Going Solo: A Veteran Programmer's Rejection of Git Forges

Veteran programmer Simon Tatham has long maintained his open-source projects using independent Git repositories, eschewing popular platforms like GitHub and GitLab. He details his reasoning: trust – preferring self-control over reliance on large corporations; efficiency – avoiding the overhead of complex forge systems; user experience – minimizing the burden of account creation; and workflow autonomy – prioritizing independent development processes over platform constraints. He favors email patch submissions, detailing preferred methods including a Git repository URL, incremental Git bundles, and other approaches, explaining his rationale for each. While acknowledging the lower transparency of his method, he remains unconvinced of the benefits of forges outweighing their drawbacks. He concludes by expressing openness to alternative systems which offer both transparency and lightweight management.