<![CDATA[I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage.]]>RE: https://grrl.me/@soph/116586772000163018

I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. On of my decidedly low-traffic but big test suite (173 checks) would cost thousands of dollars per month.

I have come to the inevitable conclusion that they’ve played us all for fools. We all have infinitely fast dev machines, but we need to rent a dev machine’s worth of servers every month to run an open source project?

Absolutely not.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/285b2899-3f2d-45eb-aaec-c65c44d51dc1/i-ve-had-a-similar-awakening-a-few-months-when-realising-that-github-shows-you-the-cost-of-free-for-open-source-actions-usage.RSS for NodeFri, 05 Jun 2026 19:49:57 GMTSun, 17 May 2026 08:33:42 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 18:56:19 GMT]]>@janl tho not OSS related, at work we’ve had self hosted runners for our CI for a while now because LOL @ the pricing for minutes specially for macOS or windows CI runners. Being mostly rust builds our minutes add up fast.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.lol/users/jfro/statuses/116591439362627132https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.lol/users/jfro/statuses/116591439362627132Sun, 17 May 2026 18:56:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 17:32:13 GMT]]>@fedops @janl I'm not suggesting this as much as refocusing. So much is placed on sophisticated CI infrastructure when there might be ways to stage release processes more gradually. We aren't deploying into production from the main branch of most OSS (and if we were we'd probably have our own validation, ie Cloudant services vs official Apache CouchDB releases).

I don't want to trivialize the effort either. Software is hard. We still don't need to assume one right way.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/cararemixed/statuses/116591108655032663https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/cararemixed/statuses/116591108655032663Sun, 17 May 2026 17:32:13 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 16:41:53 GMT]]>@mms @janl sold my soul at the company store 🎶

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/otfrom/statuses/116590910725787535https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/otfrom/statuses/116590910725787535Sun, 17 May 2026 16:41:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:59:00 GMT]]>@janl

On of my decidedly low-traffic but big test suite (173 checks) would cost thousands of dollars per month.

That's at GitHub's prices though. GitHub uses Azure. Even from the MS financials, calculating the exact price that the VMs cost to operate vs the cost to buy is hard, but the estimates I've read place the markup on the reserved pricing at around 200% (spot price is a lot lower). GitHub's markup is wild: it's close to a factor of ten over the raw VM price. This is why there's such a thriving ecosystem of third-party CI providers around GitHub: it's easy to undercut them.

All of this means, that thousands-of-dollars-per-month cost may only be costing tens of dollars to provide.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/david_chisnall/statuses/116590742120614193https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/david_chisnall/statuses/116590742120614193Sun, 17 May 2026 15:59:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:26:50 GMT]]>@fedops @jwildeboer @janl Never got to use TeamCity, unfortunately.

Ugh, AZDO ... had to touch that briefly, what a shit experience.

Tekton et al may be interesting in this context. While representing full Kubernetes buy-in, you can self-host a small cluster, even on your dev machine. It's just ... no layer of abstraction regarding builds/pipelines at all, and lots of infra instead.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/OmegaPolice/statuses/116590615635566273https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/OmegaPolice/statuses/116590615635566273Sun, 17 May 2026 15:26:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:25:38 GMT]]>@otfrom @janl Exactly...

and if this goes into fruition, I'm 99,999% sure they will pay with tokens 😜

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/mms/statuses/116590610928869719https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/mms/statuses/116590610928869719Sun, 17 May 2026 15:25:38 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:20:26 GMT]]>@6 I’m older than the cloud, I don’t need it explained to me 🙂

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116590590434541174https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116590590434541174Sun, 17 May 2026 15:20:26 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:14:10 GMT]]>@janl@narrativ.es I mean, the cloud's always been good only for wildly variable loads, if you have a stable load, then owning your own stuff's always better in the long run
but "the cloud" shines in "oh dang I need 10x more resources this weekend for an event" sorta stuff (or "oh no the project got on HN/slashdot/youtube/whatever and blew up in popularity and now there's so many more people doing stuff")
also some minor other benefits, like supposed 24/7 availability, but github's stuff doesn't have that anyway, lol, and unless you have a very busy project, having even a whole day of downtime is probably not gonna be all too bad anyway, lol

and technically, having a multi-user build system is a more efficient use of resources but...you can afford a bit of waste when self-hosting, who cares that you have a machine idling 24/7 in the corner, the idle usage's pretty negligible generally

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://possum.city/notes/amdhcitjob6603ihhttps://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://possum.city/notes/amdhcitjob6603ihSun, 17 May 2026 15:14:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:08:08 GMT]]>@janl Yeah, what the heck is up with Mac dev licensing? I wanted to cross-compile a Rust crate for Mac and found I would have to sign some sort of contract.

