Whenever possible, it’s recommended to work in a common Git repository and use branching strategies to manage your work. However, if you do not have write access for the repository you want to contribute to, you can create a fork.
A fork is a personal copy of the repository and all its branches, which you create in a namespace of your choice. Make changes in your own fork and submit them through a merge request to the repository you don’t have access to.
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/repository/forking_workflow.html
How is this different from GitHub?
Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding: When I want to contribute to a project I'm not involved in, like inkscape, I'm not allowed to create a branch in their repo, so I have to fork it, which creates a copy of the repo, and sets the original repo as a remote.
Note that git is a distributed VCS that doesn't distinguish between servers and clients. Forking and cloning are the same operation from a technical perspective, except when you git clone
, the copy ends up on your local machine, and when you press the "fork" button, the copy is on a GitHub/GitLab server.
"secure" is relative. They may not be e2e encrypted, but they are still encrypted via TLS, like any HTTPS traffic. It's the same encryption used for online banking. If you care about your instance admin being able to read your messages, you should use Signal or a Matrix client though.
But remember that only a few years ago, almost nobody used e2e encryption, and it wasn't much of an issue.