GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins and CircleCI rent the minute. Woodpecker is Apache-2.0 and runs the pipeline on machines the client controls, usually beside Gitea or Forgejo. The pipeline file moves. The rented minutes stop. The machine does not become free.
What is the actual trade?
You trade a per-minute invoice for a host you patch, and for the work of rewriting any action that was a blob in someone else's marketplace. If the pipeline is three shell scripts, that work is small. If it is forty proprietary actions, it is the project.
What we will not claim?
That every GitHub Action has an open-source twin. It does not. The migration inventory is the list of actions, not the list of repositories.
When should CI stay rented?
When builds are bursty, the team will not babysit a runner, and the invoice is smaller than a host. Own the runner when the pipeline touches secrets and artifacts that should not sit on a shared rented fleet. Security assessment and hardening is part of that choice, not an afterthought.
What do we hand over?
We select the system, deploy it on infrastructure you control, connect it to the tools you keep, and write the runbook so your own team can operate it. Support after handover is optional. The rest of the map is in software you can stop renting; the engagement behind it is open-source business systems.
Name one process that still needs a person. We will tell you what a one-time build takes.
Contact us today