
GitHub Alternatives - ChankeyPathak
https://tutswiki.com/github-alternatives/
======
bmsleight_
I looked at lot of these alternatives, not many are eating their own dog food.
Does not inspire me with confidence.

* [https://gitea.io/en-US/](https://gitea.io/en-US/) The code for gitea is on Github. [https://github.com/go-gitea/](https://github.com/go-gitea/) * [http://gitprep.yukikimoto.com/](http://gitprep.yukikimoto.com/) The code for gitprep is on Github [https://github.com/yuki-kimoto/gitprep](https://github.com/yuki-kimoto/gitprep) * [https://gogs.io/](https://gogs.io/) Guess what ..... [https://github.com/gogs/gogs](https://github.com/gogs/gogs)

~~~
hjek
I guess Gogs have an excuse, as they had to host the project _somewhere_ , and
perhaps they haven't started dog fooding because of migration difficulties,
e.g. the issue tracker.

But I wonder what's the excuse for Gitea as they're a pretty recent Gogs fork?

They're both pretty amazing though: Self-contained binaries and less than 5
minutes setup time, so totally suitable for ad-hoc deployment.

~~~
reificator
Github also does not cost time and money to use for open source projects.

I've used a few GoGS servers, but none of them were public. Hosting a public
competitor to Github is a different set of skills to developing a self-hosted
VCS server.

------
MK_Dev
"A couple of years ago Microsoft was anti-open-source." The quote is from 2001
as is Ballmer's quote. Closing the article due to its lack of objectivity.

~~~
oneplane
Fixing an imago set by a guy calling open-source and Linux 'a cancer' is
really hard. The last few years of changes doesn't magically wipe away that
bitter taste, and the last 10-20 years doesn't magically make you forget the
past.

~~~
untog
It's an interesting debate though. If the CEO and most of the major execs of a
company have left, is it really worthwhile to factor statements made 17 years
ago into your decision making process?

Don't get me wrong, many will avoid MS-anything to punish them for their past
conduct, which is a fair personal decision. But if you're trying to evaluate
what MS _will_ do in the future, I'm not sure how relevant 2001 is.

~~~
oneplane
Indeed it is. Same goes for other prominent figures, like Steve Jobs. People
were/are convinced that the whole identity, all products and every choice was
Jobs-bound and therefore without Jobs, what Apple does can't be just as good
as it was when he was alive and running things.

So past CEOs can make a lasting impact, and in many ways it works out badly
because the negative comments get the most attention.

Where Apple, according to some louder fans is not as good as it was under
Jobs, for Microsoft under Nadella the inverse is true: according to the
haters, just because it looks better now doesn't mean the (to them) bad years
are gone.

Generalising, no matter what direction a transition takes (good to bad or bad
to good), it's always the loud messages pointing out the bad past or bad
future that gets the most attention and influences choices the most.

It's almost like trust between people: doing things right 99% of the time but
doing one thing wrong once always makes that 99% of 'good' disappear and only
the bad is taken as the 'true' value. In the extreme: lie once, and you are a
liar. Even if you are 99 years old and have never lied before. That one time,
once, will be what defines you as 'bad', and the rest does not outweigh it. Of
course in reality that extreme example is not super likely, but nevertheless,
it should carry the point I'm attempting to make ;-)

It's not the sum, aggregate or balance that seems to count, only how 'bad'
your 'badness' is.

------
CGamesPlay
I've never used Github for personal, closed-source projects, but if you have
and want to switch to something that provides absolutely no features except
git hosting, here are 3 I've used:

\- Keybase git: [https://keybase.io/blog/encrypted-git-for-
everyone](https://keybase.io/blog/encrypted-git-for-everyone) (my preferred
solution these days).

\- AWS CodeCommit:
[https://aws.amazon.com/codecommit/](https://aws.amazon.com/codecommit/)
("encrypted", but I don't know if AWS employees can access it).

\- Dropbox git remote: [https://github.com/anishathalye/git-remote-
dropbox](https://github.com/anishathalye/git-remote-dropbox) (it's slow and
unencrypted, but uses Dropbox).

