It is free and robust, and there is not much bad Microsoft can do to you. Because it is standard git, there is no lockdown. If they make a decision you don't like, migrating is just a git clone. As for the "training copilot" part, it is public, it doesn't change anything that Microsoft hosts the project on their own servers, they can just get the source like anyone else, they probably already do.
Why not Codeberg? I don't know, maybe bandwidth, but if that's standard git, making a mirror on Codeberg should be trivial.
That's why git is awesome. The central repository is just a convention. Technically, there is no difference between the original and the clone. You don't even need to be online to collaborate, as long as you have a way to exchange files.
Definitely I can access the source code. The review tools are not on GitHub. But is it even possible to host my proposed changes elsewhere, not on GitHub? I suppose that the answer is negative, but surprises happen.
This is a relatively theoretical question, but it explores the "what bad Microsoft can do to you" avenue: it can close your GitHub account, likely seriously hampering your ability to contribute.
You submit patches to Phabricator, not to GitHub.
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contrib...
> To submit a patch for review, we use a tool called moz-phab.
That does mean you need an account on Phabricator, but not on GitHub https://moz-conduit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/phabricator-use...
Yes, in fact it is only possible to submit patches through Phabricator. You cannot submit patches through Github.
Recently I also got "rate limited" after opening about three web pages.
Microsoft can do something to you, and that is to arbitrarily deny you access after you've built a dependence on it, and then make you jump through hoops to get access back.
People who haven’t used it logged out recently may be surprised to find that they have, for some time, made the site effectively unusable without an account. Doing one search and clicking a couple results gets you temporarily blocked. It’s effectively an account-required website now.
You're really going to make me clone a project locally to do a search. I just end up using google to search github. It's so stupid.
This might be a country-dependant thing.
However, it is clearly not correct to say that you were banned from GitHub. It’s like saying “I was banned from Google because I refuse to use computing devices.”
Not really a ban, just self flagellation, which, again, whatever works for you.
I've been gone for a few years now and have no insight into this decision, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. Having said that, I think that, for better or worse, GitHub is probably the best location simply because it provides the lowest barrier to entry for new contributors.
I know that's spicy enough to trigger dozens of keyboard warriors hitting the reply button, but every little thing that deviates from "the norm" (for better or for worse, GitHub is that) causes a drop-off in people willing to contribute. There are still people out there, for example, who refuse to create an account on bugzilla.mozilla.org (not that this move to GitHub changes that).
Given the post above, issues regarding self-hosting were at least part of the reason for the switch so a new self-hosted arrangement is unlikely to have been considered at all.
I don't know what the state of play is right now, but non-self-hosted GitLab has had some notable performance issues (and, less often IIRC, availability issues) in the past. This would be a concern for a popular project with many contributors, especially one with a codebase as large as Firefox.
Of course Mozilla is free to make their own choices. But this choice will be read as the latest alarm bell for many already questioning the spirit of Mozilla management.
