Mastodon: Move away from GitHub onto GitLab or another independently-run git platform

[alexgleason]

I'm surprised Mastodon fans haven't brought this up yet, unless I've missed it? If so I apologize.

Basically, I think we all knew that GitHub was concerning. It's been compared to the Library of Alexandria, for example. People have played with ideas like GitTorrent to decentralize code storage on a blockchain, and now people are drafting GitPub, an ActivityPub-based protocol that deals with decentralized web-based git services. The recent acquisition of GitHub by Micro$oft has people leading a #movingtogitlab campaign, in which many people are either self-hosting or moving to gitlab.com.

The main reason for using GitHub is that everyone is on it. It's the Facebook problem, which Mastodon knows all too well. However, I think big players like Mastodon can actually sway people to register for another platform and this would do tremendous help to shift social norms and address the underlying problem.

I propose that Mastodon migrates its git repos to another platform. Doing so is in-line with Mastodon's mission and values.

Self-hosted GitLab seems like a decent long-term bet for federation. As far as I know, they are the only ones seriously thinking about it (although it's been over 2 years since discussions started). Personally, I've migrated to gitlab.com, and I'd also be happy to see Mastodon there, too.

As an example, GNOME has a self-hosted GitLab, it's really nice: https://gitlab.gnome.org

There's also Framagit (another free, public GitLab instance), but unfortunately for English-speakers it makes heavy use of French.

Finally, there's https://notabug.org/ which is running gogs. It's very nice and simple, but integrating it with automated tests and other 3rd party services is not simple.

What are your thoughts?

[Gargron]

I announced on my Mastodon that I am going to look into migrating to GitLab. I obviously want to self-host it rather than rely on a 3rd party again, like gitlab.com, however I missed the window on some Hetzner offers which means it's kind of expensive (keep in mind that unlike many other projects we need to support up to 470 contributors, so a small box will likely not be enough)