Why Devs Are Ditching GitHub for Self-Hosted Git

Picture this: your entire blog—source code, build pipelines, container registry—running on a Kubernetes cluster in your house. Not on AWS. Not on Azure. In. Your. House. That's what Mischa van den Burg demonstrated in his lab, and honestly? It made me reconsider what "control" actually means in 2024.

He's using Forgejo, a self-hosted Git server that basically gives you GitHub but without the corporate overlords. And before you roll your eyes at another "delete big tech" video, this one hit different because Microsoft literally tried to charge developers for using their own infrastructure last month.

The Microsoft Oopsie That Broke The Internet

On December 15th, GitHub dropped a pricing announcement that went over like a lead balloon: they wanted to start billing for self-hosted GitHub Actions runners. Let that sink in. You run the hardware, you pay the electricity bill, you maintain the infrastructure—and Microsoft wanted a cut anyway.

The developer community went absolutely feral. X (formerly Twitter) was basically one giant dumpster fire of angry DevOps engineers. Van den Burg notes the backlash was so intense that Microsoft had to backpedal within days: "They actually came back and reverse that price change. So they lost some face there."

But here's the thing—they only postponed the changes "to reevaluate the approach." That's corporate speak for "we'll try again when you're not looking." And that's precisely why van den Burg already had Forgejo running before the announcement dropped.

Your Code Is Training Someone Else's AI

Let's talk about what you're actually trading when you use GitHub for free. Microsoft owns GitHub. Microsoft also builds AI models. Where do you think all that training data comes from?

"Microsoft, who owns GitHub, scans all of the code that is being published on GitHub, and then they're taking that to train the models," van den Burg explains. "I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. However, if there are things that I am developing myself that I don't necessarily want to share with others, I want to keep that in my own git repositories."

This isn't conspiracy theory stuff—it's literally in the terms of service. Your private repos might be private from other users, but they're not private from Microsoft's scrapers. Van den Burg specifically mentions his personal note-taking system: some projects just shouldn't be feeding the AI beast.

What Forgejo Actually Does

Okay, so Forgejo is basically GitHub but self-hosted. It handles repos, pull requests, issues, and CI/CD actions. The UI looks familiar enough that you won't need to relearn your entire workflow. Van den Burg showed his setup handling the complete pipeline: commit code, build container image, deploy to Kubernetes—all on his own hardware.

The kicker? Unlimited CI/CD pipelines because you're running them yourself. GitHub's free tier has limits. Their paid tiers... well, remember the pricing fiasco? With Forgejo, your only limit is your own infrastructure.

But the feature that actually got me interested is repo mirroring. Forgejo can automatically sync public GitHub repos to your infrastructure daily. If a project gets DMCA'd or the maintainer rage-quits and deletes everything, you've got the complete commit history saved. Van den Burg calls out projects he loved that just... disappeared. This is insurance against that.

Why Forgejo Over GitLab or Gitea?

Van den Burg considered the obvious alternatives. GitLab is powerful but overkill for personal projects—it's heavyweight to host, especially on Kubernetes. He worked with GitLab at his first DevOps job and... yeah, not worth it for a blog.

Gitea was the closer call. It's solid, open-source, and used by plenty of people. But here's where things get spicy: when a company acquired Gitea and launched a SaaS version, the community forked it into Forgejo. The fork happened because people didn't trust corporate ownership.

Forgejo's promise? "Guaranteed 100% free software forever." No acquisition surprises, no sudden pricing changes, no rug-pulls. It's the community saying "never again" and actually meaning it.

The nonprofit Codeberg—basically the cool open-source alternative to GitHub—runs on Forgejo. That's a pretty solid endorsement. Van den Burg donates monthly to the project, which is the kind of put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is move that actually matters.

The Setup Tax

Here's what van den Burg's video doesn't dwell on but I need to: self-hosting ain't free. Not in money (though it's cheap), but in time and mental overhead.

You need somewhere to host it—a home server, a VPS, whatever. You need to handle backups. You need to manage updates. You need to secure it properly because exposing Git repos to the internet is asking for trouble if you screw up the config. Van den Burg has a whole Kubernetes home lab setup, which is not beginner territory.

That said, he shows spinning up Forgejo with a single Docker command—literally one line and you've got a Git server on localhost:3000. That's the entry point. Whether you go from "Docker container I'm playing with" to "production infrastructure hosting my actual work" depends on your tolerance for being your own sysadmin.

Who This Actually Makes Sense For

Not everyone needs to self-host their Git repos. If you're pushing public open-source projects, GitHub is genuinely fine—the network effects matter, and Copilot training your code is kind of the point.

But if you're building proprietary stuff, working on projects you'd rather Microsoft not mine, or just tired of pricing uncertainty from big platforms—Forgejo starts looking pretty interesting. Same if you care about having receipts: that repo mirroring feature is basically insurance for when projects vanish.

The Dutch government is apparently evaluating Forgejo, which van den Burg sees as validation for career-oriented developers. Learning this tech might actually pay off beyond just philosophical satisfaction.

The Bigger Picture

Microsoft's GitHub pricing fumble revealed something bigger: when you build your entire workflow on someone else's platform, you're one policy change away from scrambling. They backed down this time because the backlash was nuclear. Next time? Maybe they'll be more careful about how they announce it.

Van den Burg's setup—code, CI/CD, registry, deployment, all self-contained—isn't just about avoiding GitHub. It's about actually controlling your development pipeline instead of feeling like you control it because the platform hasn't changed the rules lately.

Forgejo might not be your answer. But the question it forces—do you own your development infrastructure or are you just renting?—is worth sitting with. Especially when the landlord has a history of rewriting the lease.

Tyler Nakamura covers consumer tech and gadgets for Buzzrag, with a focus on what actually matters for real people's budgets and workflows.