I've heard and read variations of this a lot. GitHub never was simply a git frontend. It always had a community and artefacts around the code.
When Github was stable and well loved, people defended it all the time. It was the place to upload code, find contributors, and (after Microslop bought it) even funding for those lucky few popular enough to get it. I understand that change is hard but GitHub's trajectory was written in stone the second Microslop bought it.
Of course, letting go of something is difficult, especially if it feels simple to use and everybody else seems to be using it. But when cracks start to show, the minority will react. The majority will simply tolerate enshittification and reject anything else, for many reasons. Some are valid, some not, it's perspective sometimes.
However, claiming that moving away from Github is easy because git is decentralised... that's either a profound lack of understanding or a bad faith argument. Maybe even both. If you honestly think that's the case, go see how fun it is to contribute to the Linux kernel (or any project using mailing lists). Go to a project hosted on Git Web and try to submit a bug report.
Alternatives
There is hope for one GitHub alternative in particular with a highly unfortunate name for reason I won't get into: forgejo. They have been trying for years to build a federated gitforge (without much success unfortunately), but hope might be on the horizon as Europe starts down the path of leaving foreign Big Tech behind. The Netherlands wants to contribute to forgejo.
Gitlab, another GitHub alternative, has many French institutions as customers, but they have done their absolute best to ignore any requests for federation support. Instead, they've jumped onto the bandwagon and gone all in on AI. Don't expect any progress on that front any time soon.
Why federation
As stated before, GitHub has many things besides git, the biggest one is the community. But to contribute, you need to create an account Microslop's platform. You cannot use that account for smooth experience once you move to an alternative. You can login with it, but that's about it.
Without federation, any alternative is fighting an already immense uphill battle. When you create your user with your repositories on ALTERNATIVE SERVER that cannot connect to ANOTHER SERVER, which forces you to create accounts on every other server.
Federation would solve that. You could search, find and contribute to repositories on the fediverse. It could (hopefully) put a dent in GitHub's omnipresence and allow for users to migrate away once, without creating accounts everywhere. Normal users could also contribute straight from the fediverse without having to create an account on Github first.
Let's hope European countries fund forgejo instead of forking it or starting a completely new project.