...so I just don't compile for Mac.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/varx/statuses/116590542124934609https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/varx/statuses/116590542124934609Sun, 17 May 2026 15:08:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:04:17 GMT]]>@janl Ah yeah fair enough

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://techhub.social/users/diazona/statuses/116590526932933630https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://techhub.social/users/diazona/statuses/116590526932933630Sun, 17 May 2026 15:04:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 15:03:13 GMT]]>@OmegaPolice yeah. We did use Teamcity for a while, but of course nowadays most stuff is azure devops because msft. Plus Jenkins, but on a server and not on dev machines.

@jwildeboer @janl

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/fedops/statuses/116590522773484667https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/fedops/statuses/116590522773484667Sun, 17 May 2026 15:03:13 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 14:41:48 GMT]]>@fedops @jwildeboer @janl Ah, I seem to have misremembered. They still advertise "local-first", even though they have a cloud offering. IIRC what interested me was their DSL which they abandoned.

Earthly went commercial (which somewhat precludes local-first, doesn't it?) but apparently didn't make it. 🫤

Haven't seen anything except Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub in the enterprise myself.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/OmegaPolice/statuses/116590438515968896https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/OmegaPolice/statuses/116590438515968896Sun, 17 May 2026 14:41:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 14:01:40 GMT]]>@janl What confuses me is that there are TW of energy used in the social media in slagging off AI use for coding and attacking those who might admit to using it, but not a sausage of FOSS effort I can see on making a better tool than these expensive tech bro LLMs. Am really perplexed that FOSS efforts seems to have been defeated by next big thing: training & providing free models that compete with the expensive stuff in speed & quality & give users what they want: off-line, all params known.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/adingbatponder/statuses/116590280729820256https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/adingbatponder/statuses/116590280729820256Sun, 17 May 2026 14:01:40 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:55:08 GMT]]>@mms @janl that... That... Ugh

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/otfrom/statuses/116590255018973501https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/otfrom/statuses/116590255018973501Sun, 17 May 2026 13:55:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:46:36 GMT]]>@otfrom @janl there are plans for distributed compute for llm providers... so I guess all other ways will be outlawed soon.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/mms/statuses/116590221505841485https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/mms/statuses/116590221505841485Sun, 17 May 2026 13:46:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:42:50 GMT]]>@OmegaPolice wonder why...

What happened to Dagger specifically?

@jwildeboer @janl

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/fedops/statuses/116590206700465342https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/fedops/statuses/116590206700465342Sun, 17 May 2026 13:42:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:34:19 GMT]]>@mms @janl I'd like to do some kind of seti@home system.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/otfrom/statuses/116590173173831516https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/otfrom/statuses/116590173173831516Sun, 17 May 2026 13:34:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:31:10 GMT]]>@zygmyd we do this for CouchDB, but our CI has a wider platform matrix

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116590160809451307https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116590160809451307Sun, 17 May 2026 13:31:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:29:46 GMT]]>@mms we have donated hardware for CouchDB as well.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116590155278661251https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116590155278661251Sun, 17 May 2026 13:29:46 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:22:49 GMT]]>@janl TBF, FreeBSD has their own fleet farm to build ports. It a regular problem to fund machines for it.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/mms/statuses/116590127997903488https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/mms/statuses/116590127997903488Sun, 17 May 2026 13:22:49 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 13:07:27 GMT]]>@fedops @jwildeboer @janl They all went away again or enshittified ... thinking of Dagger and earthly, there are probably countless more.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/OmegaPolice/statuses/116590067518565096https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/OmegaPolice/statuses/116590067518565096Sun, 17 May 2026 13:07:27 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 12:53:52 GMT]]>@janl

Way back when, or in fact in 2026 for some projects, people would get a mailing list message to try the most recent tests. Some similar kind of "make test" seems to be what you are talking about? Or does it specifically have to be a bespoke CI in a box?

Link Preview Image
RE26 testing call (2.6.13) #1 - openldap-technical - openldap.org

favicon

(lists.openldap.org)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://toot.cat/users/zygmyd/statuses/116590014127806785https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://toot.cat/users/zygmyd/statuses/116590014127806785Sun, 17 May 2026 12:53:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 12:24:03 GMT]]>@diazona it’s a bit bursty, so averaging is tough

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116589896900528638https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://narrativ.es/users/janl/statuses/116589896900528638Sun, 17 May 2026 12:24:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I’ve had a similar awakening a few months when realising that GitHub shows you the cost of free-for-open-source Actions usage. on Sun, 17 May 2026 12:23:52 GMT]]>@cararemixed number of builds run is a terrible metric, not only due to resource waste.
@janl

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/fedops/statuses/116589896201811287https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/fedops/statuses/116589896201811287Sun, 17 May 2026 12:23:52 GMT