It doesn’t feel that long ago, but it has been 2 years since I moved some projects to GitLab. After that I started self-hosting my git repos, so there always was the question of GitLab in the back of my mind.
I never liked the user interface too much, it feels slow and bloated, but in general the feature-set is nice, and it definitely works for me. But then GitLab has been making changes that I didn’t like too much –even if they didn’t affect me directly–:
- Open source projects need to apply to special programme, or they will be moved to the free tier.
- They have changed the limits on the free tiers, and some aren’t great –but it is free, so fair enough–.
- They are copying the bad things I didn’t like in GitHub (achievements? why?), including a push for AI –because all has to have AI now!–.
- Their paid tiers are too expensive, meaning that you are in the free tier or you are a business that can justify the cost.
Considering that I’m privileged because I have my own servers and I can self-host, it doesn’t make sense for me to keep using their service if I’m not happy with them. I don’t want to endorse them either, which is something that you indirectly do when use a free service.
The projects I have left in GitHub (50 repos) are all forks, archived and/or I’m not actively working on them –and if at some point I resume some of them, I’ll move them to my servers–. The projects in GitLab, however, are active. So I have to make changes.
I have moved SpaceBeans already, and ubox MSX lib should come next.
I know the move will affect contributions and will make some things harder –although mostly because they will be different–. And that would be true even if I was moving to another hosting service, because that would likely be SourceHut, and it relies on email workflows.
So it is happening: I’m moving out of GitLab. I’m planning changes on the MSX libraries, and that is probably the perfect time to move things around. Now you know why.