GitHub is fun, useful, and easy. Self-hosted GitLab is capable; I use it all the time. But the first is a funnel for whatever the Microsoft folks in Redmond want us to be doing next, and the second is a real heavyweight for whatever server it runs on.
That's why I set up lightweight Forgejo at forge.cyberplanetary.org. Sure, I lose out on all the nice integrations with Claude and Codex. And I miss out on the ease with which others could discover and work with my code on GitHub. But I control my code and am not dependent on anyone else to host or serve it.
Recently, Anthropic started waving around free Claude cloud credits—yes, please—so I've added a second remote to my local repo to take advantage of their GitHub integration. But after Claude or GPT-6 opens pull requests in my private GitHub repos, I pull the code back to my development machine to merge it, and push it to the Cyberplanetary code forge.
Someday, I'll make public mirrors of my repos and invite others to contribute. But for now, my default is that I own my code and I own its hosting, even while taking advantage of freebies coaxing me toward the dependency funnels of GitHub.
What do your applications depend on?
Have a thought to share? I’d like to hear it.
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