Forgejo – Launching a Fork of Gitea | Hacker News Reader

Forgejo – Launching a Fork of Gitea

codeberg.org

64 pointsjoencott78 comments

See also: Open letter to Gitea, https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33372471 – 28 days ago (134 comments)

This is interesting but does codeberg dictate what projects are acceptable? From this post it seems that codeberg has an authoritarian vibe to the point where you can produce “wrong code”;

https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/794#issuecomm...

If that is the case I’ll stick with my self hosted gitlab.

That isn't the vibe I got from that post. The vibe I got is that individual posts a wall of text about their crypto viewpoints, akin to... I totally debunked this on my blog, just go check it out where I might also predict the markets based on gematria, and the admins are like... nope, we don't care to comment on your weird post dude cause you couldn't get the point and sound like a cryptobro.

A platform needs to be moderated, and I support Codeberg. Ddevault and SourceHut already banned all cryptocurrency-related projects.

Thanks for the clarification. I’m not a crypto dev or into crypto much but I’m not into the idea of banning people for “wrong code”, “wrong speak” or idealogical reasons so I’ll be sure to stay away from sourceHut, Ddevault and codeberg.

Good luck to you none the less.

I share your concerns and principled stance. These ideological driven policies are akin to polices encouraging bookburnings in my eyes. Futile polices that do nothing but hurt those who perpetuate it and engage in it.

I don't know, i have a friend who went to the UK in 2015 to work on ready-made dropshipping website that they sold to influencers, and latter on the business shifted to ready-made shitcoins they sold to influencers, with "additionnal code" sold separately (throttle selling, and bypassing the throttle for example). I think the main solidity code was hosted on sourceforge, and this made me kind of boycott the website (i mean, i don't use it much anyway). I understand they need to make money, but hosting tools designed to create scams is a bit too much. I think they sold (or disbanded) the company last year, so i'm not sure if the product is still hosted there.

I guess that if you don't want to pay a moderation team who can read code, banning solidity code and crypto-related project is good enough.

I only wrote this as a counterpoint. i understand your stance, you don't want private company to support censorship. I don't really want that either, but i also don't want private companies to allow scam to be run on their plateforms, and to me, protecting less informed citizens is more important that protecting an ideological concept. It's a trade off for me, and i understand people who don't weigh things the same way.

What does SourceHut have to do with anything ? Are you planning to include cryptocurrency functionality in this fork?

I am a fan of this fork, but not participating. SourceHut is relevant because the link is a reaction to what ddevault did for changing the SourceHut terms of service https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-10-31-tos-update-cryptocurre...

> From this post it seems that codeberg has an authoritarian vibe to the point where you can produce “wrong code”;

This aged well. One of the mods has already threatened to ban someone who literally did nothing wrong.

While the seeming lack of communication from the Gitea owners (see the Gitea open letter) is a bit worrying, it does seem a bit premature to fork and potentially fragment the community before they've actually done anything.

Today the for-profit company released a code dump for the implementation of an integrated CI/CD server. This was worked on in secret for months by multiple people with no say from the community. Gitea should work with Woodpecker for closer integration, not build one by itself. There is no incentive for the company to support alternative CI/CD

It's the first time I hear of Woodpecker https://woodpecker-ci.org/ And I thought I knew the CI/CD ecosystem fairly well. Now I learned that it's a fork of Drone https://www.drone.io/ Oh, the irony.

You should try it, Codeberg uses it for their public CI/CD

Why should Gitea/Forejo lock themselves into a CI product such as Woodpecker, which could, like Drone, be purchased out?

Creating standards would be better, but in the lack of, a closely tied CI/CD or runner or whatever would be sufficient.

Right now, even the Gitea/Gogs/Forgejo ecosystem is fragmented. The latter fork exists, but I don't see how it's different from Foregjo and I have no inclination to believe that it will be optimised for codeberg's use case beyond others, but now I do ask - if Gitea implements functionality such as CICD / run pipelines, will Forgejo keep that or strip it out of their fork, if they maintain upstream syncs?

Is there even a document about what the product aims are? If they're just going to maintain Gitea sync without adding functionality, why should I even look at it, which is likely to fall out of sync with Gitea?

Sorry, why should they work with Woodpecker? I like the project, but options are generally good. For example, Why work on Woodpecker? Why not Jenkins?

It is easy to use, and Codeberg uses it for their public CI/CD

Not to dismiss your comment but you appear entitled through comments like

> Gitea should work with Woodpecker for closer integration, not build one by itself.

> Codeberg uses it for their public CI/CD

Why should anyone care/use CI/CD software because Codeberg uses it? I didn't even know this company existed until just now. Isn't it rude to act entitled and act companies to bend to your will? You speak negatively of Gitea, highlighting a fork because they were working on a CI, but recommend Woodpecker which itself is a fork of Drone CI. What's your line of thinking here?

