Codeberg/Forgejo only supports Git for VCS which is a major downside. There’re good alternatives to Git, but their code forges are all pretty lackluster—and I continue to use them looking for tool/place to host.

Japan has one of the more popular gridiron football scenes outside of the US. They also have one of the biggest wrestling & motorsports scenes. That said, I wouldn’t be calling any sport really political on one side or the other but a general working-class pasttime.

Asia is full of KFCs with Pepsi fountains

You might be underestimating the OP

Hey now. A lot of that effort has been poured into turning a code forge into a corpo social media platform like Microsoft LinkedIn as well as a way to siphon out a percent chunk of donations via Sponsors too.

I want to see good forges for alternative DVCSs. Git itself feels like legacy software full a truckload of arcane commands & flags with bad defaults that just keeps bloating. Most software makers at this point have never even used a non-Git VCS.

Not good initial experience: starts with the colonial UK flag which is not a symbol for languages, site doesn’t quite work without JS so no menu access (popover works without JS), puts proprietary services Microsoft GitHub & Reddit in priority position, using VC funding leads to hesitation, no mention in the FAQs or otherwise how to contribute to the code (not for general users sure, but missing entirely).

https://www.freie-messenger.de/en/systemvergleich/xmpp-matrix/ this better?

You don’t need to worry about data retention when you own the server & you are the only user. It’s the servers you or someone you know & trust don’t own where you should actually worry about this.

It’s also more problematic with all systems built on eventual consistency models, so best to avoid those since you’ll never be able to get the data dropped. Chat being ephemeral is good.