Gentoo Linux Ditches GitHub Over AI Concerns
The Gentoo Linux project is migrating its code repositories from GitHub to Codeberg, a non-profit alternative. The move was prompted by concerns over Microsoft's use of public code to train AI tools like GitHub Copilot, highlighting a growing tension in the open-source community between AI-powered development and code provenance.
- The migration, first announced in January 2026, was prompted by what Gentoo developers described as "continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories". In 2024, the project had already established a policy forbidding contributions created with the help of Natural Language Processing AI tools due to copyright, quality, and ethical concerns. - Codeberg, the chosen alternative, is a non-profit Git hosting platform based in Berlin, Germany, that runs on Forgejo, an open-source software forge. It positions itself as a community-driven and privacy-focused platform, with no tracking or third-party cookies. - This move is part of a larger trend of open-source projects expressing concern over GitHub's direction since its acquisition by Microsoft. In late 2025, the Zig programming language and the Dillo browser project also announced moves away from GitHub, citing frustrations with bugs and an over-focus on AI. - The Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organization, began a "Give up GitHub" campaign in 2022, spurred by the launch of the for-profit Copilot tool which was trained on public open-source code. - Gentoo is a long-standing Linux distribution, first released in 2002, known for its "rolling release" model and source-based package management system called Portage. This system allows users to compile and optimize software specifically for their hardware, giving them a high degree of control. - The migration from GitHub is gradual. Initially, only the main "ebuild" repository for software packages is actively using Codeberg for pull requests, with other repositories to follow. Gentoo will maintain its primary infrastructure and mirrors on both platforms for the time being. - Concerns around AI-powered coding assistants like Copilot include the potential for leaking secrets and proprietary code, generating insecure code suggestions, and introducing licensing issues. Free-tier users of Copilot may have their code used to train the AI models. - The new CEO-less structure of GitHub, reporting directly to Microsoft's CoreAI engineering division as of August 2025, has intensified worries within the developer community about the platform's future priorities.
