GitHub is sinking (3 minute read)
GitHub's reliability has reportedly degraded since Microsoft's acquisition, prompting high-profile projects to migrate to alternative Git hosting platforms.
What: An opinion piece arguing that GitHub has become unreliable with declining uptime and performance issues, allegedly due to Microsoft's management and AI-generated content flooding the platform. The author cites several notable projects recently announcing departures from GitHub, including Ghostty and others.
Why it matters: GitHub hosts the majority of open source projects and serves as the de facto standard for code collaboration. If reliability concerns and project migrations represent a genuine trend rather than isolated incidents, it could reshape where developers host and discover code, potentially ending GitHub's network-effect dominance.
Takeaway: Evaluate migration paths for critical projects by testing alternatives like Codeberg (non-profit, Forgejo-based), self-hosted Forgejo, or GitLab, and remember that Git's distributed nature means you can push to multiple remotes simultaneously during a transition period.
Deep dive
- GitHub's reported uptime has declined noticeably since the Microsoft acquisition, with the official status page showing concerning trends and unofficial accounts suggesting worse reliability
- The author specifically blames GitHub Copilot for creating a self-inflicted DDoS through AI-generated content ("slop") overwhelming the platform
- Recent high-profile departures include Ghostty by Mitchell Hashimoto and projects moving to Codeberg/Forgejo, suggesting this isn't just individual frustration
- The article emphasizes that Git itself is open source and distributed—no centralized service is technically required, GitHub is just one implementation
- Recommended alternatives include Codeberg (non-profit, stable, Forgejo flagship), Tangled (alpha startup with AT protocol integration), managed Gitea, GitLab (enterprise-focused), and reluctantly Bitbucket
- Self-hosting options like Forgejo are viable for those wanting full control, with future federation features planned but not yet available
- The author dismisses common objections: GitHub's network effects are eroding through Microsoft's mismanagement, the "star economy" has become meaningless due to bots, and GitHub Actions are problematic anyway
- Migration doesn't require moving everything at once—developers can start by pushing new projects elsewhere or mirroring repositories to multiple remotes
- The piece argues that GitHub has transformed from a useful collaboration tool into an "expensive liability" that Microsoft is actively degrading
- For truly minimal setups, raw Git over SSH remains viable, with collaboration manageable through email patches (as Linux development demonstrates)
Decoder
- DDoS: Distributed Denial of Service attack that overwhelms servers with traffic; here used metaphorically to suggest Copilot-generated code is flooding GitHub
- Slop: Low-quality AI-generated content that clutters platforms
- Git forge: A hosting platform that adds web interface, issue tracking, and collaboration features on top of Git (like GitHub, GitLab, Gitea)
- Network effect: When a service becomes more valuable as more people use it, making it hard for competitors to gain traction
- Forgejo: Open source Git forge software forked from Gitea, used by Codeberg and available for self-hosting
- Upstream: In Git terminology, the remote repository you push to and pull from
Original article
With the introduction of Copilot, GitHub is now effectively DDoS-ing itself with slop.