Codeberg has been doing awesome things, and they maintain an open source self-hostable forge called Forgejo.
Iβm in the process of moving all of my repos over from GitHub to https://forge.sciactive.com/, my own Forgejo instance.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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Asklemmy
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Did not realize these were the same thing and the have my own forgejo install.
I've just recently discovered your sciactive.com and I have to say I'm a fan!
Thank you. :)
What about non-foss collaboration? (Ie Game Dev)
I mean you can have private repos.
Codeberg has limited private repos though which i assume is what they were referring to.
Not if you self-host.
100MB limit
Sourcehut allows private repos. Alternatively id look into a self hosted forgejo instance you control.
And many people overlook it but git has its own webui.
Itβs super easy to host your own. You could probably spin up a server on a VPS for like $5 a month.
You can set up a git server with minimal fuss, just a bit of ssh-ing. Unless you need a gui for some reason.
If the Devs can use terminal and git natively then you just need an Ubuntu server and space for the files. Git is just ssh u derbthe hood. There's a page on the git site showing how to set it up. I was very pleased how easy it was.
Everyone here has fancy answers and I just back my stuff up to bare repos on an external hard drive. Now I'm starting to question that...
Don't overcomplicate things just to fit in with strangers on the internet.
It's genuinely a breath of fresh air when people choose pragmatism over conformity.
Don't put words in my mouth. I don't do things just because of peer pressure.
No need to get snarky with the person who is actually saying positive things to you.
You can host Gitea or gitweb
i would love to see gitea gain prominence over github
If you pick a FOSS license then your project is FOSS. The number of developers doesn't matter.
I moved all my (meager bullshit) personal projects to Codeberg awhile ago. My stuff was already open source, but I did explicitly add some license files I neglected to add before just to make it clear. So far so good.
Before you archive your Github repos make sure to update them with one last commit explaining that the repo has moved to somewhere else (and potentially why). Once you lock the repo you can't make changes. If you straight-up delete them then this isn't an issue.
Most people seem to go for either codeberg or gitlab as alternatives
If you are looking for something ready made i recommend looking into git.gay they run a pretty good service over there
I have a bare private git repo on my homeland server. Not great for sharing my work but great for personal projects.
Codeburg
Gitea is completely worth it, easy to setup, minimal effort. Many benefits, though I did it for automation with Actions. Such a time saver.
Codeberg works for me. I used to use a couple of indie instances of gitea for various smaller project, but both have either gone down or been at risk, so I mostly use Codeberg which is more organized and failsafe.
Note - you can completely disable all the AI features in Gitlab. In fact, they're disabled by default unless you explicitly enable them by configuring model integrations. I think its one of the better self hosted options because it had a clear maintenance and path to profitability.
I run my own GitLab on a NUC with no issues.
Disclaimer: I have contributed open source code to GitLab before.
Yeah, AI in GitLab is nowhere to be found except the about page.
I've been using it for ten years now and have no intention to move.
For personal projects I've just got a VPS where me and a couple of partners in crime push over ssh. It's very informal and merges are requested in our group chat.
At my previous place of employment we selfhosted gitlab. I much prefer that over corporate github. I want my own fork, not a shared repo.
For personal projects you can either just use git locally or make then source-available with a restrictive license. If you don't even want the source to be available then why use a public repo?
I self host gitea and have a script that mirrors any GitHub repo that I star. Super useful.
I fork from my own mirror in gitea if I want to tinker. Keeps me from having a GitHub presence at all unless Iβm contributing upstream.
I would host them on my own server the way I did before Github. Open SSH access or use a VPN and connect using that.
I've hosted a GitLab instance for like 5 years with a $10 VPS from Contabo and all I have to remember is to sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade. Though, I have experienced problems when forgetting to update for months at a time.
If GitHub didn't exist, I'd use Codeberg, then the free hosted version of GitLab.
git init --bare repository.git if you want to just have a private git somewhere on a server you own.
I've also used Beanstalk for years, both for SVN and Git, and have been pretty happy (back when Github private repos were paid only). I have no connection with them; I just used them because back in the day it was cheaper for private repositories than subscribing to Github.
Personally now, I just use Codeberg as an alternative and love it.
Codeberg has been working fine.
I've self-hosted Gogs which is a predecessor of Forgejo and it used very few resources. A tiny VPS is plenty. Fossil (fossil-scm.org) is even smaller, but it's a DVCS that's not directly compatible with Git.
For personal projects you don't really need a "forge". I just use self-hosted git directly, with no web UI. Just "git pull" and so on. That's what the Linux kernel devs do, so it's obviously workable even for huge projects. There's actually a web interface (gitweb) that comes with git, but it's mostly to let other users browse your repo.
Self hosting some git repos worked fine before github for plenty of cases. I think sr.ht was popular for a minute but I haven't tried it.
For personal projects I use Forgejo on my device that hosts various other servers
I'm a masochist, so I'm self hosting gitea. What's nice is I can have private repositories for free!
edit: keyboard corrected masochist to man man π€£