 1,045円/month + 5,500円 set-up fee, at which point you might as well use a dedicated VPS service (which is probably what's actually going on behind the scenes anyway).
That FAQ snippet is insane to me. Maybe it's a cultural thing but I'd never do business with a company that has implicit threats in their ToS based on something so completely arbitrary.
The worst part is really the unclear procedure. If they set out terms that say they'll give me 4 weeks to migrate projects they don't like off the platform, with n email reminders in between, then that's not ideal but fine. As it is, I'd be worried I'll wake up to data loss if they get 'unhappy'. I have the same problem with sourcehut, actually, with their content policy.
What an absurd double standard. The language is patterned after GitHub's own caveats about misuse of GitHub Pages:
> you may receive a polite email from GitHub Support suggesting strategies[… such as, and including] moving to a different hosting service that might better fit your needs
GitHub Pages has never been a free-for-all. The acceptable use policy makes it clear:
> the primary focus of the Content posted in or through your Account to the Service should not be advertising or promotional[…] You may include static images, links, and promotional text in the README documents or project description sections associated with your Account, but they must be related to the project you are hosting on GitHub
Well it's kind of describing the reality that exists at other companies today. Most ToS's have clauses where they can kick you off for not using it as intended, solely at their discretion. At least these guys are honest and upfront about it. I do agree though some more guidelines around their policy would be nice.
Unfortunately I don't think there's really an answer to that conundrum that doesn't involve just spinning up your own git server and accepting all the operational overhead that comes with it.
Hmm all that operational overhead... Of an ssh server? If you literally just want a place to push some code, then that really isn't that hard.
Lots and lots of programmers have very little understanding and especially operation knowledge of how to host a public service. You can be an extreme graphics programmer and not know the web stack at all.
And no, its not that hard once you learn. Except, now its a never ending chore when it was an appliance. Instead of a car you have a project car.
> Lots and lots of programmers have very little understanding and especially operation knowledge of how to host a public service. You can be an extreme graphics programmer and not know the web stack at all.
Can confirm.
Also, not everyone who wants to share content publicly has a domain name with which to do so, or the kind of Internet connection that allows running a server. If you include "hosting" by using a hosting provider... it's perfectly possible (raises hand) to not even have any experience with that after decades of writing code and being on the Internet. (Unless you count things like, well, GitHub and its services, anyway.)
I think both of you are misunderstanding what I proposed. You just need a single VM with an ssh server. Literally no web service needed, if all you want to do is host some code remotely.
I didn't misunderstand. Sshd is a web service. Most folks don't already know how and don't want to set up a machine that is always on, that will restart on power loss, that will have a static IP or dynDNS, with a domain name and proper routing and open ports and certs and enough bandwidth and that's before you even worry about actual security and not just what is needed to work.... It's actually a big annoyance if you don't do it all the time.
The rest of the owl: go to provider, set up VM (20 questions) log into root. SSH for login. set up firewalls. create non-root user. useradd or adduser? depends if you want a home dir I guess. debug why you can't ssh in. Finally get in. sudo apt update. sudo apt install git (or is it named something else?). install failtoban. install fw.
If it's your ssh server and it's single user you don't need to use the "git@" part at all.
Just store the repo and access it with your account.
The whole git@ thing is because most "forge" software is built around a single dedicated user doing everything, rather than taking advantage of the OS users, permissions and acl system.
For a single user it's pointless. For anyone who knows how to setup filesystem permissions it's not necessary.
There isn't much advantage that can be taken from O/S users and perms anyway, at least as far as git is concerned. When using a shared-filesystem repository over SSH (or NFS etc.), the actually usable access levels are: full, including the abilities to rewrite history, forge commits from other users, and corrupt/erase the repo; read-only; and none.
Git was build to be decentralized with everyone having its own copy. If it's an organization someone trusted will hold the key to the canonical version. If you need to discuss and review patches, you use a communication medium (email, forums, IRC, shared folder,...)
Git was built to be decentralized but it ended up basically displacing all other version control systems, including centralized ones. There are still some holdouts on SVN and even CVS, and there are niche professional fields where other systems are preferred due to tighter integration with the rest of their tools and/or better binary file support, but, for most people, Git is now synonymous with version control.
but if you're just looking for a generic place to put your code projects that aren't necessarily intended for public release and support (ie. random automation scripts, scraps of concepts that never really got off the ground, things not super cleaned up), they're not really for that - private repositories are discouraged according to their FAQ and are very limited (up to 100mb).
