what is the best alternative to github ? my main requirements are that

  1. it should be free, and
  2. it should not go down or get discontinued anytime soon
  • hfkldjbuq@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    https://codeberg.org which is a non-profit organization. It is free of charge, so it is democratic enabling people to use its services. You can even join the foundation https://join.codeberg.org/

    BUT it uses Gitea, which registered two for-profit companies in Hong Kong… Codeberg is soft forking it because the now Gitea shareholders / trademark owners made it clear they want to maximize profits.

    If you care about promoting a democratic platform for everyone, do not use sourcehut. They will charge later on; their current free model enables both gathering users (potential clients) and making you a free tester/qa for them. I believe “financial aid” is undemocratic; free should be default. If anything, it should just require commercial, for-profit entities to pay; because then by default there is no processual need for “financial aid”. We should not trust any for-profit, commercial organization anyway for such important services/platforms (version control system hosting is crucial).

    From the beta onwards, unpaid accounts will be limited to read-only access to their own projects. Affected users will be emailed at least 60 days in advance of the transition. Users who host their own instance of Sourcehut, on their own servers, will be unaffected by this. Additionally, financial aid will be provided to those who cannot pay; no one is going to be priced out.

    https://sourcehut.org/alpha-details/

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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      2 years ago

      I think you are doing sourcehut injustice as it is pretty much a “one guy” run service trying to make it an income generating job for himself. Asking for subscriptions is not unethical in that regard and you pretty much get what you pay for in that case.

      Personally I don’t like sourcehut much because it relies too much on email and selfhosting it is a mess (but it is all FOSS) so I would not recommend using it, but overall it is not a bad service.

      • hfkldjbuq@beehaw.org
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        2 years ago

        He generating a job for himself is not what I criticize. I criticize promoting an undemocratic service for something so crucial that needs to be democratic which includes free service by default (otherwise you do not stand a chance against moving people out of GitHub and the like). I would never recommend to people in general a commercial and thus undemocratic service for key development (vcs).

        And did it occur to you it is a “one guy” show probably because he wants it that way? That is prone to authoritarianism, and prone that sourcehut maintainer to make it a very profitable business just like GitLab and now Gitea unless founding a proper non-profit organization? A blog post about not being driven by profit is not enough; make it a proper non-profit registered organization.

        In any case OP explicitly asked for a free service (which sourcehut in the future won’t be).

        • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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          2 years ago

          You are making it sound like a “non-profit” is a magical solution to running a service. All it does it adding some tax regulations and making it difficult for non-worker owners to extract rent profits. Most “non-profits” are controlled by a few people that thus can decide their own salaries and make a profit any ways.

          And there is no such thing as a “free” service. Someone needs to pay for the infrastructure and operating costs one way or the other. It is just a question of how direct that payment is and if it is affordable by poorer people.