> Why should anyone care/use CI/CD software because Codeberg uses it?

Woodpecker is community-run, and Codeberg is a non-profit running the biggest Gitea instance.

> You speak negatively of Gitea, highlighting a fork because they were working on a CI

The for-profit Gitea company released the integrated CI/CD that should not be trusted because it was a code dump and worked on in secret. You can read more about the hostile takeover of Gitea at the open letter https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social

> Woodpecker which itself is a fork of Drone CI

Drone CI is not open source, and does not respect user freedoms.

>Woodpecker is community-run, and Codeberg is a non-profit running the biggest Gitea instance.

This is not the answer, really.

For example if anyone asks why should you use Firefox you can at least say Mozilla is trying to support an independent (as in "they have their own engine\stack") software that complies with modern standarts without addint it's own bullshit.

Not just because they are non profit or because of some of their views or whatever.

While closed sourced sofware owned for a profit entity has it's risks - so does the community-run software. Different risks but still risks. Endless number of forks is one of them.

Actualy in Chinese community（QQ group which like Discord server）, there are two daily problem, one is Is there an integrated CI/CD, and the other one is When is Gitea Action(runner/Bot) out.

Personaly, i have been request CI/CD support for half year due to there is no artifact in drone or woodpeeker.

Things being what they are, gitea is essentially the form, and this is the continuation of the existing open source model. Gitea(Tm) is trying to fragment the community by creating a company, but this fork is just about building a great open source product.

If anyone at Gitea(Tm) is seriously afraid of fragmenting the community they are free to contribute to the open source product just like everyone else, but the open source community is naturally not free to engage in anything on behalf of the company.

Gitea itself was forked off of Gogs.

Gitea said they were going to make "An enhanced enterprise version" (i.e., a proprietary version). That's bad enough to warrant a fork in my book.

If only everyone follows ddevault's advice and starts each project with AGPL, that way no company can steal the code.

So it’s stealing to use a license you don’t like?

As an outsider, your posts throughout this thread come across as whiny, entitled m, and thoroughly self-serving.

No. Using a pushover license instead of the AGPL is like not locking your door, and using other people's free work in your own non-free product is stealing from the commons.

Just letting people know Gitea is already a fork of Gogs. So there are going to be three similar but parallel projects all sharing some history?

https://github.com/gogs/gogs

Is there anyway I can find out the differences between two gogs and gitea?

https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/

I kind of wonder how accurate the comparison is. I mean I have little doubt that what's listed is accurate, and that gitea is more fully featured than gogs, but isn't there anything gogs does that gitea doesn't? It's still being developed after all

You can try it out on your own. There is a specification that says "Be warned that we don’t regularly check for feature changes in other products, so this list may be outdated. "

I've been thinking about a self-hosted setup that has public issues but private code. Apparently Gogs supports this, while Gitea has had an open request for it since 2017ish.

Well-being and moderation teams were already created. Must be a VERY vibrant community.

There is a section for what does Forgejo offer but what does it offer that gitea does not?

Forgejo is owned by an independent community instead of a for-profit company, and promises to be free/libre forever!

So, reducing to the actual difference we have … “not them” and “promises to be different from them” …

As someone using neither of them Im genuinely perplexed why anyone trying to work in this space thinks they have a snowballs chance in hell of long term survival if they don’t have some level of critical mass. If the moment the mass reaches critical and business organisation is needed to deal with the legal and business stuff… this whole debacle is a very hardline open source philosophy shitshow and I fully expect this splinter group to eventually fail with the longer term survival of the parent project now less certain because they lost some of that critical mass right at a crucial moment in their growth towards a sustainable level of business cashflow (which is a necessary evil in order for developers working in any software to make a god damn living and not die starving in a gutter) …

So yeah, please tell me why your promises make you qualitatively better at something I would care about?

If your business/community are getting the bulk of their growth from the community of people being alienated from a much larger, older, platform… it behoves you to not make it harder for people to choose you from the other options as they walk out the proverbial door.

> developers working in any software to make a god damn living and not die starving in a gutter

There are many examples of opensource developers receiving full time payment from the community. Krita, Godot, and more all exist long term.

You can earn a living, and respect user freedoms.

See that right there is already a better statement than what I replied to. However it still doesn’t tell me how you intend on being more respectful of user freedoms than the other project. You effectively have to convince me why your ethical stance is the correct one in order to make your project seem better than it’s parent in order to sway me towards choosing it over the older more established project.

Those are all unique projects, not forks.

I assume this is meant to be "forĝejo" (place of forging), but dropping the accent makes it "distant gay man" instead

The “j” is pronounced like the English letter “y”.

Sounds like pointless drama to be honest.

Mmh, I wonder what integrating act[1] into a CI System would look like... you could easily migrate your github projects to self-hosted and still support something like woodpecker ci.

