Codeberg launches Forgejo – Gitea fork
blog.codeberg.orgBackground story seems to be that a portion of Gitea maintainers formed a for-profit company, and transferred all the trademarks to it, going against former promises made, and blowing up their own community as a consequence. They go over the now-traditional "companies are using our free software without paying us" discourse here: https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th...
> we’re planning on establishing a fund to be able to provide support to contributors who not only contribute features, but also bug fixes, performance enhancements, and important refactors.
Sounds like any other for-profit company building commercial software. What stopped them from doing that while keeping the original OSS software copyrights intact?
Also curious to see their plan to pay out all the developers working on the OSS that underpins Gitea itself. The list is pretty long.
I will never cease to be surprised when open source developers choose a license that says "Please, please please steal my code and contribute nothing in return" and then act indignant when companies steal their code and contribute nothing in return. If you are starting an open source project, the default license should be the AGPL, with the LGPL coming in second if you just care about making a useful library.
The GPL is not scary. It just provides you the means to enforce what everyone knows is basic decency in Free software: you get total control of the software, in return you release your changes, and provide your downstreams with the same freedom.
The problem is getting a foot in the door. Many companies outright ban AGPL code because their lawyers don't like the obligations (and how they are up for interpretation) that come with it.
That's simply too much friction. There's a reason most projects that see commercial adoption and are AGPL (or SSPL) started out more permissive.
We need an ALGPL license.
EUPL?
I’m curious about their plan for paying out developers as well.
I have some vague notions for “community supported software”, where features and implementation priorities are driven by the community and not the enterprise. In order to give the developers a fair share, I was thinking of something similar to kickstarter rounds for feature sets, with a defined group of developers for that round.
I’m sure the practical reality is challenging. For example, that means doing fundraising and marketing regularly. There is also an opportunity cost — this is meant to serve the community, and it’s unlikely anyone will get FAANG level compensation for work on this.
Also, reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34011469 -- such as this article (https://stefan-lesser.com/2020/10/27/how-to-adopt-christophe...) ... I'm getting an inkling that there's something related to Christopher Alexander's ideas on end-user programming that is somehow related to community supported software. That in order to have software designed for community interests and have people involved fairly compensated, it involves end-user programming in some way.
> What stopped them from doing that while keeping the original OSS software copyrights intact?
But the original copyrights and license stay intact, not?
By the way, hard forking always gives a sense of confusion to me. Will both projects have a bright future ahead, or will one of them fall by the wayside. Sometimes it takes a few years to crystallize, like with ffmpeg/libav.
I do understand Codeberg has ambitions and a place in the FOSS ecosystem (that is why I moved to it), I just hope it all pans out and they don't bite off a bite that is too big. No idea about Gitea, as I wasn't directly involved. They seem to go somewhat towards a RedHat model, offering support for money. It might be that if Forgejo will really take off and builds a community, Gitea will base off of Forgejo in some future scenario.
> By the way, hard forking always gives a sense of confusion to me. Will both projects have a bright future ahead, or will one of them fall by the wayside. Sometimes it takes a few years to crystallize, like with ffmpeg/libav.
Countless examples either way. It can lead to a "nodejs/iojs" situation where the fork happened because of disagreement, and the upstream project realizes their mistake and eventually integrates the fork into mainline development repository. That probably would count as a success for everyone.
Or it goes the way of webkit/blink, where both forks are successful in their own way, although the project they forked from (khtml), probably is considered less successful.
Either way, that it's even possible to fork and continue working on both I'd consider a success in it's own way. It's the beauty of FOSS.
Maybe the best fork win, and also the base it was forked from.
> that it's even possible to fork and continue working on both I'd consider a success in it's own way
I totally agree.
We can be upset that the Gitea people choose to profit personally on the brand, causing a hard fork, but the beauty born from the ashes is priceless: A new hard fork shakes things up, brings new initiative, people jumping in and saying they'd like to contribute.
There are other examples of forks where each direction is doing its own thing.
HackMD -> HackMD -> CodiMD -> HedgeDoc is another example. I believe they're all alive.
I believe Gogs, from which Gitea once forked, is still being developed on.
It is a healthy sign that this software is already so good that even if you hardfork and lose easy access to the advances made in the sibling branches, you probably don't need it, because the basics are there.
As a quick clarification, Forgejo is a soft fork, not hard.
They will still benefit from upstream contributions.
There will come a point where the branches have diverged too far and merging becomes infeasible. So long-term, it's bound to become "hard".
Possibly, yeah. Although Codeberg was already sort of similar, they had patches on top of Gitea, so assuming it doesn't change too drastically it may stay feasible for quite a while.
They do say "The Gitea project will of course remain open source, and a community project."
It's not clear to me if they intend to further develop Gitea or work on the non open parts. Looking at the reactions and the announcement it looks like everyone assumes the latter.
I wonder why not both?
Because this is how GitLab did it. Started with open source w/ closed parts, then progressively hid source and ways to download and install GitLab on your own infrastructure.
