I created my github account about four years ago. I'd written a fair amount of code prior
to that, but after I began work on stellar-enigma, which was (and still is) my most
complicated project, I decided it was time to start using external version control. I
also wanted my projects to get out there, in the off chance that someone could find a
use for any of them.
I went with github, as it was the git server I was most familar with. It was what most
people were using at the time.
Microsoft acquired github in 2018. For a while, everything operated mostly fine. However,
things slowly got worse. Github's reliability began falling. Microsoft started changing
things up. Most importantly to me, though, are the changes that began after the AI boom.
After products like ChatGPT went viral, Microsoft started pushing Copilot into all
sorts of things. Copilot's training data includes most github repositories.
I'm generally not a big fan of AI. I wouldn't call myself a hard-line anti-AI type, but
I have many negative towards it. Particularly the ways in which it's enabled people to
fill the internet with worthless SEO spam, trivialized the spreading of lies and
misinformation, and taken over the entire economy.
I write my code without AI. I enjoy solving problems, building cool things, and improving
my skills. I don't want my code to be fed to microsoft's slop machine so it can get
better at filling the internet with worthless garbage.
I know that demands that AI not be trained on one's data are legally dubious and likely
unenforceable. However, I can choose to leave a platform that uses my code as input to
a machine built to further enrich Microsoft. I don't want to contribute my effort towards
this.
For a while, I didn't really want to move off of github. I have more than a dozen
repositories hosted there. For a while, I hosted my website there. However, over the last
year or so, I've been trying to get away from big tech (mainly google) to what extent
I can. I still rely on google for many things, but I've definitely made some strides
there.
I finally decided it was time to leave github behind. I picked codeberg, and have been
migrating my repositories over there. I'm planning on either deleting or archiving most
of my repositories on github. When that happens, I'll update all my relevant pages
to point to the new links.
Footnote:
I'm perfectly happy with others remixing my code, using it as a base for other projects,
or other transformative uses that follow the terms of the licenses I use. I release
all my code under open source licenses for a reason. I don't really consider AI training
as the same sort of thing. If you want to use AI to make a project based on my code, I
won't stop you.