GitHub is experiencing an open-source exodus. Here's where the developers are going instead

Published Oct 19, 2026, 6:30 PM EDT Sydney Butler is a technology writer with over 20 years of experience as a freelance PC technician and system builder and over a decade as a professional writer. He's worked for more than a decade in user education. On How-To Geek, he writes commerce content, guides, opinions, and specializes in editing hardware and cutting edge technology articles. Sydney started working as a freelance computer technician around the age of 13, before which he was in charge of running the computer center for his school. (He also ran LAN gaming tournaments when the teachers weren't looking!) His interests include VR, PC, Mac, gaming, 3D printing, consumer electronics, the web, and privacy. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Research Psychology with a minor in media and technology studies. His masters dissertation examined the potential for social media to spread misinformation. Outside of How-To Geek, he hosts the Online Tech Tips YouTube Channel, and writes for Online Tech Tips, Switching to Mac, and Helpdesk Geek. Sydney also writes for Expert Reviews UK. He also has bylines at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Tom's Hardware, MakeTechEasier, and Laptop Mag. I'm not a programmer, so all I can do is watch the events unfolding in the world of coding. Since the first programmable computers, there probably hasn't been a bigger shake-up in software development than the advent of AI-powered vibe coding. It's a little ironic that programming as a human activity is being threatened (or at the very least transformed) by AI. "Vibe coding" is a problem all over the place, including in the world of open-source software, but it's also clear that in the hands of an experienced coder who knows what they're doing, it can also be a powerful, force-multiplying tool. Unfortunately, the world's biggest code repository, GitHub, is now itself the target of AI data mining. GitHub's Copilot will use you for training data, and this is sneakily an opt-out feature. So with news of several FOSS projects leaving GitHub, it's easy to blame it all on this AI push. However, while we think GitHub is no longer the best place to host your code, the reasons FOSS projects are bailing on it are more nuanced than simply fleeing from Microsoft's all-seeing AI. Developers are leaving for reasons that go beyond Copilot It is, in fact, bad for many additional reasons Credit: Sundry Photography/Shutterstock.com To be clear, GitHub is still the world's most popular repo platform, and most FOSS projects are still there, but we're seeing notable departures that might be canaries in the coal mine. In November 2025, Zig announced that it was migrating away from GitHub. The post is well worth reading to understand how multifaceted GitHub's issues are, even if the way it's expressed is mildly unprintable! If one of the hot modern programming language projects decides your code repo isn't a good home anymore, you'd probably think something was up. The post specifically highlights automated AI-powered features, reliability problems, and a general loss of "engineering excellence" following the change in ownership and philosophy. Reliability was also brought up in the April 2026 announcement that Ghostty was leaving GitHub. GitHub outages in particular have had a significant negative effect on the project: "...for the past month I've kept a journal where I put an "X" next to every date where a GitHub outage has negatively impacted my ability to work2. Almost every day has an X." So if GitHub is no longer the best home for these software projects, where are they actually going? While there will likely be plenty of platforms ready to welcome GitHub refugees, you also have the option of simply self-hosting Git. Still, these are three of the most popular options. Codeberg is attracting projects that want their hosting to match their principles It's about working with like-minded platforms Codeberg is a non-profit platform to host software projects for free. As of this writing, Codeberg hosts over 730,000 projects, likely in part because of its core philosophical approach. It's not only non-profit but also community-based. Its principles of free culture and openness align well with FOSS in general. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't prey on its users. There's no tracking, no third-party cookies, and no AI scraping your work so that it can reproduce it later. Self-hosted Forgejo gives projects control over their own development home It's about independence Forgejo is a self-hosted solution for managing your own software project. If you read the homepage for Codeberg, you'll see this is actually how that service offers Git hosting. It gives you an alternative to making an account with Codeberg, and lets you keep everything in-house. Of course, the downside is that you are now responsible for keeping your server up and running, but given the numerous complaints about GitHub outages, it's hard to see how you could do a worse job than that. SourceHut offers a different way to collaborate This is an AI-free zone Sourcehut offers a place to host your repository that takes a hard philosophical stance against AI features on the platform, and against hosting vibe-coded projects in the first place. Sourcehut offers a suite of tools to develop and maintain your software project, many of which don't even require an account. It's all free and open-source, and like the other platforms mentioned here, it doesn't have any tracking, telemetry, or other forms of exploitation of those who entrust their code to it for safekeeping. Leaving GitHub is harder than just moving the code It's important to understand how risky, costly, and painful it is to migrate away from GitHub when you've been using it for a decade or more, as some of the projects I've mentioned have. It's not a decision that can be made lightly, and even if you do everything right, it's going to be messy for everyone. At least for a while. If I were Microsoft, I'd ask myself why such long-term, loyal GitHub users have decided to uproot themselves. It's a warning sign the company ignores at its peril.