Currently (as I checked 30 seconds ago), downloading and installing is easy, but finding the small "Install" text on the bottom of the page is not. You need to further dig the docs to find the location of the source in the webpage, too.
Everybody assumes that Gitea took the first step towards this state, and they are right to assume that, because we have no other prominent examples.
And I tend to agree with them, too.
GitLab team member here.
Which website did you open to download and install GitLab? about.gitlab.com > Resources > Install provides an overview of all distributions and installation methods (packages, cloud native, etc.) at [0]
> You need to further dig the docs to find the location of the source in the webpage, too.
I assume that the intention was to download GitLab's source code and start the installation from there?
The recommended way to install GitLab is through packages and cloud-native deployments. There are many components involved in the architecture [1], and these methods also help ensure that (database) migrations are run as intended, keeping upgrade maintenance short. Installing from sources is not recommended, albeit possible.
The source code is available for both, open source (CE) and source available (EE), following GitLab's stewardship promise [3].
Maybe this needs an update for the website, please let us know.
[0] https://about.gitlab.com/install/
[1] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/architecture.html
First, I want to note that the comment didn't meant to take a jab at GitLab. I'm administering self-hosted GitLab on two installations for a decade now, and had no problems with it. Actually, I wanted to move to GitLab when I decided to leave GitHub, but, Source Hut fits my needs better.
I went to "www.gitlab.com", which sent me to "about.gitlab.com". I scanned the page, and looked to solutions first, expecting to see "Self Hosted", not seeing it, I clicked to Pricing, where I failed to see Self-managed install. Possibly frustrated, scrolled down and found the "Install" link.
I remember peeking at Resources menu, too but I looked to the first three or so entries possibly. I chalk the situation to a bona fide PEBKAC + Friday tiredness.
> I assume that the intention was to download GitLab's source code and start the installation from there?
Actually no. I trust to a codebase which I'm using for a decade. In most cases, I try to find the code repository to look at the licenses, code organization, or to see how something works. In this case I wanted to do the same (see the licenses, and find the repo in general). I expected to find a direct link to the source code repository. This case was the same. I just want to see the code, and take a look around.
Being able to find the source code repository only via documentation, at least for me, sends the message of "The code is there, but we actually don't want you to see/access it so easily, unless you really want to".
> The source code is available for both, open source (CE) and source available (EE), following GitLab's stewardship promise.
I didn't know that EE was source available. I'm adding this as a plus to my mental notebook, and honestly thanks for being like this.
All in all, I understand (and deeply respect) GitLab for being what it is. I witnessed it becoming from a GitHub clone(ish) to a CI/CD first development platform. I possibly wanted to be greeted by a more developer-oriented webpage than a customer-oriented one, but I guess this works well for you, so I have no complaints.
Thanks for directly answering my comment, and filling the gaps in my knowledge. I really, greatly appreciate it.
I "recommend" you work on making the install process better then. There are projects bigger and more complex than gitlab that don't have any trouble with installing from source.
It also has contributor benefits: if I can't build the repo into a working state, I can't contribute fixes. That's jammed me up with GitLab at least 3 different times now where I've opened issues that I'm perfectly capable of fixing, but since I'm not a battle-hardened Rubyist, and gdk is both some whatthehell and also dies mysteriously, those issues just lie on the pile with the other 46,000
Thanks for the feedback. Would you mind sharing the problems with GDK in a new issue, or link an existing one, and tag me there? Thanks! https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-development-kit/-/issue...
Running the GDK on Gitpod can be alternative: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-development-kit/-/blob/...
Just installed Gitlab again yesterday.
On their 'Pricing' page, the different setups are listed - https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/
Click "Self-Managed" takes you to https://about.gitlab.com/install/
Fairly easy to find. If not, Ctrl-F.
The current plan, as far as I know it, is to continue on the OSS part predominantly.
The only parts that would not be, would be anything that comes from a contract and doesn't make sense to contribute back. For example, if a company wants some bespoke functionality that doesn't make sense in the main repo.
It is great that Codeberg has taken custody of the Forgejo project, and will use it for their own services. Not only is Forgejo using exclusively FOSS tools now, maybe the additional services that Codeberg offers, like Codeberg Pages, Codeberg CI (based on Woodpecker, FOSS Drone.io alternative) and Translations (based on Weblate) will become very easy integrations to any Forgejo installation.
Thanks for pointing out the CI one.
Might just make this a long run goal - moving selfhosted gitlab over
Woodpecker / drone is still not on the same level as Gitlab CI
Anything in particular that you feel is missing? My CI needs are fairly modest (homelab so nothing super advanced)
Multi arch builds, triggers based on environment variables.
Woodpecker can't even build with non-root images, so it's pretty far off. :(
Well gitea itself is a fork of a different project, because of some other founder drama (that I forgot honestly). So it’s fine.
There was no drama as far as I recall, just complaints that he wasn't agile enough or something like that. The different project is Gogs https://gogs.io/ and its author is Joe Chen ('unknwon').
From what I recall the drama was that the split was timed to his absence and they announced everywhere that "Gogs is dead/unmaintained" until he came back and set the record straight.