[1]: https://github.com/nektos/act

This should not be trusted, the for-profit company worked on in secret on this for months with multiple people, and released it today in a code dump with no input from the community. Now they have no incentive to support alternative CI/CD like woodpecker

Esperanto name is a strange choice. Is it a result of voting in community?

It was done by a democratic vote https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/1#issuecomment-6885...

the name of this project just becomes increasingly unpronounceable with each fork

Nice to see they're keeping the pronunciation ambiguity!

call it gitgo please? forgejo is a non starter name to me.

Go is rather an… overloaded word at this point

could you say .... generic?

Is Gitea a for-profit project? What's wrong with that?

https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th...

Yeah looks like they are selling support, which I have no problem with. I actually recently set up Gitea and Drone together and it is a match made in heaven. I don't have a problem if open source developers try to monetize their work. I will likely try to do the same with a few projects in the future, lol

I also don't have a problem if open source developers try to monetize their work. In fact I think it's great, if done right. But context is important here.

In Gitea's case, I think this could have been done right, with the community's knowledge and involvement. But that's not what happened. Two of the three "elected owners" of the project effectively undertook a hostile takeover, transferring the ownership of the domains and trademarks to a secretive private company, without telling anyone until after the fact. I know people who were formerly active maintainers, and they were taken completely by surprise – even though it turns out that preparations for this had been ongoing behind closed doors for many months.

At first, I and many others thought it was perhaps a case of failures of communication, and were prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. But after an open letter was signed by many community members, and the people behind Gitea Ltd had ample opportunity to improve the situation, they only dug their heels in and made things worse, and refused to answer questions beyond corporate-speak PR posts. It was at that point that the decision was taken to fork.

As a Gitea user and as someone who is excited about the forge ecosystem and the future of forge federation, I truly hope that Gitea as a community project continues to thrive, and that the company ultimately doesn't derail the community. Unfortunately, I am also very pessimistic about that being the reality, and so I think this fork is a very positive development.

I don't have any problem with them selling support and hosting.

I do have a problem with "An enhanced enterprise version", because this often means arbitrarily locking features behind that enterprise version and working against the interests of the open source code base. What happens in reality is probably more down to the immediate maintainers... however with bad incentives it's just a matter of time.

I remember some disagreements about control of key domains and infrastructure between the OSS maintainers and the nonprofit/company mamagement.

The open letter gives all the details you need to know https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/

Exciting - the action does seem to fit with how codeberg presents themselves! And they should have no trouble battle-testing their project.

so can anyone here quantify

gogs

gitea

forgejo

how are they different? which one is more mature, more stable? more likely to not go kaput?

Forgejo is a community-run fork because the project should not be owned by a for-profit company.

are the core developers and other contributors migrating to Forgejo?

Some of them have migrated. I imagine others are taking more of a "wait-and-see" approach.

For what it's worth, Codeberg is quite a major contributor to Gitea as well as the biggest public instance, and they are supporting the fork and will be switching over after the first stable release.

This is my question as well. If the majority migrate then I will follow.

why fork gitea and not gogs? is gitea "better" than the former?

Yes, you can see a comparison on Gitea's website. The Gitea community has put substantial development into growing Gitea into becoming a GitHub/GitLab alternative. I hope Forgejo will take it further, or that Gitea will actual work to become a community project like they promised.

The people starting forgejo were working on and with gitea before. With that I suppose the question is "Why fork anything but gitea?"

Hard to pronounce name sounds already like a bad start.

It's easy \ˈfor.d͡ʒe.jo\ the Esperanto word for forge

… unless your first language is very different from Esperanto. It really does sound weird. I already imagine trying to sell this at my $DAYJOB (I would likely have to "fork" it myself just to replace a few strings in the codebase that mention the original name).

> unless your first language is very different from Esperanto.

Even with a language close to Esperanto (French) it’s hard to pronounce, and not very catchy.

Honestly using an Esperanto word is a bit uninspired and mediocre.

What does it sound like in your language?

Nothing bad or unpleasant, It just sounds very foreign and hard to pronounce. When I hear it (in my head), the first thing that comes to mind is some sort of a hairy middle-aged male character in a Spanish soap opera.

Doesn't really matter for me personally, but very much does matter in a work context. People have already had trouble with calling Gitea by its proper name and just calling it 'git'.

The problem is g and j have a variety of pronunciations across languages, some of them overlapping!

And English being the mess that it is, it has multiple pronunciations itself.

So It is a bit of a messy name, tho I appreciate I can read it with the Italian interpretation of those.

> It's easy

The many comments disagree. I hope you are content with people referring to it as "forge" or "Forge Joe".

For us plebs that don't fluently read phonetics, can you spell it with equivalent sounds from English?

four•JAY•yo

This doesn't roll off the tongue at all. I'm afraid it's a very poor name.

It’s an idealistic choice and not a pragmatic one. In Portuguese it’s passable, but still off (I understand most Southern European languages and a smattering of German, and it feels like a poor choice in any of them).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com