Leaving GitHub for Forgejo
jorijn.com
May 13, 2026
16 min read
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Summary
The Dutch Ministry of the Interior launched a self-hosted Forgejo instance for government source code, fulfilling legal requirements for source code publication. Forgejo was selected over GitLab for its fully open-source nature and support for digital autonomy.
Key Takeaways
- The Dutch Ministry of the Interior launched a self-hosted Forgejo instance for government source code due to legal requirements for digital autonomy.
- GitHub experienced 257 incidents and 48 major outages from May 2025 to April 2026, with the CTO stating that capacity needs to increase 30 times to handle AI-driven loads.
- GitHub's user interaction data for Copilot was changed to an opt-in basis for AI training by default, with no repository-level opt-out option.
- The author migrated their code to Forgejo and plans to archive their public GitHub repositories, citing ownership concerns as a primary reason for the switch.
Community Sentiment
Positives
- Forgejo is actively working to decentralize tooling around Git, which could enhance collaboration and reduce reliance on centralized platforms.
- Tangled offers innovative features like PR stacking that GitHub has yet to implement, suggesting a potential shift in how developers manage pull requests.
- Self-hosting options like Gitea provide a reliable and cost-effective way to manage repositories, appealing to those wary of centralized services.
Concerns
- Concerns about GitHub's use of open repositories for training AI models like Copilot without user consent highlight ethical issues in AI data usage.
- The sentiment that decentralization often leads to new forms of centralization reflects skepticism about the effectiveness of current decentralized solutions.
- Many users express frustration over the high costs associated with feature-rich hosting services, which often include unnecessary AI tools that inflate prices.
