Midway towards Codeberg.org Mar 31, 2026

The active development of the Genode OS Framework is gradually moving from GitHub to Codeberg.

After having started out on Sourceforge, Genode's source-code had been hosted on GitHub since 2012. Since embracing GitHub, all of Genode's development happens in the open, completely transparent for everyone, using GitHub's issue tracker, which accumulated more that 5500 technical topics discussed over the years.

With the acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft in 2018, we initially grew weary of potential conflicts of interests between the new landlord and the interests of the free-software community. However, from our perspective, GitHub seemingly remained largely true to its own mission for many years. So we remained as happy campers enjoying the free hosting. This illusion was ultimately dispelled by Microsoft's AI products, which feast on open-source code as training material while disregarding licensing and ethical concerns. Genode has not been developed to be swallowed as training material for AI products after all.

Fortunately, others have seen the writing on the wall long before us. In particular, a courageous group of Berliners came together, founding a non-profit organization to establish a counter weight to corporate dominance in the domain of open-source code hosting. According to its mission statement, Codeberg.org puts software freedom first. Being a non-profit, it has a transparent and open governance structure, not driven by exploitative motives. The underlying server software Forgejo resembles the best of GitHub's user interface but it is completely open source.

After on-and-off discussing a potential migration from GitHub to Codeberg since mid of 2024, we have eventually taken the leap. By now, all of Genode's source repositories and discussions except for the main repository have been successfully moved over to our new host. This includes the Goa SDK, the genode-world repository, all hardware-specific supplements, and the Genode books. We somewhat expected technical points of friction for a migration like that. But to our surprise there was none. The process was buttery-smooth. Given this delightful experience so far, the main repository will follow suit shortly.

We are not leaving GitHub in grief. In fact, we are thankful for the free hosting we have enjoyed over the past 14 years. However, Codeberg.org feels much closer to home both location-wise and ethically. From now on, you will find our code at https://codeberg.org/genodelabs.