This is exactly right. However, just because some projects can't up and move on a moment's notice doesn't mean the ball isn't rolling.

Yea, my projects are still on there. But it's not going to stay there. It's just there because I've been too busy to investigate alternatives and move. But I will in a week or three.

Why move though ? Just curious.

I don't know if I'll move yet. Since 2006 or so, I've maintained a personal website for code/résumé, etc.

At first it was hosted on http://peterburk.free.fr, my parents' ISP. That was fine until I no longer lived with them, and I can't trust that it'll always be available. Also, I wanted a .com subdomain instead of a .fr domain.

So in 2011, I moved to http://peterburk.appspot.com on Google App Engine. No problem, until I moved to China in 2013. All Google services are blocked there, including my page. So I migrated to http://peter-burk.rhcloud.com (Red Hat OpenShift). I didn't like the mandatory dash in the subdomain, so I also set up http://peterburk.tumblr.com to redirect. RHCloud supported PHP, so I could finally run WordPress.

Then RHCloud changed to being paid-only, so in 2015 I moved to https://peterburk.github.com and couldn't use PHP again. Now I code everything in client-side JavaScript and static HTML. More recently, Github removed the .com subdomain service, so my Chinese-learning side project is https://pingtype.github.io and that confuses some users. If something happens to Github, I might try to hop to heroku, but http://peterburk.herokuapp.com is pretty long to type.

What do other people do for ad-free hosting? I think most sites pay for AWS, but I can't have a credit card because I'm a foreigner. The design of my site is very basic, because I've had to re-write it 4 times already, typically every 2 years. I choose technologies based on the platform features, so I did know all about GAE, but now I'm more familiar with Git. My loyalty isn't to the code management tool (this is for side projects, not a business that would need collaboration with colleagues), I just move to wherever is free/not blocked by China/has an easy-to-remember domain name.

> What do other people do for ad-free hosting?

By your own domain a $5/month VPS and host your apps just the way you like it.

Just 10 years ago, geeks like us used to take pride in buying domain and creating a personal presence with one's domain name. Don't people do that anymore?

I find this trend of looking for free hosting services a bit disturbing. Because you know the cliche that when you are not paying for a service, you are the product.

Even if you do not want to buy a $5/month VPS, please buy the domain. Costs less than $1/month (more like $10/year) and point the domain to your favorite free hosting service with CNAME entries. GitHub and Heroku support such custom domains with CNAME entries.

Buy your own domain. It's worth the investment in your brand.

I've started using React-static on netlify. Works well, and will auto deploy on commit to GitHub.

This is my question. There's been no changes. It's still a great platform. Is it that guaranteed that Microsoft is going to mess it up?

Software developers are human too. Every decision need not be rational.

But are they serious developers? The impact might not be felt for years.

This is an important question, microsoft controlling the servers that host most open source code is not great but what they really bought was the community. If those developers move a small project no big deal, but, those same developers will never start another project on github and will of course stop recommending github to corporate clients. Github will become VSS.

I'd consider Gnome a pretty serious product.

https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/gnome-moves-to-gitlab-2/

ok. so they weren't on github. GOSH!

Gnome didn't move to gitlab because Microsoft is buying it. They weren't even on github. IIRC, they were self-hosting. And they still are.

FYI, Nat Friedman, co-founder of GNOME, is now the Microsoft employee who is the CEO of GitHub.

Well, not quite. Nat cofounded a company (Helix Code, later Ximian) with Miguel de Icaza (cofounder) which then developed GNOME apps and infra.[0]

Nat was a cofounder in the same way that Jeb Bush was a US president. Connected to one perhaps but not one himself.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History

I believe you are mistaking Miguel de Icaza with Nat Friedman (probably because of Ximian).

Isn't Miguel de Icaza also with Microsoft now ?

Yes.

Gnome has never been hosted on GitHub!

They aren't hosting on gitlab.com and github.com because both are not open source. Gitlab.com is open core which us why they host on their own gitlab ce version.