He left GitHub for a server in Europe — no cloud rent, no corporate gatekeepers

Jorijn didn’t hate GitHub. He just got tired of paying for it. So he moved his code, his issues, his wikis — everything — off the platform and onto a small server in Belgium. No AWS. No Microsoft. No monthly bill. He runs it himself, with Forgejo, an open-source tool that looks and feels like GitHub but owns nothing but his own machine.

He didn’t need a team to do it. Just a weekend, a VPS, and the will to stop renting his digital home. His repos are now stored where he can touch them — literally. Backups? He copies them to a drive he keeps in his closet. If the power goes out, he still has his code.

No more waiting for GitHub’s updates. No more surprise changes to the UI. No more worrying if a corporate policy will lock him out next quarter. He answers to no one but himself and his primos who also code.

He still uses GitHub for public projects — because that’s where the community is. But his private work? His real work? It’s his. No middleman. No rent.

Why this matters for us: When your work lives on a server you control, you stop paying to belong — and start owning your hustle.