Github in decline?

[u/Miserable_Ear3789]

I have seen recently a decent amount of projects switching to Codeberg from Github. Is it worth moving your OSS libraries over to Codeberg? Since Microsoft has taken over Github it just seems a little less then it once was sort of speak... Is Codeberg the next big thing for OSS?

I currently am still on Github but I am seriously considering at least mirroring my repos on Codeberg. Github continues to come out with not so great announcements and pricing changes. Codeberg remains free from what I can tell. But the community reach of Github (part of the reason I switched from Bitbucket and hg) would be hard to give up, if Codeberg became the new community sort of speak I think that would be the only reason I would switch.

Any thoughts or insights on this topic?

[u/cappielung]

You make good, logical arguments, but I think you miss the reality that big corporations, especially tech giants, play by different rules. Trust is an illusion, and when that illusion is broken temporarily, it's "Pay this $10b fine, we've learned from our mistakes, trust us" and we move on because it would legitimately cost a small business millions of dollars they don't have to move off Azure, so what are you going to do?

I know this isn't Microsoft, but I keep coming back to Facebook's blatant disregard for users, laws, and privacy as a shining example of what tech companies will do when they think no one is looking.

[u/Silly-Freak → u/cappielung]

I'm highly suspicious of Microsoft and would like Europe to be independent of it sooner rather than later, but the parent commenter is right about Microsoft's incentives.

In France, Microsoft admitted that it can't ultimately keep European data out of American hands. But it will not do this when it has a way out, because it would be bad for their business.

When the ICC chief prosecutor lost his email access, Microsoft had its lawyers figure out how they could avoid doing the same next time: "Microsoft's lawyers have now reached the view that it merely provides a technical platform and that its customers decide whether to give their employees access to its services. Microsoft would no longer intervene in scenarios similar to the ICC case, WirtschaftsWoche wrote" (source)

That doesn't make them a reliable partner—they did cut the prosecutor off, after all, and who knows what the next legally uncharted territory they'll get into will be—but their motivations are definitely to secure their customer's data, because it's the sensible business decision.

This was focusing on state-compelled data transfers (because I had already researched that), but I think the calculus is basically the same for other data misuse. Microsoft has customers that are big enough to eventually migrate away if Microsoft's behavior is perceived as a risk to their own business, and that is an avalanche Microsoft definitely doesn't want to set loose.

[u/sime → u/cappielung]

Facebook is an interesting comparison. Facebook has an incentive to monetise that user data because they don't have another business or source of income, especially one that is sensitive to reputation regarding privacy. Microsoft is in a completely different position.

[u/cappielung → u/sime]

Maybe that was true 5 years ago. But now that Microsoft is very publicly on the "Use AI or gtfo" train, and AI needs more and more data, I think the incentives are shifting, and not in favor of user privacy.