What's the benefit of a distributed git host? Are you just trying to distribute the storage costs?
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Not just storage costs — mainly for privacy, avoiding Big Tech control, and having an open-source, decentralized alternative where I’m not tracked or subjected to ads.
You can pay for hosting or self host it and get all that. What did being distributed do that?
Yes, codeberg, and it's going to be decentralized soon when forgejo implements federation
You can self host forgejo as well.
Yes, codeberg, and it’s going to be decentralized soon when forgejo implements federation
amazing!
Interesting would something decentralised like this help prevent take downs of fan games by big companies like Nintendo? 😆
Yes, Codeberg/Forgejo or even self-hosting a git server. Git itself is decentralized and self-hostable.
Git itself is decentralized and self-hostable.
This is true but Git is nothing like GitHub really
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@fajre @Codeberg ist “a non-profit, community-led organization that helps free and open source projects prosper. Our services include Git hosting (using @forgejo ), Weblate, Woodpecker CI and Pages.”
interesting man, i'll try!
Forgejo is an activitypub-enabled Git forge software, and codeberg is one of the largest forgejo instances.
Tangentially related, but git-annex, and, in particular, its sync subcommand are a great tool for storing files and managing git repos across multiple machines (and even just loose drives) in a "P2P" way without any centralised server
Forgejo is an activitypub-enabled Git forge software, and codeberg is one of the largest forgejo instances.
Thank you for this explainer, that's cool as fuck!
I self-host forgejo, it's one of the easiest systems I self-host.
But which features other than a plain git repo are you looking for? That will mostly determine your options. There are tons of git repos, and even just a plain git repo on a server with an ssh tunnel is enough if you don't need anything beyond that.
+1 for forgejo
The only requirement of yours it doesn't hit is "decentralized", since you'd likely be self-hosting it. If you're looking to host git repos, you're likely technical enough to fire up a foregjo container in Docker and go wild with it. Just make sure you have a plan for backups, and you're good.
I self-host forgejo, it’s one of the easiest systems I self-host.
But which features other than a plain git repo are you looking for? That will mostly determine your options. There are tons of git repos, and even just a plain git repo on a server with an ssh tunnel is enough if you don’t need anything beyond that.
My main goal is to stay independent from big tech and have full control over my data, but I’m still new to programming (2/8 in Software Engineering).
Yeah, forgejo will give you many of the features of GitHub. Not the proprietary ones like the Actions Marketplace of course, but a lot of equivalent features. It's lightweight enough though that even if you never use it for anything beyond git, creating pull requests, and some basic CI, it's not going to require much power to run it.
Do you need the public to have access to it? That would be the only reason for federation that I could think of.
Yes, the main reason I’d want federation is for public access and decentralization. For personal or small-team use, running it privately is enough.
When I have questions like this, I tend to check this site first. You can also filter the results based on your criteria.
OMG, I didn’t know this site, thanks man!
Glad I could help! Have fun with all the alternatives to everything.
Git itself is that for the DVCS part, it's easy to host and is decentralized. I haven't used it myself, but hubzilla seems to support wikis and forums in a distributed way. If you needed to, you could manage issues in forums, although it feels like there should be somethings.
- Forgejo
- Gitlab
- Gitea
- Codeberg
I'm sure there's more
codeberg is forgejo
No one has mentioned Gitea yet, is there a reason? Genuinely asking.
Gitea has gone open core; it is still free software but its development is controlled by a for-profit company which is developing non-free features. So, Forgejo is the community-run fork of it which people outside the Gitea company are contributing to instead now. You can read more about their divergence here.
Thank you!
I wonder when people (especially companies) learn that with open source projects, it's the community and contributors who are in charge and not the "owner". The moment you do something the community doesn't like, they'll fork the project, migrate, and your project is left in the dust.
Few examples off the top of my head - CyanogenMod/LineageOS. Maps me/Organic Maps/CoMaps. OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
If your company/business/project depends on user content, don't piss off the users.
Try GitLab. They're independent and free of trackers according to Brave Shields. Though keep an eye out for the storage limits, since GitLab makes you quickly realize that, unlike GitHub, they don't have unlimited storage.
On server:
git init --bare ~/projects/project.git
On client:
git clone username@server:projects/project.git
GitLab, I am not sure if their own installation hits all points (depends on what you define as "big tech involvement" maybe), but if you self-host it, certainly.
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I haven't tried it but Radicle sounds cool ? Radicle is an open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on Git. Unlike centralized code hosting platforms, there is no single entity controlling the network. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner, and users are in full control of their data and workflow.
There are some dev/repo tools, but I don't know how they compare with commercial platforms.
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