Contributing on GitHub requires JS and that creates challenges and some are discouraged

alimirjamali · May 15, 2025, 2:38pm

While their authenticated REST API requests (5000/hour) is reasonable, the unauthenticated rate of 60 request per hour is ridicules. It is questionable why they can not afford higher numbers.

In the meantime, “all authenticated users are equal but some are more equal”:

renehoj · May 15, 2025, 2:43pm

Having the nth AI startup scraping all of GitHub for yet another coding model probably just got too much.

Besides, making an account is free.

rzg · May 17, 2025, 10:29am

Version Control Platforms

Feature / Platform	GitHub	Bitbucket	GitLab	Pagure	Gitea	Codeberg	Harness
Hosting Type	Cloud-hosted	Cloud-hosted	Self-hosted or cloud-hosted	Self-hosted or cloud-hosted	Self-hosted or cloud-hosted	Cloud-hosted	Cloud-hosted
Free Tier	Yes	Yes	Yes (requires credit card)	Yes (fully open source)	Yes (Free trial or self-hosted)	Yes (fully free, donation-supported)	Yes
Private Repositories	Yes, limited	Yes, limited	Yes, limited	Yes (for self-hosted)	Yes (for self-hosted)	Yes (ethical hosting, no tracking)	Yes
Accessibility and User Experience	JavaScript required for most features	JavaScript required for most features	JavaScript required even to view issues; Cloudflare may block certain browsers (e.g., LibreWolf)	No JavaScript required for basic functionality (lightweight interface)	JavaScript required for most features	No JavaScript required for basic functionality (privacy-focused)	JavaScript required for most features
Collaborators	3 on free tier, more on paid	5 on free tier, more on paid	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
License	Various (GitHub Enterprise is proprietary)	Proprietary	MIT	GNU GPL v2+ (fully FOSS)	MIT	AGPLv3 (community-owned non-profit)	Open Source
Authentication	OAuth, SAML, GitHub App	OAuth, SAML	LDAP, OAuth, SAML	Basic authentication (with gitolite for SSH access)	OAuth, LDAP/Active Directory	OAuth (no tracking, privacy-focused)	OAuth, SAML
Price	Free and paid plans	Free and paid plans	Free and paid plans	Free (community-driven project)	Free (self-hosted) and paid plans	Free (donation-supported)	Free and paid plans
First Release	2008	2008	2011	2014	2016	2019 (Forgejo fork in 2022)	2024
Maintainer	GitHub (Microsoft)	Atlassian	GitLab Inc.	Red Hat Community (originally by Pierre-Yves Chibon)	Community-driven	Codeberg e.V. (non-profit association)	Harness Inc.
Focus	Open source collaboration	Collaboration and CI/CD	DevOps lifecycle	Lightweight git-centered forge with documentation and ticketing	DevOps and CI/CD with flexible deployment	Free culture and ethical hosting (non-profit, community-owned)	End-to-end software delivery
Integrations	Extensive integrations	Good integrations	Extensive integrations	Basic integrations	Extensive integrations	Basic integrations	Good integrations
CI/CD	Built-in CI/CD workflows	Built-in CI/CD pipelines	Built-in CI/CD pipelines	Basic CI/CD support (external integration)	Built-in (Gitea Actions, compatible with GitHub Actions), supports external tools (Drone, Jenkins)	Basic CI/CD support (hosted CI available)	Production-ready CI/CD solution
Notable Users	Google, Facebook, Microsoft	Atlassian, Volkswagen, The Washington Post	NASA, Alibaba, GNOME	Red Hat, Fedora Community	Google, Two Sigma, Mastercard, OpenStack	LibreWolf, Simply Translate (150,000+ users)	Various enterprises
Key Features	Large ecosystem, GitHub Actions	Jira integration, Bitbucket Pipelines	Complete DevOps platform	Lightweight, git-centered, no JS required, keeps metadata in git repos	Fast, lightweight, Gitea Actions	Ethical hosting, no tracking, community governance	End-to-end delivery platform

Image Format (.png)

http · May 23, 2025, 4:04pm

GitHub is microsoft. What do you expect? I think it is tragic that open source software has now been centralised to microsoft. It almost defeats the whole purpose. An alternative is needed.

alzer89 · June 29, 2025, 3:26am

SourceHut at the moment is in a state where:

The only “supported” platform is Alpine Linux
You have to clobber system packages with SourceHut’s own custom versions
You have to give each feature of the software it’s own entry in your web server
- And each system component checks the origin domain every time, and it doesn’t seem to like .onion addresses (still working on that) or having Tor as a reverse proxy…
The documentation (I’m not going to lie) is woefully inadequate, and there isn’t enough there for you to “fill in the blanks”, either…

That’s why I haven’t provided details. I underestimated how much work it was, and I apologise for that.

I will continue to tinker with it, but I cannot put a timeframe on it.

qubist · June 30, 2025, 5:21pm

@alzer89

Thanks for the feedback.

Then, I guess, the “ZERO contributions” etc. mentioned in your other comment is because of what you explain here.

alzer89 · July 1, 2025, 12:13am

Well, the way I see it, I had two options:

OPTION A:

Complain for almost a year that a solution to a problem doesn’t exist
When a solution is proposed, go out of my way to find flaws in it
Always say I was “busy with other things” when asked if I was willing to contribute
- Yet somehow always be able to devote an equivalent amount of time to finding flaws in any solution proposed by others
  - And every time I do, show the community that I most certainly possess the skill, ability and know-how required to be able to solve the very thing I’m complaining about (and then some)
Look down upon, belittle and ridicule anyone who might be brave enough to volunteer their time and effort into finding a solution
All of which would have likely required so much more effort than actually creating a solution myself…

OPTION B:

Take the initiative
Understand that this would likely be an incremental process, with multiple iterations until an acceptable solution was found
Offer up my own computing resources to the community obligation-free, and at no cost whatsoever
Attempt to create a solution for something that had never been done before, without knowing what the final result would be
Learn a lot in the process, so that future attempts may be more fruitful
Report back to the community on my findings
Document the findings of my endeavours
Repeat this process until eventually an acceptable solution is found by the community as a whole

The choices that we make say a lot about who we are.

qubist · July 5, 2025, 5:13pm

The choices that we make say a lot about who we are.

Who chose GitHub?

unman · July 6, 2025, 1:39am

The Qubes team for reasons already given

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

deeplow · July 7, 2025, 9:15am

I’m sure someone else has already highlighted that techncially, contributing patches via the mailing list is possible. It may be a bit of an extra hurdle for developers, but it is possible:

alimirjamali · July 7, 2025, 9:43am

That is correct. People have been contributing without a Github account and/or annonymously to Qubes OS project. As an example, if you look at the commits to core-agent-linux during last week, the ones by 3np is from a non-existing Github account with a Pseudonym e-mail address (Author: 3np <3np@example.com>)

unman · July 7, 2025, 11:38am

This has been highlighted on many occasions - apparently this is
regarded as a work around, or unusable, and not a solution.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

qubist · July 7, 2025, 4:26pm

@alimirjamali

Where did these come from? I am subscribed to qubes-devel but have not seen any commits there.

qubist · July 7, 2025, 4:27pm

not a solution.

Indeed not a fully working one. It is not possible to search for or read existing issues with comments through the mailing list. It may also be difficult for the manager to combine contributions through 2 different channels.