PSA: GitHub does not have a monopoly, you are free to host your stuff elsewhere (or yourself)
Google “network effect”
Relatively minor for source code forges.
The reasons everyone uses GitHub:
- Free, even for private repos. No ads.
- Free CI - this is huge. Nobody else does this because it costs Microsoft around $100m/year to provide.
- It’s quite good.
If anyone can ever compete with that then I doubt network effects will keep people there.
Codeberg has free CI if your project has a FOSS license and a readme: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg-e.V./requests#woodpecker-ci
They’re clearly not going to be able to afford $100m/year in free CI.
Which is one of the reasons behind github’s network effect.
That’s not a network effect.
I said its one of the reasons behind the network effect, not the network effect itself. github can offer more freebies, which attracts more users, which makes it more attractive to other users and for existing users to stick around.
Terrible title. The article is about the risks of everyone using GitHub. That doesn’t mean GitHub is destroying the open source ecosystem. In fact it’s the complete opposite - GitHub massively helps the open source ecosystem. That’s why everyone uses it in the first place!
Not quite. GitHub used to help the open source ecosystem. Since it’s been taken over by Micro$lop it’s gradually been shifting towards exploiting it.
Would be nice to see federated PRs. Git is distributed after all!
