I moved my AI project off GitHub to Codeberg — here's what happened

This week, Codeberg hit the front page of Hacker News with 496 points and 250 comments. Developers are migrating away from GitHub. The conversation reminded me of a decision I made last year when I built SimplyLouie — and why I try to reduce dependency on Big Tech platforms wherever I can.

The GitHub dependency problem

Most developers don't think about platform risk until it bites them. GitHub is owned by Microsoft. Your code is on their servers, under their terms, with their AI training policies.

I'm not anti-Microsoft. But I am pro-independence.

When you're building something small and independent — a $2/month AI tool, a side project, anything — platform risk is real. You've seen it happen:

• OpenAI killed Sora with no warning
• LiteLLM got supply-chain attacked through a compromised dependency
• GitHub Copilot started training on your private code (unless you opt out)

The pattern is: Big Tech gives you something free, then slowly changes the terms.

What Codeberg actually is

Codeberg is a nonprofit-run Git hosting platform. It's Gitea under the hood. No VC money, no ad model, no AI training on your repos.

The migration process took about 45 minutes for my main project:

# Mirror from GitHub to Codeberg
git remote add codeberg https://codeberg.org/youruser/yourrepo.git
git push codeberg --all
git push codeberg --tags

Then update your CI/CD to point to the new remote. Done.

The broader lesson about AI infrastructure

The same logic applies to AI APIs.

I built SimplyLouie as a single-provider Claude API. No LiteLLM proxy. No multi-provider abstraction. Just a direct connection to Anthropic's API, with a thin layer that handles auth and billing.

When the LiteLLM supply-chain attack happened, I was unaffected. When OpenAI killed Sora, I wasn't scrambling. Single dependency, but the right dependency — one I chose intentionally.

The $2/month math

Here's what running a lean AI product actually costs:

VPS (Hetzner CX21):     $7/month
Claude API (typical):   $3-5/month at current usage
Domain + SSL:           $1/month amortized
Codeberg hosting:       FREE (nonprofit)
────────────────────────────────────
Total infrastructure:   ~$12/month

I charge users $2/month. At current scale (3 paid users), I'm not profitable on infrastructure yet — but I'm also spending nothing on sales, marketing tools, or enterprise SaaS.

The goal is to reach 50 paid users ($100 MRR) where infrastructure costs become a rounding error.

Why open source platforms matter for indie builders

When I was deciding where to host SimplyLouie's codebase, I thought about:

1. Data sovereignty — who owns my code?
2. Terms stability — will the rules change?
3. Cost — can I afford this at $2/month per user?
4. Mission alignment — SimplyLouie donates 50% of revenue to animal rescue. I want to work with platforms that have values.

Codeberg is a nonprofit. Anthropic is (unusually for AI) a public benefit corporation. These choices compound.

The developer community is moving

496 points on HN isn't noise. It's a signal that developers are paying attention to platform independence again — the same energy that drove the POSSE movement, the Mastodon migration, the self-hosting renaissance.

If you're building something where the mission matters — where why you built it is as important as what you built — your infrastructure choices should reflect that.

Try SimplyLouie

If you want Claude API access at $2/month with no Big Tech lock-in:

👉 simplylouie.com — 7-day free trial, cancel anytime

50% of revenue goes to animal rescue. The pricing is fixed at $2/month — always.

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Built by a developer who believes tools should be affordable, independent, and mission-aligned. The peace sign in ✌️2/month is intentional.