~~~
manigandham
All the major clouds offer repos, Google Cloud has free private ones with
decent limits: [https://cloud.google.com/source-
repositories/](https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/)

------
sergiotapia
Here's a good comparison page of the three big ones.

[https://stackshare.io/stackups/gitlab-vs-github-vs-
bitbucket](https://stackshare.io/stackups/gitlab-vs-github-vs-bitbucket)

Gitlab seems to be picking up the pace and gaining mindshare among developers.

Freelancers I'm curious, would you switch and lose your repos' stars, PRs,
fork counts? Those are actually a good marketing tool for potential customers
since they see you are legitimate.

------
vasilakisfil
There is also Gitea: [https://gitea.io](https://gitea.io)

~~~
zzzeek
Thanks! gogs looked great until I was horrified it has no oauth plugin
support?! gitea does. why the fork? seems awkward.

~~~
simcop2387
The fork happened years ago because Gogs was (not entirely sure of current
status) managed by a single person who would disappear on the regular, leaving
fixes and other things not merged for weeks. So it got forked by people who
were contributing to Gogs, and I think that ended up pushing Gogs into more
active development. Now the two projects are still very similar but diverged
enough to have some important differences like the OAuth support in gitea and
such.

~~~
zzzeek
oauth is a total no-brainer feature add. Years ago I abandoned Trac because I
couldn't deal w/ the spam user accounts and oauth integration w/ github wasn't
really a thing back then. gogs should really add this though already gitea
seems like that's where this particular community has gone.

~~~
simcop2387
gitea somewhat recently also added support for some 2fa stuff too. I haven't
played with it yet but it seems like auth is being taken seriously there.

------
alkonaut
I’m only half joking when I say VSTS is a pretty strong contender in the
code+issues space, especially if you need more complex features for CI/CD.

For obvious reasons it’s not a good option if you are switching from Github
out of fear of Microsoft (which is presumably the reason it’s not listed in
the article).

~~~
ggg9990
The site is so fucking slow though.

------
whatever1
Enough with this.

Does anyone have any hard evidence that SV Angel, or IVP, or Thrive Capital,
or Sequoia Capital, or Andreessen Horowitz (the main investors in GitHub), had
more noble intentions, or management style than Microsoft of Nadella?

Github was not a non-profit company. But you were willing to upload your
private repo there. And somehow now it is problematic.

~~~
O1111OOO
> And somehow now it is problematic.

As far as I know, Github hasn't delivered a surveillance, keylogging Operating
System. They haven't used deceptive practices in getting users to upgrade to
Windows 10 (leading to class-action suits).

Too many people are stating as _fact_ that Microsoft is not the same company
they were 5 years ago. They are right... I think they are worse.

~~~
whatever1
And yet the good GitHub sold your private repos to the highest (and according
to you the most evil) bidder.

~~~
O1111OOO
It's a bit of a stretch to call GitHub _good_ from the statement I made or to
call Microsoft the _most_ evil bidder when _evil_ will suffice. I'll have to
chalk that up to unnecessary sarcasm on your part.

To get back on track... I find it astounding that there are people actually
defending any worldwide multi-billion dollar corporation whose actions are so
incredibly user-hostile. Ideally, I would love to see this turn into a
historical crossroads of sorts...

A point where end-users, who have the real power here to actually say "enough
already" and make this purchase absolutely worthless. Instead of continuing to
give the powerful more power and complain about it, to take that power back.
In essence, to send a statement that an Open Internet can still exist.

That it doesn't have to be the cesspool of surveillance, backdoors,
keyloggers, data-sharing and hording run by a few Tech Giants with zero
accountability. A GitHub exodus (ie, The Great GitHub Exodus) can represent
that with Microsoft (and others like them) choking on their dirty billions.

------
jordigh
Also Kallithea.

[https://kallithea-scm.org/](https://kallithea-scm.org/)

I guess it's a wiki so I could add it myself, but apparently you need a github
account to edit this wiki?

