Alternatives to GitHub

[Lukas Bystricky]

I've been thinking about at least partially migrating from GitHub for some time. I know for our projects here it's not strictly required to use GitHub, but I think everyone does. GitHub has the advantage that we all have accounts there already so the reviewers don't need to setup a new account to post a review. 

Does anyone have experience with different Git hosts? It doesn't necessarily have to be free, but I think a requirement would be that someone could post a review without an account.  

[Robin Whittleton]

Posting a review without an account is by necessity going to limit the options severely. When I’ve reviewed non-GitHub productions before it’s usually been over email directly with the producer.

I did look at using Codeberg for my productions, but I couldn’t guarantee that they were death+70 PD compatible so it would have potentially been against their T&Cs.

-Robin

On 8 Aug 2026, at 13:21, Lukas Bystricky <lukasby...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've been thinking about at least partially migrating from GitHub for some time. I know for our projects here it's not strictly required to use GitHub, but I think everyone does. GitHub has the advantage that we all have accounts there already so the reviewers don't need to setup a new account to post a review. 

Does anyone have experience with different Git hosts? It doesn't necessarily have to be free, but I think a requirement would be that someone could post a review without an account.  

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[Lukas Bystricky]

Now that you mention it, some of my earlier projects were reviewed through email, so maybe that's not such a huge inconvenience in end. (Other reviewers may have different opinions.)

I hadn't thought about the legal aspects though. I guess strictly speaking whatever projects we work on would have to be legal in whatever country the repo is hosted. 

[Robin Whittleton]

I guess another option would be Alex spinning up an SE-specific Forgejo instance, but I’m not sure I’d want to deal with the current plague of scrapers these days.

-Robin

On 8 Aug 2026, at 14:05, Lukas Bystricky <lukasby...@gmail.com> wrote:

Now that you mention it, some of my earlier projects were reviewed through email, so maybe that's not such a huge inconvenience in end. (Other reviewers may have different opinions.)

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[Alex Cabal]

I have no suggestions for alternatives, I haven't really used any. You
could certainly use whatever service you like if you don't want to use
Github. I suppose you could conduct reviews over email though it might
be less convenient.

As Robin mentions it's been a long-standing "nice to have" project to
migrate from Github to our own self-hosted Git web service of some type,
something like vcs.standardebooks.org. This made more sense pre-2022,
but now with AI scrapers famously DDOSing these kinds of self-hosted Git
services and taking down servers and chewing through bandwidth, it seems
much less appealing at a practical level. Also no one has volunteered to
try to figure it out anyway.

On 8/8/26 7:56 AM, Robin Whittleton wrote:
> I guess another option would be Alex spinning up an SE-specific Forgejo
> instance, but I’m not sure I’d want to deal with the current plague of
> scrapers these days.
>
> -Robin
>
>> On 8 Aug 2026, at 14:05, Lukas Bystricky <lukasby...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Now that you mention it, some of my earlier projects were reviewed
>> through email, so maybe that's not such a huge inconvenience in end.
>> (Other reviewers may have different opinions.)
>>
>> I hadn't thought about the legal aspects though. I guess strictly
>> speaking whatever projects we work on would have to be legal in
>> whatever country the repo is hosted.
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, August 8, 2026 at 1:50:56 PM UTC+2 robin wrote:
>>
>> Posting a review without an account is by necessity going to limit
>> the options severely. When I’ve reviewed non-GitHub productions
>> before it’s usually been over email directly with the producer.
>>
>> I did look at using Codeberg for my productions, but I couldn’t
>> guarantee that they were death+70 PD compatible so it would have
>> potentially been against their T&Cs.
>>
>> -Robin
>>
>>> On 8 Aug 2026, at 13:21, Lukas Bystricky <lukasby...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I've been thinking about at least partially migrating from
>>> GitHub for some time. I know for our projects here it's not

>>> strictly /required/ to use GitHub, but I think everyone does.

>>> GitHub has the advantage that we all have accounts there already
>>> so the reviewers don't need to setup a new account to post a review.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have experience with different Git hosts? It doesn't
>>> necessarily have to be free, but I think a requirement would be
>>> that someone could post a review without an account.
>>>
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>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the
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[David]

I'm confident this idea is a non-starter for more reasons than one, so just as a thought experiment....

