If everyone is vibecoding, and SaaS plays have no moats anymore, and everyone says they are mad at Github's reliability...why aren't there like 10 viable replacements already?
- There are already viable GitHub replacements, like Codeberg, Bitbucket, Gitlab, etc. Everyone stays on Github for network effects, not because of the superior product. You can't vibe code network effects.
- And yes, GitHub is a massive product with like 50 different huge features. No reasonable person would say you can trivially vibecode that. Vibecoding would still make it easier. I feel this argument is a bit silly, no? "Ah, you can't vibecode GitHub in a weekend? That proves vibecoding was a mirage!" Surely even the most fervent anti-AI skeptic must admit there must be some middle ground between "a mirage" and "can literally replace millions of man-hours of work".
OK, say you're proposing an in-house tool to host your repo to your boss. What do you think will sound better? "Let's use this random vibecoded app I just found"? Or "Let's use GitHub"?
First they came for the four nines
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a power grid
Then they came for the three nines
And I did not speak out
Because I was not paying for Enterprise
Then they came for the two nines
And I did not speak out
Because the status page said all systems operational
Then they came for the one nine
And I did not speak out
Because I was a manager, and outages are just extra standup material
Then they came for the coin flip
And there was no one left to merge my PR
Because Actions was down
And so was Pages
And so was Codespaces
And the status page said all systems operational
Everyone already has an account, so there's no friction to opening up issues, adding thumbs up to issues, using the discussion forum, etc. And while I think it's pretty silly, a lot of people take "10k stars on GitHub" to be a positive signal, and you can only get there when you have 10k people willing to star on your platform.
Turns out, the brand itself is a moat. There's never going to be another Google or Uber or Facebook or Twitter. Good or bad, GitHub is always going to have the name GitHub.
My theory is that vibecoded replacements haven't succeeded for the same reason why GitHub's quality has declined: because vibecoding/AI software development isn't as efficient as believed when measuring real-world outcomes.
I have yet to even see anyone claim that software can't constitute a moat anymore but I expect that there are people saying that. GitHub has a huge non-software moat in the form of network effects, brand recognition, and good will.
The hardest part isn't making a "forge", it's making money off of making a forge. Getting a sufficiently large number of paying customers.
If GitHub doesn't get their quality issues under control someone probably will manage to breach that moat and take over the market. It's not like there's a lack of competitors (Pre-llm: GitLab, BitBucket, Gitea, Source Hut, etc. Post LLM: Tangled, esrc is promising something any day now. Probably more in both camps that don't come to mind).
>> SaaS plays have no moats anymore
> I have yet to see literally anyone say this.
I've heard a lot of people say this...including myself after a root beers. I think you just have to look to any time an AI feature is announced and some related companies stock price crumbles. Just google something like "stock price tumbles after anthropic announces" or something like that.
Locally, I'm using gitolite+cgit. I was previously using Gitea, but that didn't suit my requirements.
I'm using GitHub for my open source projects as:
1. While GitHub Actions has its issues and doesn't work for everyone, I've found it easy to build and test an IntelliJ plugin against multiple IntelliJ versions.
2. I don't have to pay for and manage the hosting of the git repository.
Because everyone wants the fake internet points (sorry, stars) to mention on their CV.
Because there are already a number of viable alternatives, them not being chosen has nothing to do with AI coding but other factors like market momentum & network effects and familiarity. They are used, just much less so. If there are already good alternatives, why would anyone vibe code a new one any more than they would write a new one manually? Forges are not sexy stuff, and the existence of numerous decent free ones means that you aren't going to be able to sell a new one in any way (paid accounts, stalking/advertising, …) at least not until it has a significant following and that is unlikely to happen because of the reasons above.
People not wanting to use github (or one of the common alternatives that already exist) are more likely to just use git as-is, and other tolls as needed for issue tracking, CI, etc, than to create a new forge.
That's not what they mean. That would still be a moat, just for OpenAI instead of Microsoft. They mean anyone who wants a github (eventually) can just tell their own ai to make them a github on the spot.
GitHub outages and stuff don’t really affect me, so I have no great reason to leave. But I have good reason to stay, because that’s where everyone else is already.
It's a great question. I'm assuming it is due to devs being too lazy to fight the momentum. Go ahead an switch services if five-nines uptime is critical to your codebase. The daily HN complaint isn't going to move mountains for you... oh, maybe next outage then, if you're not too busy? Right..
Github is struggling because of compute, which comes from everyone vibecoding and triggering actions 10x more.
I can vibecode an alternative, but once i have users, who is going to secure this amount of compute? Compute+talent to manage it(devops isnt vibecoded *yet) is a moat
Why care about making a commercial alternative? I just want a “forge” for my team that looks like a combination of GitHub and tangled (stacked PRs and JJ).
So I’m working on waza.sh. I have NO intent on making it commercial, nor open-source (unless someone wants to collab on it).
Will it need compute? Yes! For my team only. So a dedicated box at OVH/Hetzner for 30eu is more than sufficient.
lol do you not have actual stuff to prioritize for your team rather than re inventing forges? there are quite a few open source alternatives if you want something quick. Fork them. No need to re invent the wheel
$COMPANY is on Github now, thinking of moving to Codeberg/Forgejo.
This is a personal pet project, just to see what it might look like, how it would work, to satisfy personal curiosity. If it comes to the point that it actually becomes usable for the team (read: actually add value), then it's up to $TEAM to decide whether to use it or not.
I would hate my team to waste company time on such an endeavour. ;-)
What do you mean? like it doesn't doesn't know how to perform a actions on it like it does with the gh cli? fwiw in a different comment i cited gh cli X claude code as one of the reasons I still github.
Claude Code in the CLI works fine. I mean if you want to use the Claude Code web interface (https://claude.ai/code), the literal first step is connect to github.
i have a lot of sway over what git+cicd system my corporate overlord uses. As I am very Github alternative curious right now, if anyone is pushing alternative git+cicd stack, I want to hear it.
Another reason is Github Actions. For all of it's problems ( supply chain, reliability issues...to name a few ), it's tight integration with Github (not git) events is pretty great (when it works).
If everyone is vibecoding, and SaaS plays have no moats anymore, and everyone says they are mad at Github's reliability...why aren't there like 10 viable replacements already?
Why are you still using Github?