------
macinjosh
I am a happy gitlab.com user. However, with all of this week's news I decided
to see what it would take to run my own GitLab instance. I was surprised to
find that on Digital Ocean and AWS Lightsail the one-click GitLab installs
required an instance that costs ~$40 per month just for me, one user. Any
cheaper/smaller instances were to anemic to run GitLab at all. Seems like
there are some performance issues to deal with there.

~~~
cobbzilla
GitLab is a Rails app, what did you expect? /s We use gitea (written in Go),
it runs well on more modest hardware.

~~~
artursapek
Why the sarcasm? Rails is a pig.

~~~
pmoriarty
I wonder if there's a chance GitLab will be rewritten in a more efficient
language.

~~~
edjboston
GitLab VPE here. We are starting to re-write performance intensive part of our
application in Golang. E.g. our Gitaly project: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitaly](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly)

~~~
artursapek
That's awesome. Great choice of a language. We just moved to Gitlab internally
(we were actually starting to do so before the MSFT news). Very happy so far.
Looking forward to speed improvements.

------
manigandham
For all the complaints about Microsoft, I've yet to hear what they could do
that would be so bad? Change the homepage to actually be useful? Improve the
search? Give away free private repos?

~~~
alkonaut
Kill Atom was the most reasonable fear I heard. And I can’t see how that
wouldn’t be a well founded fear. If I was Microsoft I wouldn’t want to keep
paying devs to make two so similar products (atom, code). They are much more
similar than e.g code/vs or github/vsts.

But even so: I agree the fear that the _product_ will be worse in a few feels
completely irrational.

What I can agree with is that it’s unfortunate that it’s no longer seen as a
neutral ground for development. It felt almost like a standard or like a piece
of infrastructure, rather than a for-profit. But that was of course never the
case. But now it becomes obvious, which might fracture the community (it was
very nice to have everything in one place - e.g package managers literally
started drawing stuff from github links). The appearance of neutrality and
trust was the #1 feature of GitHub. Everything else is polish. Microsoft will
have to work hard to keep the #1 feature working.

~~~
brightball
Kill Electron would be the bigger fear. I know a lot of people don’t like it,
but it has enabled so many more applications for Linux that killing it would
be a major blow.

~~~
ytpete
They could be pretty interested in shifting it away from Chromium an V8-based
Node to something that uses platform webviews (Edge on Windows) and a
platform-specific JS engine backing Node (ChakraCore on Windows). I believe
they have posted open-source experimental forks in that direction in the past.

That's very different from killing it, but it could make developing or
supporting Electron apps more difficult - plus the fear that it could then
start sliding down the slope of the Windows version getting more investment,
eventually leading to the classic "it's best on Windows" embrace/extend
platform lockin. I'm not betting on that being their play, but I could see how
people would worry...

~~~
manigandham
The whole point of Electron is equal cross-platform abilities from a single
code-base. Making it run "best on windows" is the complete opposite goal and
rather silly considering they already have several native UI and app
frameworks made for Windows.

------
oaiey
These are no alternatives. GitHub is a specialized social network with git
hosting included.

~~~
manigandham
But there's no real stickiness there. Developers are not mainstream users who
want a dumb UX like Facebook, they're perfectly capable of creating an account
(if they don't already have one) and interacting with a project wherever it
is.

Most discussions are limited in scope to a project anyway so it's not like you
need the whole site. What difference does it make to go visit issues on GitLab
vs Github?

~~~
oaiey
There is stickiness. Low entry burden for contributer is the key point why
huge projects use GitHub instead of other platforms.

And me registering at dozen of platforms, reading the legal stuff, learning
the platform,... And when I finally successful submit a one line patch (how:
no idea) the maintainer has a fair 50% chance of dropping it. That is not what
I will do. And I will not be alone :).

