Alternatives to GitHub

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The writing of this article on alternatives to GitHub had a sharp acceleration due to GitHub's removal of the youtube-dl software ¹. If you don't know anything about what happened then we will first give you, as always, a very brief summary of the situation.

We thank the collective Devol for the idea and for the help arrived on Mastodon in the search for alternatives to GitHub.

Alternatives to GitHub

Youtube-dl it's software Open source which allows you to download any video from Youtube very easily. It is not just any project, it is in fact also one of the most starry Of GitHub ².
It happened that the RIAA (the American SIAE) asked GitHub (which, let us always remember, is property Microsoft) to block the distribution of the software youtube-dl. This is because the program can be potentially also used to download music videos and sound recordings without permission.

Update 11/17/20: GitHub he readmitted youtube-dl thanks also to the intervention of the legendary EFF ³. He also said he wanted to allocate one million euros to protect developers against excessive or unjustified DMCA takedown requests ⁴. 🥳

GitHub immediately accepted the request RIAA without making any opposition and without defending the goodness of the project. He also threatened to ban anyone who continues to distribute that software ⁵. Which, let's remember, is not necessarily illegal ⁶. If someone uses it to download copyrighted music they are doing an illegal operation. Otherwise we would have to ban everything because it could potentially be used illegally.
Interesting this video of the foundation EFF where the importance of the software is explained youtube-dl and why it is a fundamental tool.

Youtube-dl and the RIAA

In fact, the original software can still be regularly downloaded from the official website ⁷. He is alone GitHub who accepted, without thinking twice, the request of RIAA. The irony was that, as often happens with these things, youtube-dl it has become much more popular ⁸ after this request which in fact only gave him a lot of free publicity.

But what is GitHub?

Mini-summary for those who are not in the sector: you don't need to understand exactly what we're talking about, it can be complex to explain in detail. However, know that the Git software it is a convenient, practical and widely used method for managing versions of a project ⁹. Using then Hosting as GitHub, which implement this control tool, anyone can do some pull requests, request gods merge or send issues. That is, you can ask the author of the software to insert your own proposal into the code or you can open some ticket to alert you that something isn't working as it should or that something else could be improved.

Why look for alternatives to GitHub?

It is for this reason that we wanted to speed up the writing of this article. Because it is clear that Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub And a problem that can no longer be ignored.
And it is equally clear that to feel truly free and protected, a developer must be able to support his project in a place Safe.

Before getting to our choices we suggest you take a look at this complete comparison list alternatives to GitHub: Comparison of source-code-Hosting facilities. This is in fact a very complete and interesting list that summarizes well all the alternatives available for hosting and sharing your own with other people source code.

Here are our alternatives to GitHub

Gitea

Open source

It is the first alternative suggested to us for security, privacy and functionality. It's a project Open source ¹⁰ and anyone can install it wherever they want, even to use it only locally. The Devol collective has its own Instance on gitea.it where anyone can register and insert their project without risk of censorship. Alternatively you can also register on Gitea.com.

Codeberg

Open source

This alternative is suggested by the project ReverseEagle. Codeberg is a Fork (things?) Of Gitea with a custom theme and a different design. It's free and lives by donations. Anyone can sign up to host their own source code!

Gitlab

CDN with Fastly and CloudFlare
Open source
Framagit has instead

Gitlab it is one of the most reported sites when it comes to alternatives to GitHub. However the main site is only partially there FOSS ¹¹. It is therefore recommended not to use it but to prefer secondary instances created based on the code FOSS For example Framagit always excellent Framasoft.

Gogs

CDN with CloudFlare
Open source

Another platform Open source which you can also install manually on your computer is called Gogs. It is certainly less known than the others but it seems equally interesting and is definitely an alternative worth evaluating. You can also use the site NotABug who uses it to host your project.

There are also other alternatives, less famous and perhaps more complex to use, such as SourceHut And Hermit crabs.

Finally, if you are interested, there are also graphical Git software, for those who don't like using only command lines. We report theOpen source GitAhead Gittyup For Windows, macOS And Linux And Git Cola, Always Open source ¹² and written in Python, also available for Windows, macOS And Linux.

1. Process DMCA request[↩]
2. RIAA blitz takes down 18 GitHub projects used for downloading YouTube videos[↩]
3. Letter from the EFF[↩]
4. Standing up for developers: youtube-dl is back[↩]
5. GitHub warns of bans for users still distributing YouTube-DL[↩]
6. The Github youtube-dl Takedown Isn't Just a Problem of American Law[↩]
7. youtube-dl download[↩]
8. Removing software for downloading videos from YouTube from Github has made it even more sought after[↩]
9. Getting Started – What is Git?[↩]
10. source code of Gythea[↩]
11. GitLab FOSS[↩]
12. source code by Git Cola[↩]

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