Surely self-hosted runners are a retention mechanism with a relatively low cost for GitHub? How do they rationalise the long-term harm that this causes over just swallowing the relatively small amount it costs to keep customers paying?

People, now, are going to be annoyed and/or pissed off about this and look for/move to alternatives. It's not even that difficult to move, and if you're already self-hosting runners you're also in the position to self-host your Forge or move elsewhere.

Actions isn't even good enough to demand this. They're slow, buggy, and full of shit.

Feels super much like the classic Microsoft short-sighted bullshit. Take something that's been running well, and people were happy, then abruptly change it in disruptive ways and slowly kill your products that were doing just fine.

Github can just drop Actions pricing and leave the self-hosted stuff alone, and people would even have extended more goodwill. Is MS this short-sighted and greedy as to push further toward killing a golden goose?