Exploring GitHub Alternatives for Hosting Open Source Projects

The acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft has raised concerns among some open-source enthusiasts. This apprehension is rooted in the understanding that Microsoft, being a for-profit corporation, may introduce alterations to the platform's terms and conditions, a typical outcome in such business dealings, even for the world's premier software development platform.

If you're considering alternatives to GitHub for hosting your open-source project(s), take a look at the list below.

GitLab stands out as an open-source, robust, secure, and highly efficient application designed for managing the software development and operations (DevOps) lifecycle.

It emerges as a top-tier alternative to GitHub, offering an array of features, including group milestones, an issue tracker, configurable issue boards, seamless issue migration between projects, and more. Additionally, GitLab supports time tracking, robust branching tools, protected branches and tags, file locking, merge requests, custom notifications, project roadmaps, issue weight management, as well as handling confidential and related issues. 

To top it off, GitLab provides burndown charts for project and group milestones, making it a comprehensive platform for DevOps and software development.

Moreover, GitLab offers the flexibility to integrate with Mattermost, create issues directly from emails, and preview your modifications using review apps. The platform also includes a Web IDE and offers a variety of project templates to kickstart your projects, among many other features.

Bitbucket stands as a robust, fully scalable, and high-performance development platform meticulously crafted for professional teams. Education users and open-source projects are granted complimentary Bitbucket accounts with a host of valuable features.

The platform offers a straightforward six-step process to effortlessly import your GitHub repositories into Bitbucket, ensuring a smooth transition. It further supports seamless third-party integrations. Bitbucket's feature set includes the impressive Bitbucket Pipelines, comprehensive code search, pull request management, adaptable deployment models, a user-friendly diff view, intelligent mirroring, issue tracking, IP whitelisting, and branch permissions to fortify the security and efficiency of your workflow.

Bitbucket's exceptional features extend to its robust support for Git Large File Storage (LFS), particularly valuable for game development. With the capability to host an unlimited number of private repositories, it seamlessly integrates into your current workflow and includes built-in support for continuous delivery.

Leading companies like BBC Worldwide, Alibaba, AVG, Avast, Blackberry, and numerous others have chosen Bitbucket as their platform of choice.

Beanstalk stands as a formidable, secure, high-performance, and dependable platform tailored for the seamless management of source code repositories.

This platform is meticulously designed to enhance your development workflow, offering an array of valuable features. These include code review capabilities, an efficient issue tracker, comprehensive repository statistics, release note management, notification systems, email digests, a convenient compare view, a complete history of commits and files, and a host of other resources to streamline your development process.

Beanstalk prioritizes security by implementing repository and branch-level permissions, bolstering account security through two-step authentication, maintaining IP access records, enforcing strong password requirements, and implementing IP access restrictions. It offers flexibility for deployment across multiple environments with customizable configurations.

Distinguished companies like Philips, Intel, and many more have embraced Beanstalk as a valuable part of their development and security strategy.

Launchpad stands as a renowned and completely free platform developed by Canonical, the creator of Ubuntu Linux. It serves as a versatile hub for creating, overseeing, and facilitating collaborative efforts on software projects.

Within its arsenal of features, Launchpad offers code hosting, Ubuntu package creation and hosting, bug tracking, code reviews, mailing lists, and specification monitoring. Moreover, Launchpad extends its capabilities to support translations, answer tracking, and a comprehensive FAQ section.

Launchpad hosts a variety of well-known projects, including Ubuntu Linux, MySQL, OpenStack, Terminator, and numerous others.

SourceForge stands as a cost-free, open-source software development and distribution platform designed to empower open-source projects. It is hosted on Apache Allura and accommodates an unlimited number of individual projects.

SourceForge provides a comprehensive range of services, including code repositories, open-source directories, integrated issue-tracking tools, and project documentation. Additionally, it offers support for forums, blogs, and mailing lists.

Notably, SourceForge serves as the hosting platform for prominent projects like Apache OpenOffice, FileZilla, and many others.

GitBucket, an open-source and incredibly adaptable Git platform, is designed to operate within the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) environment. It boasts a rich array of features, including a repository viewer, issue tracker, pull requests, documentation, and a wiki. What's more, it offers a plugin system to effortlessly expand its core functionality.

Gogs, a cost-free, open-source, lightweight, and highly customizable self-hosted Git service, boasts incredibly modest system requirements. It offers easy installation and is compact enough to function smoothly even on a Raspberry Pi.

With its user-friendly features, Gogs is arguably the most straightforward and speedy method to establish your self-hosted code hosting solution for your open-source project.

AWS CodeCommit, a dependable source control service, is purpose-built to safely house Git-based repositories, fostering seamless teamwork in a secure and incredibly scalable setting. This liberates you from the complexities of upkeeping your own source control system and the anxieties of infrastructure scaling.

CodeCommit offers a rock-solid platform for housing a wide spectrum of data, ranging from source code to binaries, while effortlessly integrating with your existing Git tools.

Google Cloud Source Repositories stands as a formidable and secure platform tailored to the management of source code. It excels at fostering collaborative software development by offering a robust version control solution that empowers developers to efficiently store, track, and manage their code repositories.

Designed to seamlessly integrate with popular version control systems like Git, Google Cloud Source Repositories facilitate effortless teamwork on projects through robust access controls.

This centralized, cloud-based repository simplifies code collaboration, while its impressive scalability makes it an ideal choice for modern software development teams, accommodating projects of all sizes with ease.

Gitea, a free and open-source platform, is a breeze to install and is a community-managed evolution of Gogs. It serves as a straightforward and high-speed solution for establishing a self-hosted Git service, perfect for open-source software development.

Apache Allura stands as an open-source, adaptable, extensible, and customizable project hosting platform that had its origins at SourceForge.

This platform offers a suite of tools designed to facilitate collaborative work on software projects. Its impressive array of features includes issue tracking, robust search capabilities, syntax highlighting, forking and merge requests, a commit history graph view, threaded discussion forums, code repositories, project documentation, and much more. All of this can be self-hosted on an instance of Allura.

While GitHub remains a prominent platform for hosting open-source projects, there are various alternatives available to cater to the diverse needs of developers and development teams. GitLab, Bitbucket, Beanstalk, Launchpad, SourceForge, GitBucket, Gogs, AWS CodeCommit, Google Cloud Source Repositories, Gitea, Apache Allura, RhodeCode, Phabricator, Fossil, and AWS CodeBuild offer a range of features and deployment options, from self-hosted solutions to cloud-based services.

When choosing an alternative to GitHub, consider factors such as project size, collaboration requirements, security, scalability, and integration with other development tools. The right platform will depend on your specific project and team needs, and the options listed here provide a comprehensive array of choices to explore for hosting your open-source projects.