The reason for the split was understandable, them going around proclaiming Gogs dead and unmaintained felt pretty scummy to me, however.
The drama was that the original project's maintainer had full control and would go absent for weeks/months leaving the project in limbo, and refused to share the maintainer burden with anyone (including refusing features he disliked).
> refused to share … (including refusing features he disliked)
That makes the maintainer of Gogs sound rather petty, which I don't think is true. It is their project, they don't have to give control to anyone else if they don't want to, or implement features that they don't want.
A number of projects are explicitly “open source, not open contribution” and this is perfectly OK. If it is a problem for other individuals or “the community” than there is always the fork option (as taken by Gitea and now Forgejo) or if that isn't practical maybe offering to pay the maintainer, so can afford to make time to bother more with needs/wants away from their own (though in the latter case, don't be offended if this is politely rebuffed also).
> and refused to share the maintainer burden with anyone (including refusing features he disliked).
I realize gogs is MIT license which is subject to easy fork. To avoid a fork when using such license, you have few options. One is fully feature your product, the other is expect your product to require domain specific skills that makes fork less trivial to move on; file format, data manipulation, etc.
So I wondered if original maintainer really wanted to avoid the fork, or simply don't care. It would be interesting to hear.
It took a long time, but GitHub has finally (thankfully) shipped privacy settings that allow you to disable the way it broadcasts/publicizes your every move on your profile page. Does Codeberg or Gitea allow this yet? (They really should have been the first to do so...)
It would be nice to also disable the public listing of repositories for your profile page and to control it for organizations, too. (Not talking about private repos. Instead: these should be ordinary repos that remain accessible to anyone who has the link, but they are simply not aggregated into a single unified list that's available to anyone who clicks over to the "Repositories" tab. Think of them like unlisted YouTube videos, except they are all unlisted by default, rather than having to specifically designate each one as being unlisted—although that would work, too, it's just not the way it should be implemented.)
Codeberg is not for private code, it's explicitly for "Free and Open Source Software". Probably it would still make sense to have some privacy for authors/contributors, so you can't simply list all activity by going to someones profile on the website, but the repositories should still be findable, browsable and public, as that's the goal of repositories in the organization Codeberg e.V.
It may be that there is an issue in the Gitea tracker. The Forgejo tracker is a clean slate, but you could request this at: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues
> allow you to disable the way it broadcasts/publicizes your every move on your profile page.
.. except from the owners of Github, and their paid clients ! you don't realize this?
For anyone else who, like me, couldn't decide which pronunciation it was the FAQ says "(pronounced /forˈd͡ʒe.jo/)". I don't know IPA so I can't tell if that j in ".jo" is like "joker" or like the french "jambon" or if it's soft like "yo"
It's a mistranscription of the Esperanto word forĝejo, meaning "forge" (i.e. the place where forging happens).
But diacritic marks aren't optional in Esperanto, they change pronunciation and meaning. "Forgejo", which is pronounced with a hard "g" (IPA /g/), is a nonsense word which means something like "distant gay".
The correct transcription without diacritics would be "forghejo".
Name is only inspired by esperanto, but no literal transcription.
I missed that they called this out specifically on the announcement page; I appreciate they acknowledge the source. Wonder why they didn't then go for the .io domain possibility with "Forgeio".
There's a controversy with regards to the .io TLD. Especially on the Fediverse people using this TLD are often reminded of this and discouraged to use it.
That text is linked to an audio file. In normal text could be like "for-jay-oh".
So... 4JO? Like a droid name. I suppose this reads better in English than in German though.
That’s par of course too… I never knew how to pronounce gitea.
Their tagline is “ Git with a cup of tea” so I assume it’s pronounced like the words git and tea, but without repeating the T.
From the IPA, it's soft like “yo”. (And the “e” is not silent, so the word has three syllables.)
As a German proficient in English that name just makes my head hurt, no matter how the real pronunciation is. Maybe I'll go with a combination of Jorge and rojo (in Spanish) out of spite...
Also, missed opportunity, Codeberg folks. Why Not "Erika"? ;)
> Also, missed opportunity, Codeberg folks. Why Not "Erika"? ;)
Oh wow, that's a deep cut. I'm deeply impressed and amused. Almost to the point of yodeling ;)
(For those lucky enough not to be this old and/or German, there once were two sisters called "Gitti & Erika" who made some horrible, yet famous Schlager songs – folksy chansons. Including the title melody of the local dub of the "Heidi" anime, triggering basically every "80s/90s kid".)
Isn't Erika a nazi song about flowers, bees, and maidens?
I think it's male name -> female name -> flower named after that -> song named after that. I honestly doubt that that's the first thing that comes to mind and thus would besmirch the good name of, erm, git. ;)
(Not that I'm suggesting actually naming something after a boomer-level German in-joke in the first place.)
> Take back control
Oh jeez, will every marketing copy repeat this phrase forever now?
Codeberg isn't a marketing company. It isn't even a company
Change the name.
thinking i'm going to forgo this
As an occasional gitea contributor: irc > matrix