Comment by Ayesh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ayesh | Hacker News Reader

Having tried GitHub, GitLab, Source Hut, Codeberg, and BitBucket (RIP), I think the only serious options are GitHub, GitLab self hosted, and Source Hut.

GitHub owned by MSFT aside, and also putting their AI push _also_ aside, GitHub has things like Sponsors, Dependabot, and code scanning that you won't find anywhere else. They sure are luring you into ecosystems that require a huge escape velocity, but GitHub serves as less-friction entry point to open source software.

GitLab self hosting is also nice and flexible, but it has a more "enterprise open source" feeling to it. Debian and Drupal can take advantage of it, but I don't see myself hosting mini projects like my mini CSS library that is also used by three other strangers.

Source Hut is really nice too. Admittedly I don't like email based workflows, so I haven't really thought about moving anything there. But Source Hut has "unlisted" repos, which I thought was really clever and missing from other forges.

> and Source Hut

Not a very serious option if you're looking for anyone from the 21st century to contribute to your project. No, the email workflow doesn't get better by just screaming "it's not that bad!" over and over again.

I'm looking forward to the federation work that is being done for forgejo, that will be big if it works out as it seems like it will.

Also, the founder has an unfortunate history of just up and abandoning his projects when they stop being fun for him. I used his media host/imgur alternative in the past, and it spontaneously just disappeared one day. I'd rather that not happen to my source code

> I used his media host/imgur alternative in the past, and it spontaneously just disappeared one day. I'd rather that not happen to my source code

Git is decentralized.

Git is decentralized. Ticketing systems and mailing lists as found on SourceHut and many other forges aren’t.

And if SourceHut disappears, what would you do with the repository? You’d upload it to a new forge, but how would you tell users where to find it, how would the users know this is the original source and not a hostile fork? It’s better to pick a stable, trustworthy. and 21st-century place like GitHub or GitLab instead of SourceHut.

> It’s better to pick a stable, trustworthy. and 21st-century place like GitHub or GitLab instead of SourceHut.

It's better to not make yourself (much) dependent on functionalities that only the respective software forge provides.

What would you suggest instead? How would you replace pull requests, or even sending patches via email to mailing lists?

I'd don't really see a difference between sending an email to a list or to a maintainer. Maybe that's an argument for not adding and adapting to unnecessary concepts like a web based pull request.

What if there’s more than one maintainer? How do you build any sort of community without a place for discussion?

> How do you build any sort of community without a place for discussion?

There exist many ways for this. Why does this have to be the same provider (if you don't want to self-host this functionality) as the one that hosts the server for the VCS?

> abandoning his projects when they stop being fun for him

I would call expecting any developer to do it differently quite an entitled opinion. And DeVault has a way better track record on successful projects (some of which continue being successful after he moved on with the help of the communities he fostered) than any of us really.

Experience shows that it's very difficult to make a business work on top of open source software and he is doing it as we speak. Your complaint smells like a petty grudge in the face of all the other things that could be said about his projects.

> > and Source Hut

> Not a very serious option if you're looking for anyone from the 21st century to contribute to your project. No, the email workflow doesn't get better by just screaming "it's not that bad!" over and over again.

Perhaps the maintainers of the respective project consider filtering out contributions from "hipster programmers" actually desirable for the project. :-)

Can't say i feel much like a hipster programmer after doing some amount of programming for 20 years. I still prefer the github approach.

Are the hipsters the ones using email or refusing to use email? I could see a dude rolling up on a penny farthing to explain why email is the one true workflow. But he'll be embarrassed when a more powerful hipster shows up using a telegraph to send diffs by wire.

Having been using gitea at work for a while as an "internal mini-github" (along with a github organisation for stuff that isn't purely internal or would otherwise benefit for that) I have to say it ... hasn't annoyed me noticeably.

So I think I'd put gitea* on that list as well.

(I don't think I disagree with your opinions about the ones you -have- listed)

* and I mean that to include forgejo, I think, though I haven't tried it so YMMV

> Dependabot, and code scanning that you won't find anywhere else.

Gitlab has equivalents you can enable as CI pipelines.

So do other forges: I have Renovate [0] set up on my self-hosted Forgejo and it's worked great so far.

[0] https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate

I'm curious what you thought was missing from Codeberg.

What irks me about GitHub is their LFS offering, which supports uploading/tracking files, but not deleting them. If you want to remove files from their LFS (and stop paying for it), you are supposed - and I am not kidding - delete the whole repo. (And they don't mention it on their LFS setup page.)

GitHub Sponsors is pretty great. Seems like a perfectly ethical way for open source developers to earn money. Doesn't depend on copyright, artificial scarcity, advertising. I really like it.

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