I have moved my repos on Github to Codeberg.
I do not care if I sound like I am stuck in the 1990s, but I never liked Microsoft, and I never trusted them. I do not care how independent MS says Github is. If I can avoid using anything MS and use an alternative instead, I will.
I am tired of having to use Windows just because everybody else uses Windows. It is like Javascript: It is a status quo that everybody defends, nobody actually chose, and very few actually like. I am tired of having to use it just because everybody else uses it. Using MS technologies makes people stupid [Note 1]. Try explaining a BPM server (like Camunda or jBPM) to “business people”. They get the concept until they ask how it integrates with Office and you tell them it does not. Then for some reason a concept they understood five seconds ago is beyond them. If you could solve any problem by putting another spreadsheet onto Sharepit, the world would not have any problems. Yet here we are.
And then there is Copilot. I refuse to work for free for one of the wealthiest companies on the planet. If Bill needs more lawyers to deal with the Epstein fallout, that is not my problem [Note 2]. Maybe he can sell some of the farmland he is buying. Not only are they stealing your work, they are putting you at legal risk: Copilot ignores licenses, and just gives you what it barfs up.
ChatGPT also ignores licensing issues, and insists it is never wrong. Sounds like Bill Gates and Microsoft to me. For anyone looking at ChatGPT: Do not touch it. It is made by OpenAI: which is owned by (among others) Microsoft, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. If you use it, you will just make rich jerks richer.
I started looking into alternatives after the Software Freedom Conservancy had a post on getting off of Github (blog post here, page here, post on Hacker News here). As the blog post points out, Copilot is not using MS code for input. Why not? MS owns them. If MS says there are licensing issues, all the repo owners on Github could say the same thing. Rules for thee, not for me. No thank you.
And now Windows is just a big spyware and ad machine, despite Microsoft having a captive audience and being one of the largest companies in the world (see article here). Yes, you can turn it off, but you should not have to. If Microsoft is so great, why do they constantly have to push their software on you? It’s my machine; I should be able to do what I want, and not see what I do not want. It is possible I am running something that is sending some telemetry somewhere, but I do not have to be perfectly consistent to want Microsoft out of my life.
So I moved all my repos over. I now have nothing on Github. I also moved where I store the repos on my own machine, so I had to change some paths in some config files. My Emacs config has a lot of URLs in comments for other packages, and there are a LOT of things on Github. The open source world is highly dependent on Github. At the next Austin Golang meetup I will ask how Go manages packages. I see a lot of github.com URLs in Go repos. For Java, I think the central Maven repository is run by a company called Sonatype, but I think the Apache Foundation can take it over if Sonatype goes down or goes under (see this article). Granted, if Apache runs Maven, that gives IBM more influence; can you see why I am looking beyond Java?
To migrate to Codeberg, you can follow the directions on Codeberg here. They even have a page that lets you migrate from another git repository, like Github, as long as the other repo is publicly web-accessible. You just put in the other repo’s URL, and it does it all for you. Granted, I have no idea what is to stop a person from migrating someone else’s repo and claiming it as their own. But I only did mine.
I like the fact that they display my name as “EMacAdie” and not “emacadie” like Github. I guess there are some people in Germany working on Codeberg with case sensitive names. Thanks, Herr von Cognizant, whoever you are.
Codeberg says they have enough money for ten years. Still, I might donate to them in the future. Unless the Emacs Mastodon server needs money.
You decided to bend over Because Bill and Steve told ya The new guy is named Satya And if you're still on Windows, he's got ya
You’re welcome.
Note 1: You don’t think contact with MS makes people stupid? Look at his ex-wife. She got big fancy degrees, but then she married Bill Gates.
Most people never really admired Gates. People just liked his money.
On the other hand, he is not one of the many billionaires trying to overturn a legitimate election and cares about energy and climate change, so I guess he’s not ALL bad. Just 99% bad.
Note 2: To give you an idea of Bill Gates’ ethics and intelligence: His first personal investment manager was a convicted felon (see Forbes article here). Gates hired him post-conviction. Even though anyone with two brain cells could tell you that is as bad an idea as it looks, he had to be told by his mother this was a bad idea. He was an adult at the time. I wonder if she asked for a refund from the private school she sent him to. How do such stupid people get to be wealthy? Also: The first manager has not done so well since he got replaced per the linked article.
Image from the Munich Serbian Psalter, a 14-th century manuscript housed in the Bavarian State Library, allowed under CC0 1.0 license.