I created GitSocial, it stores issues, PRs, etc straight in git. Works on any git forge and allows cross-forge PRs and collaboration in general.

https://github.com/gitsocial-org/gitsocial

If you would like less dependence on GitHub for issues and PRs, please check out GitSocial, it stores everything in git itself, making them portable and offline-first.

In "What I gave up" section author mentions his social graph. It is possible to take your social graph and collaboration history using GitSocial. It also allows cross-forge pull requests between any git hosts. All without 3rd party dependencies.

Thank you for this, GitSocial is a very cool piece of software!

github is a social network. git hosting is just a minor feature. thats why none of these alternatives ever take off .

People keep saying this, but I’ve never used the social aspects of GitHub beyond not having to create a new user for a new project.

If the projects I am interested in are elsewhere I’ll meet them where they are.

Happened to me twice (a decade ago, though) that I had some niche project (one a serial terminal, another a laser cutter firmware) that was on github with users left but the maintainer long gone.

I was able to pull the graph and collect patches and bugfixes from forks, like from a fablab somewhere using the same hardware, pushing to their fork with all their other location-specific stuff. In one case I discovered like four different forks with a different fix for the same problem.

Now you could argue the "social" part wasn't working if people fixed the same issue multiple times without knowing about each other. But at least github made it possible for me to collect everything there is, review and merge it into my own repo, and then drop a comment at the original issue tracker. (Which would have gone 404 had it been self-hosted, or with registrations closed due to spam.) In both cases I eventually got feedback from other people who found my branch and used it.

TIL. Thanks!

You're welcome! I'm the creator of GitSocial, happy to answer any questions.

I'm very interested.

I run my own public instance of forgejo. Is this software I run on my own that syndicates other users' commits? GitHub *was* good for discovery; does GitSocial offer something similar? Are there ways I can push more of my contributions into GitSocial, or does that happen automatically when I start using it?

I think the GitSocial website would benefit from a "features and benefits" section rather than just a timeline view and demo, and I advise you to emphasize the benefits. I can see a TUI and a timeline of commits, but it seems like GitSocial is MUCH more exciting than just that.

To me, GitSocial offers freedom from corporate control and surveillance of my open source work, and that's really intriguing.

Discovery is still in the works, but the core idea is that all collaboration data is stored in git itself (be that the project or a fork). It's git all the way down :)

Not if you do it over git itself on the existing forge. You basically store everything in git and federate via git forks/mirrors.

GitSocial solves this: https://gitsocial.org/

GitSocial allows cross-forge collaboration without any 3rd party dependencies as it keeps everything in git: <https://github.com/gitsocial-org/gitsocial/blob/main/documen...>

Git IS the federation layer in this case.

How do you authenticate the identity when people are submitting patches between two repositories running on two different servers?

There's a federated identity spec and implementation: https://github.com/gitsocial-org/gitsocial/blob/main/documen.... For GH/GL, just an api call to verify signature, for custom domains, it's .well-known/gitmsg-id.json

GitSocial is a cross-forge collaboration platform that allows you to store all collaboration data (issues, PRs, releases, etc) as git commits with structured trailers on gitmsg/* branches, syncing via git fetch and git push.

This allows you to stay independent from forges and to collaborate across them (open issues and PRs across forges).

Creator of GitSocial here, check it out if you'd like to have better control of your data and be protected from such things: https://github.com/gitsocial-org/gitsocial

I built GitSocial that allows you to bypass Twitter/Bluesky in favor posting and following straight in your repository: https://github.com/gitsocial-org/gitsocial.

Similarly, VS Code extension is at: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=gitsocia...