~~~
manigandham
What? You can do the exact same thing in GitLab or Bitbucket in the same exact
few clicks. Fork, edit, submit PR, done. Have you used these other platforms?

~~~
oaiey
Yes I have. But like always with social networks it's about the critical mass
(GitHub dwarves everything else) and public acceptance (like a company
accepting this strange "Bitbucket"... :)).

------
ThatPlayer
There's also BitBucket's Paid Self-Hosted option, for 10 users, and a one-time
payment of 10$. It even has a docker image.

[https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=self-
hosted](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=self-hosted)

[https://hub.docker.com/r/atlassian/bitbucket-
server/](https://hub.docker.com/r/atlassian/bitbucket-server/)

~~~
reificator
For those looking into this option, it is important to note that Bitbucket's
self-hosted option is a separate codebase that started with no link to the
cloud product.

Previously it was called Stash but was later rebranded to Bitbucket to
_reduce_ confusion.

~~~
nickserv
Was not aware of this, thanks for the info.

Do you know if their enterprise edition is based on cloud or server?

~~~
reificator
If you mean the Data-Centre edition, it's based on Stash. Otherwise I'm not
sure I've heard of that.

Here's the FAQ from when the change was made:

[https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-r...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-
rebrand-faq-779298912.html)

------
chapati23
Honest question: Besides more traction among the open source community, where
do you feel GitHub is stronger than GitLab?

I’m not affiliated with GitLab, however a little biased because we’re using
GitLab instead of GitHub at our company.

Feature-wise, It seems to me that GitLab is running circles around GitHub.
Curious about other opinions.

~~~
richardwhiuk
GitLab's UI is in every way a travesty compared to GitHub's.

GitLab feels like using GitHub's UI from about 3 years ago. Here's a list of
things missing, just to name a few:

    
    
        > consolidated reviews
        > multiple assigned people
        > reasonable diffs when merging complicated changes, ability to review code since it was last reviewed
        > easy to create merge requests, and plenty of context sensitive stuff
        > can generate comparisons of code online without creating a merge request
    

There's so many small UI/UX pain points

Take [https://gitlab.com/coldnight/ci-test](https://gitlab.com/coldnight/ci-
test) (which was the trending repo when I visited....):

    
    
        > The navigation is spread across:
          > The very top
          > The left hand side
          > An inline breadcrumbs below that
          > A bar in the middle of the screen
          > A bar below that
        > History button duplicates Commits button.
        > About 30% of the top of the UI is just useless filler - so the content on the page (the tree and the README - which is probably want I want when I visit a project) also consists of a small box in the bottom of the scren.
    

Compare
[https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data](https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data)
(which is the top trending repo on Explore on GitHub!):

    
    
        > Much more consistent navigation - series of contextual bars which move down - so each page is more consistent
    
        > Much more of the screen is available for the tree / README

~~~
andreasmarc
Hi richardwhiuk, GitLab team member here.

We appreciate open feedback, thank you for these UI details. We are very aware
of the lack of polishing of our current project home page and missed
opportunities. There is a specific issue on that we are working on for a July
release right now, see [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/44704](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/44704). This
is a first step of the larger effort we are tackling to improve the overall
experience via [https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-
org/-/epics/62](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/62). Please feel
free to check these out and comment in the issue.

Regarding our navigation, we feel confident that the experience has been
greatly improved with the new 10.0 UI. See
[https://about.gitlab.com/2017/09/13/unveiling-gitlabs-new-
na...](https://about.gitlab.com/2017/09/13/unveiling-gitlabs-new-navigation/)
for some context. I’d like to encourage you to get involved and let us know
what you think! You can always create an issue to contribute improving the
GitLab experience.

Andreas Product Manager

------
aneutron
Why are people jumping ship to lower quality services ? And I'm talking about
unrecognizable brand names, because at least migrating to Gitlab or Bitbucket
may be understandable in a way, but still an exageration in my opinion.

~~~
pmontra
I was alive when Microsoft was evil and I don't want my stuff to stay in a
Microsoft service. I moved my pulic repositories to GitLab today. It's slower
and it doesn't looks as nice but it's ok.

I self host my private repositories, no need of a third party service for
that.

By the way, Bitbucket looks a little better than GitLab but its usability is
abysmal. I always have troubles finding the things I want in there.

