According to a Statista report, the open-source services market is expected to hit a market valuation of USD 30 billion this year. Today, GitHub is the go-to repository for the tech community to adopt, collaborate, create and discuss open-source code projects. GitHub caters to over 73 million users and hosts 200 million private and public repositories as of November 2021. In addition, the version control platform offers precision bug-tracking, real-time collaboration, documentation and web page hosting.

Below, we look at alternative hosting platforms gaining popularity in open source development.

GitLab

GitLab Inc offers DevOps software, GitLab, to an estimated 30 million registered users. Go, Ruby on Rails, and Vue.js power its tech stack. GitLab follows an open-core development model, and the core functionality is released under an open-source (MIT) license. Meanwhile, functionalities such as code owners, multiple issue assignees, dependency scanning, etc are under a proprietary license.

The one DevOps platform provides turnkey solutions for planning, packaging, releasing, securing and managing applications. In addition, GitLab has a dedicated project website and an integrated project wiki. 

Click here for more details.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket is another Git-based hosting platform for open source repositories. Backed by Atlassian, the platform serves as a one-stop-shop to plan projects, collaborate on code, test, and deploy.

Bitbucket’s features like smart monitoring, flexible deployments, and issue tracking help improve workflow. It also offers an IP whitelisting and integrated Snyk security scan to dial up the security aspect.

Bitbucket has unlimited free private repositories and integrates seamlessly with third-party apps like JIRA and Trello etc.

Check out the platform here.

Launchpad

Developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd, Launchpad is an open-source code-hosting platform developers use to create, test, collaborate, and manage code. The python-based platform allows developers to track and resolve bugs. You can share bug reports, statuses, patches and comments across project boundaries. Launchpad lets you develop, promote and publish software, collaborate with other projects and developers, and build communities using teams and mailing lists.

Click here for more details.

SourceForge

SourceForge is one of the first open-source platforms. Developers can select either Git or Mercurial as their version control system in the platform. Compared to GitHub, SourceForge follows an entirely different structure for a project. SourceForge allows users to host both static and dynamic pages. The platform’s popular directory connects nearly 30 million visitors and serves more than 2.6 million software downloads a day.

Check the platform out here.

Beanstalk

Beanstalk helps developers manage source code repositories and is designed to improve their development workflow. It provides features such as issue tracker, email digests, comparison review, history of commits & files, etc. In addition, Beanstalk has two-factor authentication and guarantees security through IP records and by enforcing strong passwords for accounts with level permissions.

Click here to know more.

Rhode Code

RhodeCode is an enterprise source code management platform that provides version control through Mercurial, Git, and SVN repositories. It offers a web interface and APIs to control source code access, manage users, and conduct code reviews. It also allows forking, pull requests, and code reviews via a web interface. In addition, the platform applies existing tools and integrations across the whole codebase.

RhodeCode is written in Python using the Pylons Framework that runs as a standalone application on a dedicated server (or in a private cloud) to manage multiple repositories within an organisation. RhodeCode CE is a free platform where an unlimited number of users can access all the repositories, whereas RhodeCode EE is for-fee and builds enterprise integrations on top of CE.

For more info, click here.

Gitea

Gitea is an open-source forge software package used for hosting development with version control using Git. The website provides collaborative features like code review, bug tracking and wikis. It supports self-hosting and provides a free public first-party instance. Gitea can be hosted on all platforms supported by Go, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. Open Collective funds the project.

Check it out here.

Git Bucket

GitBucket is a GitHub clone created on Scala and is compatible with all GitHub APIs. Migration from GitHub is simple due to the repository hosting via HTTPS or SSH. Git bucket’s major features include pull requests, repository viewer, issue tracker, documentation, and wiki.
Click here for more details.