Gentoo Ditches GitHub for Codeberg as Microsoft Pushes Copilot on Open Source Projects

Gentoo moves to Codeberg amid GitHub Copilot concerns

Gentoo's official migration from Microsoft-owned GitHub to Codeberg is underway, as the Linux distribution fulfills a pledge to ditch the code shack due to "continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories." The decision was made public last month, when Gentoo confirmed it intended to migrate repository mirrors and pull request contributions to the new home. On February 16, the organization revealed it now had a presence on Codeberg, where contributions could be submitted. Gentoo posted: "Eventually also other git repositories will become available under the Codeberg Gentoo organization." It is increasingly difficult to avoid Copilot on GitHub, and the impact of AI on open source is seen more as a negative than a positive, as repositories risk being filled with AI slop. Last week, GitHub added a setting to turn off pull requests entirely, meaning nobody can see existing pull requests or open new ones. The new setting arrived after the Microsoft-owned biz kicked off a discussion earlier this year over "the increasing volume of low-quality contributions that is creating significant operational challenges for maintainers." Open source fan and general tech whizz Jeff Geerling noted the problem in a recent blog post, where he wrote, "AI slop generation is getting easier, but it's not getting smarter. From what I've seen, models have hit a plateau where code generation is pretty good... "But it's not improving like it did the past few years." In 2024, Gentoo published a policy stating, "It is expressly forbidden to contribute to Gentoo any content that has been created with the assistance of Natural Language Processing artificial intelligence tools." The ban was made on the grounds of copyright, quality, and ethical concerns. So, no Copilot assistance or reviews, please. And then there's the whole issue of training coding assistants using the content of repositories. The Codeberg site is based on Forgejo, is maintained by a non-profit, and is located in Berlin, Germany. In its announcement of its intention to migrate, Gentoo wrote, "Gentoo continues to host its own primary git, bugs, etc infrastructure and has no plans to change that," but the migration from GitHub for its mirror repositories due to those "continuous attempts to force Copilot usage" is now underway. The Register contacted GitHub for its reaction to the move and will update if the source shack responds. ®

Gentoo begins its exodus from GitHub as it settles into Codeberg

* Gentoo is migrating from GitHub to Codeberg to avoid Copilot scanning and AI training on its code. * Codeberg is Forgejo-based and run by a non-profit, offering a privacy-focused host for Gentoo. * Contributions are accepted now on Codeberg; GitHub remains active for a transitional period. How much would you allow an AI to scan and train off your code? People have differing opinions as to how much they're okay with an LLM taking a peek at their projects, and I think it's for the best of all humanity if I keep my own code away from the eyes of an AI. Regardless, the team over at Gentoo has made a decision: they'd rather not have Copilot on GitHub going through all of their code. As such, they've been slowly migrating over to Codeberg, and they've just announced that they're open for submissions over on its new home. GOG has already started working on Linux gaming as it says they're "a big fan" of the OS GOG is hitting the ground running with its FOSS support. Posts 6 By Simon Batt Gentoo begins accepting submissions over on Codeberg GitHub is still active...for now As spotted by Phoronix, the Gentoo team has created a new blog post. Titled "Gentoo on Codeberg," it details where the OS is in terms of moving away from GitHub and onto Codeberg: Gentoo now has a presence on Codeberg, and contributions can be submitted for the Gentoo repository mirror at https://codeberg.org/gentoo/gentoo as an alternative to GitHub. Eventually also other git repositories will become available under the Codeberg Gentoo organization. This is part of the gradual mirror migration away from GitHub, as already mentioned in the 2025 end-of-year review. Sure enough, if you take a peek at that end-of-year review, you'll see that the developers weren't happy with GitHub's "continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories." In response, the Gentoo team is moving everything over to Codeberg, which is "based on Forgejo, maintained by a non-profit organization." Gentoo isn't ready to cut the ties with GitHub just yet, as it still has some migration work to be done. However, you can check out the project on the new site and submit code through it, so the team is definitely getting somewhere. Once Gentoo has properly settled into its new home, Gentoo will pull the plug on its GitHub version and go all-in on Codeberg. XDA Report: Subscribe and never miss what matters Stay ahead in the world of Windows, software, PC components, and more with XDA Subscribe By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime. It seems that Linux developers worldwide are using the start of the new year to make a fresh slate for themselves. Just the other day, we heard the news that KaOS, which used KDE Plasma for 12 years, is ditching the desktop environment for Niri.

After Microsoft couldn't keep its AI hands to itself, a notoriously complex Linux distro has started its long march away from GitHub

Gentoo Linux has kicked off its long transition away from Microsoft's GitHub to Codeberg, an open-source git-hosting service run by the Berlin-based non-profit Codeberg e.V (via Phoronix). Which is quite an intimidating series of nouns, but here's why the average Joe/Jane might find it interesting: Gentoo is specifically migrating away from GitHub because Microsoft just can't keep its AI hands to itself. In its 2025 retrospective, published last month, Gentoo announced an initiative to migrate its mirrors from GitHub to Codeberg, "mostly because of the continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories." Like any other AI company, Microsoft is ravenous for training data, and has leveraged its ownership of GitHub (which it acquired in 2018, not without controversy) to feed that hunger, training its LLMs on public repos hosted on the site and nagging users to make use of its GitHub Copilot assistant. Well, Gentoo's had enough. In a post on the project's site yesterday, it announced that "Gentoo now has a presence on Codeberg, and contributions can be submitted for the Gentoo repository mirror at https://codeberg.org/gentoo/gentoo as an alternative to GitHub." It's not a full leap -- you don't move a project as large and complex as Gentoo in one fell swoop -- but it's the beginning of a long process. "Eventually also other git repositories will become available under the Codeberg Gentoo organization," wrote Gentoo's maintainers, assuring users that "These mirrors are for convenience for contribution and we continue to host our own repositories, just like we did while using GitHub mirrors for ease of contribution too." Gentoo is a venerable and well-respected Linux distro, albeit one with a reputation for complexity. That reputation mostly stems from the way it handles packages; users traditionally compile their own software from source rather than making use of precompiled binaries (which is what those of us on simpler OSes are generally used to, as compiling software from source can be, delicately, a complete ballache). Nevertheless, it has a fairly sizeable -- and often quite welcoming -- community, and was the basis for the ChromiumOS operating system from which Google's own ChromeOS was derived. If it's sick enough of Copilot to start a major shift like this, it's certainly not alone.