Until the AI scrapers[1] come for you at 5k requests per second and you're doing operations in hard-mode.
1. Most forges have http pages for discoverability. I suppose one could hypothetically setup an ssh-only forge and statically generate a html site periodically, but this is already advanced ops for the average Github user
This isn't a real thing and if it ever becomes a thing you can sue them for DDOS and send Sam Altman to jail. AI scraping is in the realm of 1-5 requests per second, not 5000.
Hey, I’m building Monohub - as a GitHub alternative, and having private repositories is perhaps a key feature - it started as a place for me to host my own random stuff. Monohub [dot] dev is the URL. It’s quite early in development, so it’s quite rough around the edges. It has PR support though.
Hosted in EU, incorporated in EU.
Would be happy if you tried it out — maybe it’s something for you.
I started developing it as a slim wrapper around Git to support my own needs. At the same time, it is essential to have rich features like pull requests/code review, so I started focusing on designing a tool that strikes an appropriate balance between being minimalistic and functional. One thing that I focus on is allowing users to disable any feature they don't need.
And the site also uses Cloudflare (for domain registrar, DNS and CDN):
ipinfo monohub.dev
Core
- IP 188.114.96.1
- Anycast true
- Hostname
- City San Francisco
- Region California
- Country United States (US)
- Currency USD ($)
- Location 37.7621,-122.3971
- Organization AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
- Postal 94107
- Timezone America/Los_Angeles
Auth is hosted by Kinde (an Australian company, uses AWS)
FWIW, Pierre's "Code Storage" project [1] seems like it simplifies a lot of the operational overhead of running git servers, if what you want is "an API for git push". Not affiliated with the company (and I haven't tried it myself, so I can't vouch for how well it works), I just think it's a neat idea.
I think "Code Storage" (definitely needs a unique name), is less an API for git push (surely git push is that API?), and more an API for "git init"? It seems to be Git as infrastructure, rather than Git as a product. i.e. if you're using it for a single repo it's probably not a good fit, it's for products that themselves provide git repos.
Either take some responsibility and properly evaluate what that convenience means for you long term or don't complain when they leverage that vendor lock in at your disadvantage.
Yeah, but ooh boy is a private gitlab server complicated. Omnibus installation helps manage that, but if you outgrow it you're in for a complicated time.
Also gitlab has cves like every other week... You're going to be on that upgrade train, unless you keep access locked down (no internet access!!) and accept the admittedly lower risk of a vulnerable gitlab server on your LAN/VPN network.
Even if gitlab is updated fully, you're fighting bot crawlers 24/7.
I think the internet has "GitHub Derangement Syndrome" right now. It's an outlet for people's frustration.
The current trend reminds me a lot of the couple years we had where Game Developers were that outlet. They needed to "Wake up" and not "Go woke, go broke". An incredible amount of online discourse around gaming was hijacked by toxic negativity.
I'm sure every individual has their really good logical reasons, but zooming out I think there is definitely a similar social pathology at play.
> I think the internet has "GitHub Derangement Syndrome" right now. It's an outlet for people's frustration.
I would argue that the open source people aren't the only ones paying attention right now.
If you are hosting proprietary code on Github, it has become clear that Microsoft is going to feed that into their AI training set. If you don't want that, you don't have a choice but to leave Github.
I take it you've never disabled Windows telemetry settings and had them magically restored after an update?
This company either does what it wants to abuse people, or is too incompetent to make their software work as instructed. Both possibilities are bad. I expect the same translates to GitHub.
They also don't want to host your homepage, so if GitHub Pages is why you used GitHub, they are not a replacement.
Unfortunately I don't think there's really an answer to that conundrum that doesn't involve just spinning up your own git server and accepting all the operational overhead that comes with it. At least Forgejo (software behind Codeberg) is FOSS, so you can do that and it should cover most of what you need (and while you're in the realm of having a server, a Pages-esque replacement is trivial since you're configuring a webserver anyway.) Maybe Gitlab.com, although I am admittedly unfamiliar with how Gitlab's "main" instance has changed over the years wrt features.
Here's their FAQ on the matter, it's worth a read: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/faq/