Goodbye, Gitorious

Authors Jason Self

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jxself.org

Goodbye, Gitorious Home

I've been self-hosted since 1999, and always push that option when talking to people. Linux-libre
I didn't always follow my own advice though and made an exception for public source
code repos I put on Gitorious. The announcement of Gitorious's demise motivated me
GitWeb
to change that policy so that the rug can't be pulled out from under me again. I spent
some time reviewing options and wanted to share my own decisions and rationale.
How To
• GitLab.com - The canonical upgrade path provided by GitLab B.V. is moving
people from Gitorious to the hosted GitLab.com. I do not like the idea of Articles
moving to GitLab.com since that runs their Enterprise Edition which is not
free software. Proprietary sofware is never a solution so this option is RSS Feed
automatically disqualified.
• GitLab Community Edition - From a purely technical perspective this
About Me
seems to have some nice features. GitLab B.V. only makes money when
people buy the proprietary version though so they're clearly betting on people
doing that. They also have a CLA, which I don't like. The lax pushover Contact Me
license used for the GitLab software already allows them to make proprietary
versions though. I suspect it's only there so that they can be sure there are GPL enforced
no issues with them proprietarizing people's contributions because it seems
very big on making sure that they can sublicense the contributions under
If you appreciate any of the things I
whatever terms they want. This is backed up by history: The CLA appeared
am doing you can make a donation.
in October 2013 and the license change for the Enterprise Edition was
announced in February 2014 (it used to be free software), so the work on the
CLA could be seen as preparing for the later license change. I'd like to be
able to make contributions to a project without having to agree to such a
thing. As a result, while it's free software, using the Community Edition
seems like propping up GitLab B.V.'s proprietary software business which I
find distasteful. Disqualified.
• Gitorious - It appears that GitLab B.V. will discontinue this so I'd be using
abandoned software. That's not appealing to me. Also disqualified.
• Phabricator - Like GitLab B.V.'s Community Edition, this seems to have
some nice technical features. It also comes with a CLA, which I don't like.
Also disqualified.
• GNU Savannah - I can see that some may complain about the web interface
not being HTML5-ified, responsive, or whatever other terms the kids are
using these days. On the other hand, Savannah supports multiple version
control systems, has issue, patch, and other trackers, mailing lists, website
hosting, and more. Also, the GNU Project and FSF are unlikely to be going
anywhere anytime soon.
• Kallithea - This seems rather appealing. It's community-developed, doesn't
have a CLA, but it's missing some features some may want such as issue
tracking. From reading about their future plans in the documentation this is
and more is planned though. Seems like it could be a good candidate.
• Fossil - This seems like another good candidate. It has a bug tracker and a
wiki in addition to source code hosting.
• Gogs - This seems like a good candidate. There's no CLA and it seems to
have all of the features I'd want (namely, an issue tracker.) I've talked to
some of the developers on IRC and they seem very responsive and
accepting of feedback. Based on my suggestion they now plan to add an
option to the web interace for people to export their issues and such so that
they can take them with them if they decide to move to another instance.
• GitWeb - Basic, but would do what I need. My repositories are small, don't
have lots of contributors (it's really just me) so I don't need bug trackers. I
don't even get pull requests, really, having received exactly one. People can
send their stuff to me via email, if they have any.

In the end, I've decided to go with GitWeb and letting people do anonymous cloning
over HTTP. Someone with different needs (like an issue tracker) might do well with
their own Gogs or Fossil instance though. I know of hosted Gogs instances at gogs.io
and notabug.org and a hosted Fossil instance at chiselapp.com. Snowdrift.coop has a
list of some other options too but whatever it is you should really run your own
instance of it. The demise of Gitorious has shown just how easy it is to have the rug
pulled out from under you. Do you really want to be in a position where it can happen
again? I don't.