# GitHub 764 Hacker News commenters recommended GitHub and 2350 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 11 years (47 owners). **Verdict:** The default git forge, recommended for its huge community, project discovery and familiar pull-request tooling, though many now complain about frequent outages, AI push and lock-in. ## Why people recommend it - Largest community and network effect (5 comments): "it's probably a mistake for any one company to not pick GitHub, because it's likely a higher friction distraction from what the actual goals are of the company" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46102371)) "The base infrastructure is open source and replicable, and still there's a virtuous cycle that keeps people choosing it over the alternatives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49467811)) "Frankly not very compelling reasons to ditch the most popular forge if you value other people using/contributing to your project at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290654)) - Stars help discover and judge projects (2 comments): "github is great for discovering and tracking projects, reflecting growth via the star and fork system (although a bit broken in the last few years)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46132922)) "Although I'm not a fan of GH, I appreciate the ability to see how popular/valid some project is by looking at the number of stars" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46099465)) - Familiar UI and merge tooling (3 comments): "Some of my attraction to github is just that I am used to and like the UI, and I get annoyed on another platform where I don't understand the UI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47961847)) "Using the Github squash merge approach, every commit in the main branch refers back to a pull request, which makes this super nice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46608443)) "But Github's tooling is based around the squash merge. It works well and I don't know anyone in real life who has issues with it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689476)) - Free support for open source (3 comments): "I’m grateful for GitHub and their support for open source, but they’re not getting any sympathy for the AI mess they’re generating" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47593459)) "That's something github gives for free, and for me, it's the only reason to stay on github for small/tiny free software projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331460)) "they are clearly on board with the idea given that they help massive projects like Nix packages instead of kicking them off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46393208)) ## What people warn about - Frequent outages and poor reliability (10 comments): "General outage was uncommon, but unicorns and octocat popping up for particular pages/repos was common enough for me in the past." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49213504)) "GitHub's reliability could stand to be improved but without narrowing down to products these sort of comparisons are meaningless." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47592546)) "The scale problem will keep getting worse, and it's getting worse in a way I don't think is translating to more money for them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49382023)) - Microsoft's AI push and bot spam (7 comments): "I’m grateful for GitHub and their support for open source, but they’re not getting any sympathy for the AI mess they’re generating" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47593459)) "they need to pick a lane and decide if they want to boost professional developer productivity or be a platform for vibe coding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134858)) "If I go to one of your GPL projects and I ask a simple question to find out what this project is about, you will be perfectly "ok" that this interaction will be used for training? This is not ok." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47549643)) - Strong vendor lock-in (5 comments): "github's business model is not really a git repository but a bunch of other (admittedly useful) stuff that traps people in their ecosystem" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491018)) "Only downside I've found to this workflow is that it would make it harder to migrate to a different Git forge in the future" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47569642)) "Github has an insane level of vendor lock-in that you cannot understand until you fully remove yourself from the platform." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47940495)) - Microsoft ownership and mismanagement (3 comments): "Ongoing availability issues, Microsoft's shoehorning of AI, GitHub's focus on migrating to Azure infrastructure rather than adding features and fixing shortcomings." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100322)) "First just because github is not Foss, then accelerated because of Microsoft, and Microsoft now mismanaging Github with ai bullshit accelerated it even more." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060388)) "Is it possible to create mirrors of every repo with no Microsoft dependency or until someone else acquires GitHub from Microsoft and makes it more reliable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334258)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Forgejo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/forgejo.md): 380 recommend - [GitLab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitlab.md): 331 recommend - [Codeberg](https://hackerapproved.com/p/codeberg.md): 331 recommend - [Gitea](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitea.md): 195 recommend - [Tangled](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tangled.md): 127 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://github.com/pricing) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "GitHub", https://hackerapproved.com/p/github/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).