Why I'm Leaving GitHub for Forgejo: A Developer's Quest for Freedom

Imagine staying at a fancy hotel with free breakfast, but every morning you find tiny amendments to the terms of service in your scrambled eggs. That's how many developers feel about GitHub lately. One of them, blogger Jorijn, decided enough is enough and moved to Forgejo — a self-hosted Git platform.

What's wrong with GitHub?

It's convenient: actions, pull requests, issues, tons of integrations. But when Microsoft started pushing Copilot and changing terms, many wondered: "Whose code is it, anyway?" Jorijn points out that GitHub is becoming a black box — you don't control your data, and any policy change can hit your project.

Forgejo: the alternative without surprises

Forgejo is a community-driven fork of Gitea. It's lightweight, fast, and you host it yourself. Jorijn reports a smooth migration: clone repos, set up CI with Woodpecker (not GitHub Actions), and forget corporate whims. The only pain was manually migrating issues, but tools like gitea-github-migrator help.

Is it worth it?

If you're a solo dev or small team tired of big corps' whims, Forgejo is a solid choice. Yes, you'll need to manage a server, but you sleep better knowing your code isn't fed to an AI without consent. And if things go south, you can always backup and leave. After all, open source is about freedom, not convenience.

METABYTE studio's take: We've considered the move too, but GitHub Actions keeps us hooked — it's just too good for CI/CD. If Microsoft starts charging per pipeline run, we'll migrate faster than you can say "git push --force".