~~~
outside1234
GitLab runs on Microsoft Azure. :)

~~~
pmontra
I don't mind, as I don't mind that (another famous example) StackOverflow runs
on Windows. They use what's best for them. I don't use MicroSoft directly but
with all the stuff that they sold it's impossible to stay strictly clear from
them. Examples: Windows powered ATMs and supermarket cash counters.

------
parvenu74
An alternative way of solving this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17242015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17242015)

Pair that an open spec for something like Jira or a Kanban board and the
concept of GitHub or GitLab or Bitbucket+Jira could be commodity.

Fossil isn't a bad idea as a general replacement for all of this too.

------
manaskarekar
Raspberry Pi running your own git server.

[https://blog.meinside.pe.kr/Gogs-on-Raspberry-
Pi/](https://blog.meinside.pe.kr/Gogs-on-Raspberry-Pi/)

[https://hackernoon.com/create-your-own-git-server-using-
rasp...](https://hackernoon.com/create-your-own-git-server-using-raspberry-pi-
and-gitlab-f64475901a66)

[https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-git-
server/](https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-git-server/)

------
minxomat
There's also (Fedora) Pagure, available hosted at
[https://pagure.io/](https://pagure.io/), and it can be self-hosted. Though
it's not quite as painless as gitea/gogs. Example of a more active project:
[https://pagure.io/mlocate](https://pagure.io/mlocate)

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Didn't know about that one, thanks! This further increases my appreciation of
Fedora. Between this and the COPR hosting, you can really do some serious
development for Fedora without paying a dime for hosting or distribution.
That's awesome.

------
napsterbr
Thumbs up to Phabricator, a software imo very underrated. Absolutely recommend
if you are not very fond of Gitlab (furthermore, Phabricator's performance has
been really good in my experience)

~~~
xellisx
I am definately going to look at this. Now if there were a self host cloud
storage (nextcloud) that also did soure repository...

------
duxup
I'll leave GitHub when I have some issues that I can't resolve. By then
everyone will have blazed the trail for me, maybe a coupe times. ;)

Much like the United States.... all my stuff is there...

------
marcinkuzminski
The list doesn't mention it, but i'd also put
[https://rhodecode.com/features](https://rhodecode.com/features) into there.

------
jwilk
Launchpad is not only for Bazaar. It supports Git, too:

[https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Git](https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Git)

------
hbcondo714
Assembla's version control has been working well for me since 2011

[https://www.assembla.com/](https://www.assembla.com/)

~~~
nreece
+1 for Assembla. Reliable service, and free private repos too.

------
wilcox
Redmine is also missing from the list.
[https://www.redmine.org/](https://www.redmine.org/)

------
sebringj
This is equivalent to a knee-jerk reaction clearly following the MS purchase
of Github. The Microsoft of today is vastly different. Example: I'm using
VSCode on my Mac right now and it clearly is a better alternative to something
like Atom and its open source. My best friend is the head of the bash
initiative at MS as well and I pretty much hated MS before. Now its pretty
cool so doesn't seem like a rational view anymore to be MS negative.

------
bpierre
git-ssb, open source and decentralized:
[https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25RPKzL382v2fAia5HuDNHD5kkFdlP7bG...](https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25RPKzL382v2fAia5HuDNHD5kkFdlP7bGvXQApSXqOBwc%3D.sha256)

------
marky_nolan
Codegiant.io is also a great alternative to Github with unlimited private
repositories for free.

It also includes issue tracker, continuous integration and documentation.
Overall great tool.

------
major505
Lets be honest.... people just like to shit on microsoft. i was against open
source most a decade ago.

Now they understand that they need open source alternatives to keep alive.

Azure has suport to various popular open source techs, they keep a lot of
repositories in github, and even open sourced .net.

And, you complain about microsoft buying Github? Imagine if Oracle had done
the same.

------
keithnz
"A couple of years ago Microsoft was anti-open-source."

Then quotes stuff from 18 years ago.... ok

~~~
agumonkey
Some people still don't trust MS, even after the recent changes. Can't blame
them

------
valeg
I want also add
[https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent](https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent) Cool
concept.

------
funwie
If it is an alternative then it is probably not the best option.

