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The Surface: GitHub Is Still Huge
By the numbers, GitHub is crushing it. Someone new joins every second. It holds over 600 million repositories, and developers pushed nearly a billion code updates in 2025 alone. On paper, it’s the undisputed king of code hosting.

The Undercurrent: A Restless Rumble
But look past the stats, and you’ll notice a growing grumble. Long-time users are getting fed up—not just with annoying technical glitches, but with the platform’s political vibes and its aggressive push into AI. Since Microsoft took the reins, some developers feel the soul of the place has changed.

Who’s Actually Packing Up?
This isn’t just forum chatter. Some major projects are voting with their feet.

• Ghostty (a popular terminal app) announced it’s leaving, though it’s keeping a read-only mirror for now.
• Zig (a hip new systems language) made the jump in late 2025 after nearly a decade on GitHub.
• Tenacity (an audio editor) moved its main home back in 2023.

Alongside these heavyweights, smaller projects like the Dillo browser and Hare language have also migrated. And some big names—like GNOME and Apache—were never really on GitHub to begin with, preferring to host their own code from day one.

So, Why the Sudden Breakup?
Three main reasons keep coming up:

1. Constant Downtime: This is the biggest practical gripe. In one year alone, GitHub suffered 48 major outages, totaling 112 hours of downtime. That’s nearly five full days of “oops, can’t push your code.” For Ghostty and Zig, this was the final straw.
2. Politics and Ethics: Zig’s creator specifically called out GitHub’s business ties with ICE (U.S. immigration enforcement). Internal employees had protested that deal as far back as 2019, and it still leaves a sour taste for many.
3. The AI Takeover: GitHub is all-in on Copilot. The CEO even said, “Either you embrace AI, or get out of this career.” For developers who aren’t thrilled about their code being used to train massive AI models, that felt less like a vision and more like a threat.

One maintainer summed it up bluntly: “It’s not a fun place for me to be anymore. I want to get work done, and it doesn’t want me to.”

Where Are They Going Instead?
The most popular escape hatch is Codeberg—a community-driven, non-profit alternative that offers all the same features (issue tracking, website hosting, automated testing) without the corporate baggage.

If you prefer to go it alone, you have options:

• GitLab and Bitbucket are direct competitors with similar feels.
• Sourcehut is a fully open-source, email-centric alternative for purists.
• Gitea and Forgejo are lightweight self-hosting solutions (in fact, Forgejo is the engine that powers Codeberg).

There’s even an official campaign by the Software Freedom Conservancy to help teams migrate off GitHub.

The Bottom Line
Look, GitHub is still a fantastic tool. It single-handedly normalized open-source collaboration for millions. But it’s not your only choice. Whether you’re bothered by downtime, political stances, or AI overreach, there’s a growing ecosystem of alternatives waiting for you. And the best part? You don’t have to be a giant project like Zig to make the switch—you can start small, keep a mirror, and test the waters yourself.