Developers of 'Zig' discuss motivations for moving from GitHub to Codeberg

GitHub , a leading software development platform, is a massive service with over 100 million users. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced its acquisition and it is now a subsidiary of Microsoft. Following this, Codeberg was launched in anticipation of users switching from GitHub. A long-time GitHub user, a programming language developer, spoke about his motivation for switching from GitHub to Codeberg, and this has become a hot topic on HackerNews.

Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg ⚡ Zig Programming Language
https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/

According to Andrew Kelley , chairman of the Zig Software Foundation , the developer of the general-purpose programming language Zig , and lead developer of Zig, Zig has been using GitHub for over 10 years. Unfortunately for Andrew, GitHub was sold to Microsoft, and he spent seven years there, wishing he could have five years before everything was ruined.

For Andrew, GitHub is a shadow of its former self, having lost the engineering edge that once drove its success. 'Priorities and engineering culture have become corrupted, and users are locked into bloated, buggy JavaScript frameworks in the name of progress. What was once responsive is now sluggish and often breaks entirely,' he said.

What disappoints Andrew most is the glitch in the 'Safe Sleep' script in GitHub Actions . Despite being pointed out that there is an 'unforgivable bug' that causes an infinite loop depending on the condition, there is no sign of it being resolved.

safe_sleep.sh rarely hangs indefinitely · Issue #3792 · actions/runner
https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/3792#issuecomment-3182746514

Additionally, despite requests to implement building the runner on FreeBSD, they say this has been 'completely neglected.'

FreeBSD support · Issue #385 · actions/runner
https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/385

It was in this context that the CEO of GitHub made the statement, 'Embrace AI or get out.'

GitHub CEO Delivers Stark Message to Developers: Embrace AI or Get Out - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/github-ceo-developers-embrace-ai-or-get-out-2025-8

What happened shortly after led Andrew to believe that Microsoft's minions had understood the implications of that statement: GitHub Actions began to engage in 'vibe scheduling' rather than vibe coding , seemingly randomly selecting jobs to run. This, combined with other bugs and manual inability to intervene, led to Zig's continuous integration system becoming so overly backed up that it was no longer even checking commits on the master branch.

At this point, Andrew decided to switch Git hosting providers and part ways with his 'aging infrastructure.' His only concern is that he will no longer be able to use GitHub Sponsors . However, Andrew asserts, 'GitHub Sponsors accounts for a large portion of the Zig Software Foundation's donation income, but we consider it a liability .'

The switchover itself consisted of making the repository on GitHub read-only and building the main repository for the Zig project on Codeberg.

ziglang/zig: General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software. - Codeberg.org
https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig

Andrew concluded by saying, 'In an age of platform capitalism that leads to buyouts, weak antitrust regulations, and extreme concentrations of wealth, nonprofits remain a bastion of what remains of shared repositories. Happy hacking!'