You and I use Github not because we don’t know the alternatives, but because
Github is better

~~~
cosmojg
That isn't true. As with most online services, people use Github over
alternatives because of the network effect. It's where everyone goes because
it's where everyone is.

------
vaceletm
In the big wave of alternatives, we also should mention Tuleap [1] that is now
open to all opensource projects. Can also be self-hosted of course !

[1] [https://blog.tuleap.org/github-alternative-tuleap-open-
sourc...](https://blog.tuleap.org/github-alternative-tuleap-open-source-agile-
tool)

------
pjmlp
So much drama, I am really looking forward to what will happen if Microsoft
ever gets hold of one of the major Linux distributions.

------
exabrial
I never imagined in my lifetime Apple would become Microsoft and Microsoft
would become Apple. Yet here we are.

------
u801e
I wonder why gerrit wasn't listed?

------
mastrsushi
Is everyone really leaving GitHub, or is this just like 2013 when everyone
"left" Google for DuckDuckGo. This is pretty bad personally, I'm writing a
webcrawler for the site. I plan on making it cross-website anyway, but it
kinda sucks hearing this.

~~~
skinnymuch
It does not appear to be the case that a ton of people are leaving GitHub.
Gitlab is mentioned far and away more than all other alternatives combined and
their GitHub importing I think is like ~100K repos imported since the Sunday
rumors. A lot but nothing compared to the tens of millions of repos GitHub has
overall.

------
jjrh
git init --bare

------
johnx123-up
Probably a better comparison page [https://docs.gitea.io/en-
us/comparison/](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/)

------
BerislavLopac
I wonder why does Kallithea not get much more love, it is a very decent
project: [https://kallithea-scm.org](https://kallithea-scm.org)

------
rkeene2
There's also ChiselApp which is Free, and able to be Self-Hosted (Flint is the
upstream repository -- ChiselApp is a styled Flint, without the rights to
redistribute the theme).

------
ninjamayo
Gitlab it is then!

Not sure what to do with all my Github tshirts now :)

~~~
rixrax
I was going to point out that GitHub pages are so great for hosting static
content that that alone keeps me in GitHub. But looks like GitLab already
implements their equivalent.

Too bad it looks like they don't handle enabling TLS/SSL for custom domains as
conveniently as GitHub does (e.g. one click to enable and they will then get
the cert through LetsEncrypt or something without me having to bother with
getting it from a CA, renewals etc.) [1].

Already commented about this elsewhere, but if anyone from GitLab is reading,
this thing would make any potential transition much more convenient for me.

[1]
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/getting_starte...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/getting_started_part_three.html#ssl-
tls-certificates)

~~~
nkantar
For what it's worth, I started using Netlify
([https://www.netlify.com/](https://www.netlify.com/)) for my static sites a
while ago, and it's been great. Automatic LE support is definitely one of my
favorite features.

------
stockkid
I like the content but the website's scroll is somehow delayed and I'm unable
to pinch zoom on my mobile device.

------
zorkw4rg
the deep integration go has with github in particular seems more ridiculous
then ever.

------
wolco
I'm surprised by the lack of choices that are free non-self hosted

~~~
geodel
Why non-self hosted is supposed to be free for non open source projects?

~~~
wolco
It doesn't have to be but I'm a little shocked no one is taking that end of
the business.

------
dismantlethesun
> A couple of years ago Microsoft was anti-open-source.

Both quotes are from 2001.

So rather than a "couple of years ago", it was _seventeen_ years ago.

Toddlers walking the earth at that time, are now college graduates and
developers working at Microsoft. Let's not think its the exact same group of
people who said both statements, even if the company name is unchanged.

~~~
therein
> Toddlers walking the earth at that time, are now college graduates and
> developers working at Microsoft

This is extremely true and people need to understand how important this point
exactly is. I think we all agree that Microsoft will continue to exist even
50-60 years from now with the same exact name. They will have generations of
programmers passed through their corporate structure with varying goals and
opinions.

 _Tu quoque_ stops making sense at such timescales.

------
drev
Microsoft has cancer*

* source microsoft

