Too much Copilot: Gentoo switches from GitHub to Codeberg

Gentoo Linux is opening a presence on the Berlin-based code hosting platform Codeberg. This is a first step in disengaging from GitHub. The new repositories on Codeberg mirror the structure that Gentoo hosts itself.

In the Gentoo blog, it is stated that Codeberg is to be an alternative to GitHub, but also "part of a gradual migration away from GitHub". As early as January, Gentoo had announced its intention to detach from the Microsoft platform: "Goodbye Github, welcome Codeberg". The provider cites the following reason: "Mainly due to the continued attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories."

Many projects complain that coding assistants disrupt the work of maintainers because AI users submit more and more bad and worthless pull requests. Open-source projects in particular – like Gentoo – therefore often reject AI-generated code. Furthermore, many open-source operators are bothered by the use of their data for training the models, which GitHub expressly reserves the right to do.

More and more projects are suffering from AI contributions

For the same reasons, Zig turned its back on GitHub in December last year and curl withdrew from the bug bounty program. Curl maintainer Stenberg complains that 95 percent of submissions were worthless.

In contrast to Microsoft's GitHub, Codeberg is a non-commercial association based in Berlin. Its operation is exclusively community-driven. The technical basis is the Forgejo platform, which in turn uses Git and offers similar code collaboration features to GitHub.

Gentoo uses the AGit workflow (a method for submitting changes directly without forking) for cloning and pull requests:

git clone git@git.gentoo.org:repo/gentoo.git
cd gentoo
git remote add codeberg ssh://git@codeberg.org/gentoo/gentoo
git checkout -b my-new-fixes
git push codeberg HEAD:refs/for/master -o topic="$title"

Further commits can be added with the same topic. Gentoo hosts the main repository itself: Both the new presence on Codeberg and the old one, still existing on GitHub, are merely mirrors intended for the convenience of contributors.

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