Sourcehut’s public alpha

We aim for a higher standard of quality than most software & services working in this domain. What we consider an alpha passes for a production-ready system to some. Today, SourceHut is relied upon by thousands of projects as a robust, secure, and reliable service. We have better uptime than GitHub or GitLab.

Alpha guarantees

We provide the following guarantees regarding the production quality of the SourceHut hosted services:

Your account data is safe and secure

We take frequent backups and use highly redundant systems to store your data. We utilize extensive active monitoring and frequent testing to ensure the reliability of our backup systems. Each development change which requires changes to our storage systems is carefully planned for to ensure your account data is carried over intact. There will be no “clean slate” event as we progress from the alpha to the beta to production.

We also take great pains to carefully ensure the security of all of its systems. We use a distributed architecture which shares data internally between services on a “need to know” basis. Your data is hosted on privately owned hardware colocated in private, secure facilities. We do not use public clouds. We store only as much data as is necessary to faciliate your services, and data is shared with third-parties on a strict need-to-know basis, and only after you have explicitly consented to this sharing. For details, see our privacy policy.

Your voice matters

We welcome feedback and questions in public on the sr.ht-discuss mailing list, or in private via email.

Alpha caveats

However, we also hold some caveats regarding the alpha.

Payment will be required later

From the beta onwards, unpaid accounts will be limited to read-only access to their own projects. Affected users will be emailed at least 60 days in advance of the transition. Users who host their own instance of Sourcehut, on their own servers, will be unaffected by this. Additionally, financial aid will be provided to those who cannot pay; no one is going to be priced out.

The exact details of any billing changes will be discussed extensively with the community well in advance, and you are welcome to make yourself heard in these discussions.

See the billing FAQ for details.

Some services are incomplete

Some of our services are not complete, and you may notice conspicuously absent features. However, if you find the current featureset meets your needs, it may already be suitable for your use. Our documentation is also incomplete.

Some notable features which are still under development in the alpha period include:

• First-class support for user groups/organizations
• A web-based workflow for submitting and reviewing patches on lists.sr.ht
• Full data autonomy, including account data import & export, account deletion, and username changes

The “beta” label is used on our bug trackers to indicate tickets which are prioritized for the beta.

The API is subject to change

We are developing a new GraphQL API which we intend to support onwards into the future. Users of the legacy API will be notified of any deprecations in advance, and assistance in migrating your software will be offered. The new API, once finalized, will be supported for at least 5 years.

Goals for the beta and beyond

The beta will be considered feature complete, but may be lacking in docs and polish, or have minor known bugs. “Feature complete” is defined as “meeting the basic goals in a stable and consistent package”, but doesn’t necessarily mean that no new features will be developed in the post-beta period. The beta period will be short, we will settle any issues which arise from the payment model changing, polish and document everything, and promote it to the production phase shortly thereafter.