Hey fellow devs,

I used to love GitHub. Back when it felt like the internet's code playground — free public repos, smooth collaboration, no corporate overlord breathing down our necks.

Now? It's just another Microsoft product designed to extract every drop of value from us while giving us AI slop and broken CI in return.

And with the latest Copilot policy change dropping in April 2026, the mask is fully off. Microsoft didn't "save" GitHub in 2018. They bought it to turn the world's biggest open-source hub into their private AI training farm and lock-in machine.

It's Microsoft. They always suck.

The Golden Days: When GitHub Was Built by Rebels

GitHub launched in 2008 by a small team obsessed with Ruby on Rails. These weren't suits in Redmond — they were devs who hated the clunky tools of the era and wanted something simple, social, and actually built for developers.

Public repos were free. The community came first. No hidden agendas. No "interaction data" quietly feeding some billionaire's next monopoly play.

That was the promise. A neutral home for code.

Fast forward to 2026: that promise is dead.

The Old Policy: GitHub Actually Cared About Devs

Once upon a time, GitHub's stance was refreshingly straightforward — public code could be indexed, but your private stuff stayed private. No sneaky training on your workflow. No forcing you to subsidize their AI experiments.

It felt like a tech company that respected the "open" in open source.

The 2026 Betrayal: Your Copilot Keystrokes Now Belong to Microsoft

On March 25, 2026, GitHub casually announced the change. Starting April 24, 2026, interaction data from Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users — your prompts, accepted suggestions, rejected code, code snippets, file context, even stuff happening inside private repos while you're actively using Copilot — will be used to train their AI models by default.

Opt-out exists (buried in settings), but it's opt-out, not opt-in. Classic Microsoft move.

They swear private repo code "at rest" isn't used. Cute. But anything that flows through Copilot while you're coding? Fair game unless you dig through menus to stop it.

This isn't "improving the product." This is Microsoft turning your brain and your private work into free training data for their cash cow.

Your code. Your late nights. Your proprietary logic. All feeding the beast.

It's Microsoft. They always suck at asking permission first.

Even Their Own Leadership Is Bailing

Remember when GitHub still felt semi-independent? Yeah, that ended in 2025.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke resigned in August 2025, staying on only until year-end. No replacement CEO was named. Instead, GitHub's leadership now reports directly into Microsoft's CoreAI organization.

The timing? Right as the AI aggression ramped up and GitHub got folded deeper into the Microsoft machine.

When even the CEO nopes out as your company gets absorbed into the AI overlord division... the rumors weren't rumors. The independent spirit is gone.

AI Slop Is Flooding GitHub — And It's Killing Real Open Source

Thanks to Copilot, GitHub is drowning in low-effort, AI-generated garbage. Maintainers report 30-50%+ of incoming PRs are obvious LLM slop. Real contributors are burning out from reviewing crap.

Projects are starting to ban AI-generated contributions outright. The signal-to-noise ratio is collapsing.

Microsoft's bet on Copilot is actively making open source worse, not better. They're not stewards — they're parasites turning the commons into their data mine.

GitHub Actions: Slow, Expensive, and Microsoft Doesn't Give a Damn

February 2026 was a nightmare for anyone relying on hosted runners. High wait times, outages affecting Actions, PRs, notifications, and even Copilot. Billing continued while jobs sat queued. Support? Ghosted or blamed on "Azure issues."

Your builds are on fire, and their response is basically "lol, pay more or wait longer."

This isn't a service anymore. It's a half-broken upsell funnel trying to push you toward Azure.

Where Everyone Is Fleeing: Codeberg, GitLab, Bitbucket

The migration wave is real.

• Codeberg (non-profit, Forgejo-based, EU-hosted, privacy-focused) is the darling for OSS projects tired of Microsoft's grip. Zig, various tools, and plenty of indie devs have already moved.
• GitLab offers full DevOps in one place with better CI.
• Bitbucket still has its fans for enterprise.

People aren't just complaining — they're voting with their repos. Archives on GitHub, active development on the new homes.

Fix Your Builds Now: Ditch GitHub Runners for Depot or Blacksmith

You don't even need to fully migrate to escape the Actions pain.

Depot and Blacksmith give you dramatically faster runners (often 2-10x), better caching, lower costs, and way less queuing. Many teams report builds finishing in minutes instead of watching the GitHub spinner for half an hour.

Stop subsidizing Microsoft's broken infrastructure. Switch your workflows today — it's a one-line change in many cases.

Copilot Was Never Good for Open Source

Microsoft loves to preach "open source" while training on public code, then on your private interactions, then pushing AI suggestions that erode maintainer sanity.

They never loved open source. They loved the data. And the lock-in.

Next Victims: .NET Devs, Your Empire Is Crumbling

Microsoft spent decades telling everyone that .NET was the only serious way to build real Windows desktop apps. Deep native API access, Visual Studio magic, tight Azure integration — the full ecosystem lock-in.

It worked... for a while.

Now? That moat is getting absolutely demolished in 2026.

• Rust + Tauri is eating Electron's lunch: apps 96% smaller, 50%+ less RAM, near-native performance. New desktop projects are defaulting to Tauri. Bundle sizes go from 100-200MB down to 3-10MB.
• Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) has seen adoption explode (doubled to ~18% in recent years). Netflix, Cash App, McDonald’s, Duolingo — all sharing serious code across platforms with native performance. Google now recommends it for Android-iOS logic sharing.
• Electrobun, modern React Native, Flutter/Dart, and even Java options are giving devs lighter, truly cross-platform paths without the Microsoft tax.

So what does a desperate monopoly do when its Windows/.NET desktop empire gets bodied by better, lighter tech?

It doesn't compete harder on merit.

It doubles down on data extraction via GitHub/Copilot, folds everything into CoreAI, and quietly steers critical paths back toward .NET + overpriced Azure.

Pretty soon we'll see tighter integration where serious Windows internals and APIs "just work better" (or only reliably) inside the .NET ecosystem. Not today, but the pattern is obvious — embrace, extend, extinguish, with AI slop as the new weapon.

Mark my words: .NET loyalists will be crying next as the ecosystem gets squeezed to protect the Azure cash cow.

It's Microsoft. They always suck at fair competition, so they change the rules.

The Big Picture: Microsoft’s Panic Monopoly Play

This isn't random greed. This is response to reality.

Microsoft's old Windows/.NET dominance has been repeatedly beaten by:

• JavaScript/TypeScript eating the web and tools (VS Code ironically helped this)
• Rust exploding for systems and safe desktop
• Python dominating data/science
• Kotlin/Flutter for mobile and beyond
• Java staying rock-solid
• Dart/Flutter for beautiful cross-platform UIs

Instead of building better products, Microsoft bought GitHub, made Copilot the revenue rocket, turned your coding into training data, and is trying to force everyone back into their expensive cloud + .NET prison.

Classic "if we can't win, we'll own the playing field" strategy.

Conclusion: Stop Trusting Blindly — Especially Microsoft

GitHub isn't your friend anymore. It's a Microsoft product, and Microsoft always sucks when it comes to long-term developer freedom.

Don't bet your entire workflow on them.

Migrate where it makes sense — Codeberg for OSS purity, GitLab for serious DevOps, self-host if you're hardcore.

Switch your runners to Depot or Blacksmith immediately.

Go Linux as your daily driver. The quality of life jump is insane once you're not fighting Microsoft's ecosystem tax.

And most importantly: Never trust any big tech company blindly. They all eventually prioritize profits over devs.

The open web was built by people who rejected lock-in. Let's keep that spirit alive.

What are you migrating first? Drop your stories below — and let's make Microsoft feel this one.

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