GitHub Is Sinking¶
Source: dbushell.com
Author: David Bushell
Date: 2026-04-29
TL;DR¶
"GitHub used to be cool and now it's a lame slop graveyard."
Under Microsoft, GitHub has deteriorated into an unreliable, "enshittified" platform flooded with AI slop and bots. The author argues it is now an expensive liability rather than a useful tool, and urges users to begin migrating immediately.
Evidence of Decline¶
- Uptime collapse: GitHub is "racing towards the mythical zero nines of uptime." Official status charts are concerning, while missing status pages "tell a far worse story."
- Microsoft's impact: Since acquiring GitHub, Microsoft has spawned the "Copilot circle of hell" and is now "DDoSing themselves with slop."
- Operational failures: The author cites incidents including merge queues building on the wrong commit and shameful AI training policy changes.
"I won't dwell on what else went wrong. I don't know and I don't care. GitHub is impressively bad now. It's embarrassing. Shameful."
Industry Exodus¶
Prominent developers and projects are leaving. Examples linked: * Ditching GitHub - Lonami * Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub - Mitchell Hashimoto * Before GitHub - Armin Ronacher * From GitHub to Codeberg/Forgejo - Jonas Hietala * GitHub is dead, What's next? - Alex Hyett
"It's long past time to get off this sinking ship!"
Core Principle: Git is not GitHub¶
GitHub has become synonymous with source control, but Git is open source and distributed. All repositories are equal; no centralized service is required. GitHub was merely a convenient add-on. Microsoft has turned it into a liability.
Rebuttals to Common Excuses¶
| Excuse | Counter-argument |
|---|---|
| Network effect | GitHub's "fake star economy" is worthless. The platform is "inundated with bots and drowning in slop." Microsoft is turning GitHub into the "Moltbook of code" — "it ain't for you and me anymore." |
| Continuous Integration | "Your CI pipeline is over-engineered and GitHub Actions are an abomination." Finding another solution is a chore, but "do you trust GitHub to be reliable?" |
| Migration difficulty | "Don't hang around and allow Microsoft to pull you under. You don't need to move everything in one go. Start the process." |
Alternatives to GitHub¶
The author stresses that none are perfect — they are simply not GitHub. Do your own research.
Recommended Centralized Forges:
- Codeberg — Non-profit, community-led, established track record. Flagship instance of Forgejo. Described as "the safe alternative that'll stick around."
- Tangled — Alpha-stage startup with AT protocol integration. Best for smaller solo projects.
- Gitea — Offers cloud-managed Git hosting. The original open-source project that Codeberg/Forgejo forked away from.
- GitLab — Enterprise-grade, "bloated and confusing," but may impress management. Author later notes "they've contracted the rot" too.
- Bitbucket — "Trade one soul destroying corpo fun vacuum for another." Strongly discouraged, but technically fits the anything but GitHub category.
- Also mentioned: Game of Trees, Radicle, and Sourcehut
Bottom Line¶
Bushell's stance is uncompromising — the network effect is dead, the platform is embarrassing, and it's long past time to get off the sinking ship.