What do you do if you develop a lightweight browser that doesn’t support JavaScript, but you once chose GitHub as the home for your code? You’re now in the unenviable position that your own browser can no longer access your own online source repository because it requires JavaScript, which is both annoying and, well, a little awkward. The solution is, of course, obvious: you move somewhere else.
That’s exactly what the Dillo browser did. They set up a small VPS, opted for cgit as the git frontend for its performance and small size, and for the bug tracker, they created a brand new, very simple bug tracker.
To avoid this problem, I created my own bug tracker software, buggy, which is a very simple C tool that parses plain Markdown files and creates a single HTML page for each bug. All bugs are stored in a git repository and a git hook regenerates the bug pages and the index on each new commit. As it is simply plain text, I can edit the bugs locally and only push them to the remote when I have Internet back, so it works nice offline. Also, as the output is just an static HTML site, I don’t need to worry about having any vulnerabilities in my code, as it will only run at build time.
↫ Rodrigo Arias Mallo
There’s more considerations detailed in the article about Dillo’s migration, and it can serve as inspiration for anyone else running a small open source project who wishes to leave GitHub behind. With GitHub’s continuing to add more and more complexity and “AI” to separate open source code from its licensing terms, we may see more and more projects giving GitHub the finger.
This reminds me of things like Sourcehut’s decision to use mailing lists. People don’t choose GitHub just for the network effects or the freemium-subsidized services. They choose it for the polish, and for feature-appeal that people who habitually code in C tend not to grasp the magnitude of. (Like the people who don’t understand why systemd took off the way it did.)
buggy isn’t even the first to come up with the idea it implements… not by a long shot. It’s been so long that I can’t remember where I put my list of them, but I remember running across at least three independently developed tools in the mould of git-bug. (Clearly the idea doesn’t have runaway mass appeal.)
I think, if people want to migrate away from GitHub, they’re much more likely to move to Gitlab, BitBucket, Codeberg, or self-host something based on the Gogs→Gitea→Forgejo lineage that Codeberg uses.