[noirscape]

From their FAQ:

> If you do not contribute to free/libre software (or if it is limited to your personal homepage), and we feel like you only abuse Codeberg for storing your commercial projects or media backups, we might get unhappy about that.

Emphasis mine. This isn't about if it's technically possible (it certainly is), it's whether or not it's allowed by their platform policies.

Their page publishing feature seems more like it's meant for projects and organizations rather than individual people. The way it's described here indicates that using them to host your own blog/portfolio/what have you is considered to be abusing their services.

[shimman]

Seems fair to me, they're a nonprofit that exists in our lived reality and not an abusive monopolist that can literally throw a billion dollars to subsidize loss leaders.

All it shows the world is why there needs to be a VAT like tax against US digital services to help drive a public option for developers.

There's no reason why the people can't make our own solutions rather than be confined to abusive private US tech platforms.

[germandiago]

Adding taxes to things does not help anyone and goes against free choice.

A better alternative would be to create the incentives so that companies like these can be born in Europe.

[era-epoch]

Companies like Microsoft should not be given "incentives to exist" anywhere (at least as they exist currently). They are corrosive to the public good.

[germandiago]

Are you sure? Enumerate all the competition and associated technilogy this has enabled for decades: tooling, software, etc.

I am not sure how someone should be entitled to prevent others from enjoying thr benefits of better technology.

If you do not like it, just skip it, as I do.

[dtj1123]

Are you seriously trying to pitch the flaming garbage heap that is Microsoft Windows as "better technology"? Microsoft is a predator, they offer licenses to schools at a knock-down rate in order to nurture a dependency on their product. The volume of cash that has been extracted from the general populace in this way is obscene. To top it off they have gone out of their way to sabotage free and open competitors, limiting the market to their shitty and overpriced offerings.

[germandiago]

No, ehat I am saying is that if you go against companies that create wealth not only the bad ones will disappear but also the good ones.

Because you will scare all of them.

[cromka]

This doesn't work in when a market is run by oligopolies, you have to regulate to restore some sort of normalcy and competition.

[germandiago]

Oligopolies are the result of overregulation.

Just fix the right things, not the wrong ones.

[mcv]

How is this particular oligopoly the result of overregulation?

[shimman]

Disagree the only alternative is to let the people decide, I don't trust a dozen men that already have deeply undemocratic beliefs to dictate the direction of tech for society.

You are against democracy, I am not. Democracy has led to some of the best advances of civilization, all oligarchies have done is introduce mass poverty, mass misery, and mass death.

At least with democracy we went to the moon for mankind, not shareholders.

[germandiago]

No. I am not against democracy. If you do not like what someone does, you have rights to fight for.

Your definition of not letting people choose goes more against democracy that what I mean IMHO.

Just do not let these people collude with the power. Fewer politicians would mean fewer people doing business to influence others through politics.

That is what my experience tells me.

[johnisgood]

Reading what you quoted, no it is not, as long as you contribute to free software or you have projects that are open source. Not just your personal homepage. If you only have a personal homepage and nothing else that is open source, then they have a problem.

My 2 cents.

[noirscape]

Which makes it not really a suitable replacement for GitHub, which is my entire point.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying Codeberg is bad, but it's terms of use are pretty clear in the sense that they only really want FOSS and anyone who has something other than FOSS better look elsewhere. GitHub allowed you to basically put up anything that's "yours" and the license wasn't really their concern - that isn't the case with Codeberg. It's not about price or anything either; it'd be fine if the offer was "either give us 5$ for the privilege of private repositories or only publish and contribute public FOSS code" - I'm fine paying cash for that if need be.

One of the big draws of GitHub (and what got me to properly learn git) back in the day with GitHub Pages in particular was "I can write an HTML page, do a git push and anyone can see it". Then you throw on top an SSG (GitHub had out of the box support for Jekyll, but back then you could rig Travis CI up for other page generators if you knew what you were doing), and with a bit of technical knowledge, anyone could host a blog without the full on server stack. Codeberg cannot provide that sort of experience with their current terms of service.

Even sourcehut has, from what I can tell, a more lenient approach to what they provide (and the only reason why I wouldn't recommend sourcehut as a GitHub replacement is because git-by-email isn't really workable for most people anymore). They encourage FOSS licensing, but from what I can tell don't force it in their platform policies. (The only thing they openly ban is cryptocurrency related projects, which seems fair because cryptocurrency is pretty much always associated with platform abuse.)

[tjoff]

(SSG - static site generator)

I mean, it is arguably much easier to just write the HTML page and upload it with FTP and everyone can see it. I never understood why github became a popular place to host your site in the first place.

[noirscape]

> I never understood why github became a popular place to host your site in the first place.

Easy: it was free, it was accessible to people that couldn't spend money for a hosting provider (read: high schoolers) and didn't impose arbitrary restrictions on what you were hosting.

