ForgeFed: An extension to ActivityPub for web-based Git services federation | Hacker News Reader

ForgeFed: An extension to ActivityPub for web-based Git services federation

github.com

44 pointsp4bl09 comments

This has been discussed previously[1]. As someone from the outside, I'd be interested to know whether any actual spec has been started, or is it still at the planning stage and what could interested parties do to help speed up the process?

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17288727

I've been keeping an eye on the mailing list. There was an initial burst of activity when it started, but then it faded out. I'm not aware of any drafted specification, so it has to be in the planning stage still.

Federated Git Services would really help self-hosters of Gitlab/Gitea/Gogs/etc.

Github has the network effect; people can make merge requests because they already have accounts there.

On my instance they don't but if they had a Gitlab account and federation worked, they could!

Would Github/Gitlab/BitBucket et. al. have any incentive to implement this? I mean most of their business models are revolved around people getting on and staying on their sites.

However, Github could probably afford to do this, being owned by Microsoft now. If they implemented this, others would have to follow to stay in the game.

Github definitely not. Bitbucket likely too since they sell it as a primary function IIRC.

Gitlab would considering they have open core and it would make interop between instances easier.

There are several issues on Gitlab that deal with the question of federation and building a network of the seperate instances:

- Discover self-hosted projects from gitlab.com [0]

- Implement cross-server (federated) merge requests [1]

- Share events externally via ActivityPub [2]

Afair Gitlab Enterprise edition currently supports some forms of federation.

[0] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/36025 [1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4013 [2] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/44486

The price of a github account for a company is often far less than the cost of maintening gitlab: people are expensive, and they come with taxes while spending are deductible.

My guess is that github is not risking much.

Well, people do maintain gitlab instances, so it's worth something to them. There is lots of reasons to do, usually corporate, sometimes activist.

GitHub would likely not risk much losses but people not using GitHub would immensely benefit either way, if GH implements it or not.

This "ForgeFed" thing is the same that was posted here a while back called "GitPub". It was just renamed [1], it's not a new specification.

[1] https://dokk.org/ForgeFed

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