alt Hacker NewsAs a solo Founder who recently invested in self-hosted build infrastructure because my company runs ~70,000 minutes/month, this change is going to add an extra $140/month for hardware I own. And that's just today; this number will only go up over time.
I am not open to GitHub extracting usage-based rent for me using my own hardware.
This is the first time in my 15+ years of using GitHub that I'm seriously evaluating alternative products to move my company to.
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I get the frustration. And I’m no GitHub apologist either. But you’re not being charged for hardware you own. You’re being charged for the services surrounding it (the action runner/executor binary you didn’t build, the orchestrator configurable in their DSL you write, the artefact and log retention you’re getting, the plug-n-play with your repo, etc). Whether or not you think that is a fair price is beside the point.
That value to you is apparently less than $140/mo. Find the number you’re comfortable with and then move away from GH Actions if it’s less than $140.
More than 10 years of running my own CI infra with Jenkins on top. In 2023 I gave up Jenkins and paid for BuildKite. It’s still my hardware. BuildKite just provides the “services” I described earlier. Yet I paid them a lot of money to provide their services for me on my own hardware. GH actions, even while free, was never an option for me. I don’t like how it feels.
This is probably bad for GitHub but framing it as “charging me for my hardware” misses the point entirely.
feels like a new generation is learning what life is like when microsoft has a lot of power. (tl;dr: they try to use it.)
But it is not for hardware you own. It is for the use of GutHubs coordinators, which they have been donating the use of to you for free. They have now decided that that service is something they are going to charge for. Your objection to GitHub "extracting usage-based rent from me" seems to ignore that you have been getting usage of their hardware for free up to now.
So, like I said, the question for you is whether that $140/month of service is worth that money to you, or can you find a better priced alternative, or build something that costs less yourself.
My guess is that once you think about this some more you will decide it is worth it, and probably spend some time trying to drive down your minutes/month a bit. But at $140 a month, how much time is that worth investing?