I expect that most of the open-source projects the students care about will be in GitHub.
So perhaps a better solution was to teach them to setup their own git repo in a cheap or free uni server.
And then lose access after graduating. Great idea!
They will then understand that it is extremely easy to move a git repo.
Obviously students don't expect to use uni servers forever. They can setup their own with the lessons learned.
You see, here's Stallman being right once again. Stallman many times on many topics said he wouldn't use a product that's a walled garden and where his presence would contribute to that products dominance (i.e. network effects - everybody has to use it because everybody else is using it). People like the author said "I'll use github because it's beneficial to me in the immediate horizon, despite the fact that I'll be indirectly contributing to their assault on free software". Well, hard for me to care about the author now.
Anyway Forgejo[1,2] is FREE and COPYLEFT software, and Codeberg[3] is a pretty big forge. Forgejo also has on their roadmap to add some federated-type features, so that different people/organizations can host their Forgejo instances, but interact seemlessly with projects on other instances.
If this stuff matters to you, donate to Forgejo[4].
For chat, it depends on what you mean by fail. What actually happened/is happening, is that XMPP the protocol works so well, that most chat apps start by just being another XMPP app, and if they ever get traction they make their servers incompatible with XMPP. That's what WhatsApp did for example.
For social networks, Mastodon is quite large especially in the tech space. It's just not facebook-size. But given that Facebook's success is driven by getting people addicted to their phones, I see this as a sign that Mastodon is doing better. Mastodon doesn't try and get you addicted. And the federation aspect works AMAZINGly. I don't know/even care whether a user I'm interacting with is in the same instance or not. And I can subscribe not just to publications of Mastodon users but also blogs, photo apps etc which implement the ActivityPub protocol.
So yeah, what you said is not nonsense, but I 100% disagree with "doesn't have 1bn users therefore federation failed".
Even issues are mainly just discussions with some metadata attached and as long as they can be surfaced in a way to be attached to a project, then they could be created by anyone.
Hmm.. Surely there is already effort being focused in this direction?
But Forgejo is a git + associated services application first and foremost. It's clearly on the up, and this federation is no more than a planned feature that may or may not catch on. You make it sound like Forgejo will fail because of it, but it's just an add-on.
BTW Forgejo seems to be very similar to GitHub when it comes to bug tracking. There are so many project management systems and bug trackers out there, and I think GitHub (and as thus, Forgejo's) way of doing this is limiting.
There was a recent submission about it on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46460319.
I wonder if people would rather prefer Jira, Redmine, MantisBT, Bugzilla, or something completely different, or a choice to have X and Y and why, and so forth.
Is gitlab still relevant?
If not, there are loads of options depending on your preferences and needs.
GitLab is still relevant. Personally I find it too resource-heavy (both server and web ui) to be my first pick but it's still widely used and actively developed.
Free as in freedom?
Many other tools/platforms provide decent source control and issue tracking. Nothing else has the FOSS project market share of github, and this matters especially when you're looking for the canonical home of a project and trying to judge how popular/active/viable it is (stars/commits/issues/PRs).
If you want exposure and participation for your FOSS project, it's harder to not use github.
FWIW, Forgejo does the source control stuff well. I love it for self-hosted local mirrors.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."