I've used Fossil SCM as my personal versioning system for years. It is much like Git, but differs from it in significant ways, the most important of which for SE is that Fossil prohibits rewriting commit history by design (and see §2.7 at the previous link).

Even so, it can be setup to have mirror repos on GitHub (SQLite being the most significant example of this), and can import/export with Git. It is also very secure out-of-the-box. (As a matter of interest, I use a free Oracle virtual machine to host my remotes.) It is exceedingly easy to set up. (It also has built-in issue tracker, wiki, and forum tools ... but that's a bit beyond this discussion.)

Of course, it is not nearly so widely used as Git, and my hunch is that SE would rather stick with a more mainstream versioning system.

So I know this won't hold much (any!) appeal, but simply note this option for a bit of thinking "outside the box". Perhaps some SE producers might incorporate it into their personal workflow?

FWIW! David / Fife, UK

[David]

P.s. Ack - after re-reading several times before hitting "Post message", I still forgot to add a link! For "...Fossil prohibits rewriting commit history by design...", see:

https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/rebaseharm.md

[David]

And on P.p.s. (afterthought):  there is a "third-party" "forge" facility, Fossilrepo =
https://fossilrepo.dev/

That's probably worth noting, as that kind of platform would be essential for a project like SE.

[Lukas Bystricky]

I certainly see the advantages of Github as a catch-all host. It would be a lot of work to migrate to a different setup now, plus a lot of contributors already have Github accounts so it keeps things simple for most people. 

As long as it's not a problem to do reviews by email, I can slowly look into alternatives for myself (keeping in mind hosting laws). Fossil sounds interesting, but that might an overkill for SE, since we'll still want a Git repo as the end product. The philosophy of not rebasing is probably might not be ideal either since a readable commit history is actually important for us. 

[Alex Cabal]

Fossil is an entirely different VCS, not just its web interface. I think
Lukas is merely looking to move away from GitHub, one of the many web
interfaces to a Git repo (as Git itself is, by design, decentralized),
and not off of Git entirely.

On 8/9/26 4:27 AM, David wrote:
> I'm confident this idea is a non-starter for more reasons than one, so
> just as a thought experiment....
>

> I've used Fossil SCM <https://fossil-scm.org/> as my personal versioning
> system for years. It is much like Git, but differs <https://fossil-
> scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-git.wiki> from it in significant

> ways, the most important of which for SE is that Fossil prohibits

> rewriting commit history by design (and see §2.7 <https://fossil-
> scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-git.wiki#history> at the previous link).
>
> Even so, it can be setup to have mirror repos <https://fossil-scm.org/
> home/doc/trunk/www/mirrortogithub.md> on GitHub (SQLite being the most
> significant example of this), and can import/export <https://fossil-
> scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/inout.wiki> with Git. It is also very secure

> out-of-the-box. (As a matter of interest, I use a free Oracle virtual
> machine to host my remotes.) It is exceedingly easy to set up. (It also
> has built-in issue tracker, wiki, and forum tools ... but that's a bit
> beyond this discussion.)
>
> Of course, it is not nearly so widely used as Git, and my hunch is that
> SE would rather stick with a more mainstream versioning system.
>
> So I know this won't hold much (any!) appeal, but simply note this
> option for a bit of thinking "outside the box". Perhaps some SE
> producers might incorporate it into their personal workflow?
>
> FWIW! David / Fife, UK
>
> On Saturday, 8 August 2026 at 17:10:38 UTC+1 Alex Cabal wrote:
>
> I have no suggestions for alternatives, I haven't really used any. You
> could certainly use whatever service you like if you don't want to use
> Github. I suppose you could conduct reviews over email though it might
> be less convenient.
>
> As Robin mentions it's been a long-standing "nice to have" project to
> migrate from Github to our own self-hosted Git web service of some
> type,

> something like vcs.standardebooks.org <http://
> vcs.standardebooks.org>. This made more sense pre-2022,

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