---
title: "i've given up github (or not quite yet..)"
pubDate: 'January 25 2025'
description: ""
draft: false
---

Last February I came across [Srijans blogpost](https://injuly.in/blog/give-up-github/index.html), asking if you can give up GitHub. This led me down a rabbit hole, reading [blog post](https://tomscii.sig7.se/2024/01/Ditching-GitHub) after [blog post](http://jehanne.h--k.it/2022/01/06/jehanne_is_moving.html) of people [divesting from GitHub and going self-hosted](https://nilsnh.no/2024/07/15/divesting-from-github-and-going-self-hosted/).

After all the reading and research, I came to the conclusion that [the time has come to give up GitHub](https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/30/give-up-github-launch/), or not quite yet.. I still gotta use it for work, as well as for organizations like [friByte](https://fribyte.no), and there's still a lot of open source projects hosted there. 

But, for my own projects, I'll choose to host them myself. So yes, I _am_ keeping [my account](https://github.com/SindreKjelsrud/) even though all the repositories will link to my own forge.

Here's a quick bulletlist of some of the reasons why I'm doing this:

- I want to avoid centralization on services I don't control.
- Copilot is a for-profit product trained on many projects under [copyleft](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/glossary.html#copyleft) licenses..
- GitHub was [heavly critized](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/ice-contract-github-sparks-developer-protests/604339/) for providing services to the USA Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) back in 2020.
- I don't want my code plagiarized by Copilot (_Even though the code probably sucks_).
- Microsoft.

Okay, so now what? Well.. Selfhosting, baby! (lol) 

Being inspired by [Nils](https://nilsnh.no/how-i-self-host-git-projects/#why-i-picked-forgejo-for-self-hosting-my-git-projects), I went with [Forgejo](https://forgejo.org/) as my self-hosted software forge. And after maybe a week or two of setting it up and getting everything running, I present [code.kjelsrud.dev](https://code.kjelsrud.dev)! It may not be perfectly set up, but it's mine and I'm proud. I even set up a mirror to [Codeberg](https://codeberg.org/) for my repositories, as a "backup"-solution.

If you want to read more about the topic, I recommend checking out the Software Freedom Conservancys page - ["Give Up GitHub!"](https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/), as well as Drew DeVaults (the founder of [SourceHut](https://sourcehut.org/)) blogpost - ["GitHub Copilot and open source laundering"](https://drewdevault.com/2022/06/23/Copilot-GPL-washing.html). Or, you could click one of the many other links in this post.
