It's impressive how much GitHub dominates with so little lock-in. It's so easy to add a new git remote. Yeah GitHub has its own features too, but for a long time free private repo wasn't one of them.
Git itself is simple, but is their .md file renderer open? Are their workflow runners available anywhere to re-use? The API also has gaps (esp if you wanted to migrate your PRs or Issues over), though I don't remember what was the thing I couldn't achieve with it.
But I guess you are referring to indirect, incidental domination like "social" lock-in (I always smile at job application forms asking for a GitHub link — I've got thousands of free software commits in their own, dedicated software forges, but very few things on GitHub directly, or at least, in mirrors not tied to my GH account), "marketing" lock-in (I've heard many junior and not-so-junior engineers refer to GitHub as "Git"), etc...
This part seems mostly interoperable. GitHub's alternatives seem to have implemented something mostly compatible. If you migrate from github to gitlab or gogs or gitea or forgejo, that part will probably just work.
Worst case, markdown is still mostly readable as is and a commit can fix the odd non working thing.
But 100% agree with the rest of your comment.
GitHub has managed to create a network effect by trying to be a social network and succeeding. They managed to create fomo for code hosting. This very HN post shows this.
The lock in is issues, pull requests, and all the conversations that shape long term software projects. The actual implementation and what's tracked is often just what falls out of that.
It is quite common for larger open-source organisations to self-host their repositories and issue trackers. After all, they would quite literally stop existing if Github were to do an oopsie. Voluntarily putting the keys of your entire existence in the hands of a third party isn't exactly an attractive option.
"Literally stop existing"? Having broken links and notifying everyone when a migration happens is for sure a hassle, but migrating a git repo is the easiest thing in the world.
That's kinda the whole point of a distributed VCS.
Bit of a side note, but nobody should use Substack for anything.
For those out of the loop, Substack has been overlooking Nazis on their platform for a few years, and recently pushed a notification to all subscribers to check out a blog with a Nazi swastika.
Don't use the most used platform for blogging reach in 2025 because .0000001% of users are people you hate?
Sounds silly. Don't use wordpress because a store I don't like uses it? I hate to tell you this but friend and foe are using Google search.. time to move on.
Throughout my entire life this has been a reliable sign to move elsewhere. Monocultures and monopolies tend to have negative long term outcomes.
> this just means that the devs at FFmpeg are having so much fun
A real problem. This should be dealt with immediately.
> Trying around github alternatives for memes.
I have a feeling that if this attitude pervaded the open source community then Gérard Lantau (a.k.a. Fabrice Bellard) would have never started work on or released publicly ffmpeg in the first place.
There's a real feeling of modern corporate entitlement encoded into your comment.
The FFmpeg culture is… very different. It’s hard to explain. But one hard requirement they had is that they did not want to give someone else control over their infrastructure. And it had to be open source. Only self hosting options were considered.
[It should be overly clear that] there's nothing special in wanting to have control in one's own processes, in wanting to avoid monopolies, and for free software projects to want to rely on free software. There are also many other reasons to want to avoid github specifically (there's at least a "github is down" thread every month on HN these days - having something that works at all is one of them).
Many important free software projects use there own self hosted solution.
I don't even understand how this is a question, and your parent comment is needlessly inflammatory and didn't deserve any answer.
Well github is very much owned by Microsoft, and with the recent changes of the CEO there are a lot of reasons to prefer a non closed source and non-gigant-tech-corp-controlled software forge.
Many big successful open source projects host their own code. They also join/create foundations and create lasting legacy. Get real sponsorship dollars.
So do some smaller projects.
Culturally hosting yourself is one of the key elements of the hacker ethos.
