I think that federated gitlab instances could be a good next step forward for becoming independent from big companies.
At the moment I host a lot of my code to Github because of discoverability, but I do not feel comfortable with depending on Microsoft for this service. Gitlab is a self hosted Git server, but there is no way to federate the instances like on Lemmy. Are there any projects that deal with this?
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/](Github has banned developers in Crimea, Iran, Syria) because of US export rules. This is a good enough reason for me to be worried.
Apart from that do you trust Github not using your private projects for their AI training?
The idea popped up in my head because I am planning to open-source some of my work, and my organization wants me to keep it on our Gitlab instance. The problem there is that nobody will ever run into this project, which is why I want to keep it on Github ( only for discoverability ). But this would not be necessary if our Gitlab instance would be actually discoverable from other Gitlab instances, hence the federation.
I wasn’t aware of the sanctions, so thanks for sharing that! As for the AI, it is inevitable if the source code is public. Having it hosted elsewhere might slow the consumption, but it’s coming regardless.
Still, I do think a federated platform is a great idea. The more we can do without relying on a centralized, corporate platform, the better off we’ll be as a society.