Back then, your options as a high school student were basically to either try and reskin a closed off platform as much as you could (Tumblr could do that, but GitHub Pages also released in the time period where platforms were cracking down on all user customization larger than "what is my avatar") or to accept that the site you wanted to publish your stuff on could disappear at any moment the sketchy hosting provider that provided you a small amount of storage determined your bandwidth costs meant upselling you on the premium plan.

GitHub didn't impose those restrictions in exchange for being a bit less interactive when it came to publishing things (so no such thing as a comment section without using Disqus or something like that, and chances are you didn't need the comments anyways so win-win) That's why it got a lot more popular than just using an FTP server.

[kbolino]

There are multiple reasons why FTP by itself became obsolete. Some of them I can think of off the top of my head:

1) Passive mode. What is it and why do I need it? Well, you see, back in the old days, .... It took way too long for this critical "option" to become well supported and used by default.

2) Text mode. No, I don't want you to corrupt some of my files based on half-baked heuristics about what is and isn't a text file, and it doesn't make any sense to rewrite line endings anymore anyway.

3) Transport security. FTPS should have become the standard decades ago, but it still isn't to this day. If you want to actually transfer files using an FTP-like interface today, you use SFTP, which is a totally different protocol built on SSH.

[rkagerer]

Why would you say FTP is obsolete? For what it's worth, I still use it (for bulk file transfer).

[joecool1029]

chrome and firefox dropped support for it 5 years or so ago, it has had a lot of security issues over the years, was annoying over NAT, and there are better options for secure bulk transfers (sftp, rsync, etc)

[radlad]

Because it doesn't require you to run an HTTP server, FTP server, or install an FTP client.

[tjoff]

Finding an HTTP+FTP server was easier than finding github. Your OS probably has a FTP client installed already, but finding another one is easier than finding and most definitely easier than learning git.

And if you already knew how to write/make HTML you'd for sure already know all of that too.

[radlad]

This is definitely a matter of perspective. I have had a Github account since 2010, and git comes installed on Linux and macOS.

I don't always have a server available to host an HTTP+FTP server on. Or want to pay for one, or spend time setting one up. I can trust that Github Pages will have reasonable uptime, and I won't have to monitor it at all.

> And if you already knew how to write/make HTML you'd for sure already know all of that too.

This seems unnecessarily aggressive, and I don't really understand where it's coming from.

BTW, you can absolutely host plain HTML with Github Pages. No SSG required.

[lazyasciiart]

> And if you already knew how to write/make HTML you'd for sure already know all of that too.

That's a completely false statement. My kid took very basic programming classes in school which covered HTML so they could build webpages, which is a fantastic instant-results method. Hooray, now the class is finished, he wants to put it on the web. Just like millions of other kids who couldn't even spell FTP.

[kbolino]

I touched on the issues with FTP itself in another comment, but who can forget the issues with HTTP+FTP, like: modes (644 or 755? wait, what is a umask?), .htaccess, MIME mappings, "why isn't index.html working?", etc. Every place had a different httpd config and a different person you had to email to (hopefully) get it fixed.

[lmm]

> Finding an HTTP+FTP server was easier than finding github.

No it wasn't. Seriously, where?

[enraged_camel]

That FAQ snippet is insane to me. Maybe it's a cultural thing but I'd never do business with a company that has implicit threats in their ToS based on something so completely arbitrary.

[0x3f]

The worst part is really the unclear procedure. If they set out terms that say they'll give me 4 weeks to migrate projects they don't like off the platform, with n email reminders in between, then that's not ideal but fine. As it is, I'd be worried I'll wake up to data loss if they get 'unhappy'. I have the same problem with sourcehut, actually, with their content policy.

[cxr]

What an absurd double standard. The language is patterned after GitHub's own caveats about misuse of GitHub Pages:

> you may receive a polite email from GitHub Support suggesting strategies[… such as, and including] moving to a different hosting service that might better fit your needs

GitHub Pages has never been a free-for-all. The acceptable use policy makes it clear:

> the primary focus of the Content posted in or through your Account to the Service should not be advertising or promotional[…] You may include static images, links, and promotional text in the README documents or project description sections associated with your Account, but they must be related to the project you are hosting on GitHub

[semiquaver]

Nonprofit, not a company. as far as I can tell they don’t accept payment for anything so they don’t want your “business”.

[jeremyjh]

Which is why they are not a Github replacement for everyone.

[shimman]

They're a perfectly fine replacement if you care about FOSS and OSS, unlikely github + msft.

[rkagerer]

Well it's kind of describing the reality that exists at other companies today. Most ToS's have clauses where they can kick you off for not using it as intended, solely at their discretion. At least these guys are honest and upfront about it. I do agree though some more guidelines around their policy would be nice.

[gzread]

and we feel like you only abuse Codeberg for storing your commercial projects or media backups

Sounds like they're cool with a little personal website.