BookStack Moves from GitHub to Codeberg

BookStack dumps GitHub and the crowd instantly turns it into a culture war

TLDR: BookStack has moved its code away from GitHub to Codeberg because its creator is uneasy with GitHub’s direction under Microsoft and its heavy push into artificial intelligence. Commenters instantly split between cheering the values-based move and mocking it as pointless, niche, or bad for the project’s visibility.

BookStack, a popular self-hosted wiki tool, is officially packing its bags and moving its code from GitHub to Codeberg. The developer says the vibe on GitHub has become increasingly uncomfortable: too much Microsoft, too much artificial intelligence, too much chasing money, and not enough respect for privacy, open values, and actual humans writing actual words. In plain English: the project owner thinks GitHub is drifting away from what open-source communities care about, and wants to get ahead of that shift before it gets worse.

But the real fireworks came from the peanut gallery. One camp basically said, "fair enough, your project, your rules" — then immediately followed with a giant "but." The biggest skeptical take? BookStack hasn’t really suffered major harm on GitHub, so why leave the internet’s biggest storefront and make the project harder to discover? That practical complaint landed hard. Then the thread got extra spicy when one commenter declared open-source is splitting into social-media tribes, where you can supposedly tell a project’s politics by whether its developers hang out on X or Mastodon/Bluesky. Subtle? Absolutely not.

And yes, there was also the classic internet eye-roll: one commenter bluntly asked whether we really need updates every time a "no name project" leaves GitHub. Ouch. Even the most helpful reply had side-character energy, just swooping in to suggest a better link. So while BookStack is making a values-driven exit, the comments turned it into a messy little referendum on visibility, ideology, and whether anyone should care at all.

Key Points

  • BookStack said its secondary repositories were migrated to Codeberg as of July 27, 2024, and corresponding GitHub repositories were archived with links to Codeberg.
  • The article cites discomfort with GitHub’s direction under Microsoft, including AI-related platform changes and concerns about open-source alignment, privacy, and author rights.
  • A temporary revocation of Git LFS access due to bandwidth limits on public repositories is listed as one of the practical issues experienced on GitHub.
  • The post also says GitHub provides important benefits, including free hosting, issue management, GitHub Actions for CI, platform visibility, and income through GitHub Sponsors.
  • BookStack lists multiple migration challenges tied to GitHub, including six active repositories, issue history, CI workflows, sponsor income, install/update processes, package downloads, integrations, and pull-request workflows.

Hottest takes

"OSS is increasingly bisecting into two camps" — ursuscamp
"bookstack has not experienced much in the way of concrete issues with Github" — calpaterson
"do we need to post every no name project that moves away from github?" — beanjuiceII
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